pat tillman love letter, When Pat Tillman was deployed to Iraq for the first time, he did something he had done throughout his love affair with his wife, Marie — he wrote her a letter.Except this one was never meant to be read. It sat through two deployments on the bedroom dresser, eventually buried under piles of receipts and greeting cards.
Then, during Pat’s tour in Afghanistan, Marie got the news she had long feared. Her husband would never be coming home.
That night, she crept to the bedroom dresser, unearthed the letter and opened it.
She immediately recognized his familiar scrawl. The pages were a mess of ink and scribble. There were words and whole sentences crossed outShe closed her eyes before reading his words:
Still in shock, Marie had not cried since she heard the news of her husband’s death. Reading his words, she wept.
Marie thought of the hundreds of letters that they had shared during their 11-year relationship — an affair she chronicles in her book “The Letter: My Journey Through Love, Loss, & Life” (Grand Central) out Tuesday.
Tillman died at 27 a tragic hero — a man who left behind a lucrative contract with the NFL to join the Army, then was killed in a friendly-fire incident initially covered up by the military.
“But that is not the story I wanted to tell,” Marie told The Post.
Instead, in “The Letter,” Marie shares their love story through the notes they shared — one that began when they were teenagers.
Tillman and Marie lived in the same small town near San Francisco. He was the quintessence of the “popular jock,” while she was the “painfully shy” good girl.
Marie noticed Tillman had a crush on her when he became uncharacteristically quiet around her.
Right before their senior year, during a game of capture the flag, Pat “captured” Marie and held on to her ankle far longer than necessary. After that, a mutual friend brokered a first date between the two. They fell in love quickly.
Less than a year later, they remained together even after Tillman was arrested for fighting at a pizzeria and locked up in juvenile hall for 30 days.
It was then their relationship through letters began.
“Hi, dude,” he began his first letter, as only a teenage boy would address his paramour. But he continues thoughtfully: “I am glad I got a chance to see you. Actually glad isLove Letter of the Day: The day Pat Tillman’s wife, Marie, learned he had been killed by friendly fire in Afghanistan, she unsealed his “in case I die” letter to her that he had penned a year earlier:
It’s difficult to summarize 10 years together, my love for you, my hopes for your future, and pretend to be dead all at the same time . . . I simply cannot put all this into words. I’m not ready willing or able. … Through the years I’ve asked a great deal of you, therefore it should surprise you little that I have another favor to ask. I ask that you live.
Now, the letter is included in a new book that tells the story of the couple’s 11-year love affair through the letters they exchanged.
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