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The following is a reprint of a story in Yahoo News detailing the tragic story of University of Arizona baseball star Chris Moon who gave up a certain professional career in professional baseball to join the military, then became a war hero in Afghanistan.
Chris was Native American, a local boy from Tucson, and when he enrolled in Arizona his freshman year he was certain to achieve All American. His story should serve as an inspiration for those who have a greater desire to serve than to make money.
As a fellow Wildcat, although I went to Arizona years before Chris to play baseball and basketball, and a longtime friends to the Native Americans in Arizona, I believe Chris has given Native Americans, Tucson natives, our University of Arizona, and his family, a sense of pride for this young man.
The heartbreaking story of Chris Moon: Baseball prospect turned war hero
TUCSON, Ariz.
– On a perch overlooking the pristine baseball diamonds of Cherry Field is the
prospective site of a memorial dedicated to one of the finest athletes Tucson has ever known.
Chris Moon was a pitcher who threw more than 90 mph and a
center fielder who could throw out a base runner with precision. He was drafted
by the Atlanta Braves in
the late rounds of the 2007 MLB First-Year Player Draft, but instead accepted a
partial scholarship to his dream school, the University of Arizona.
Moon seemingly had everything going for him, but while
friends and family had grand visions of watching him play professional
baseball, he longed for a different challenge.
In fall 2007, just a semester into his first year at Arizona, Moon told
Wildcats coach Andy Lopez he was quitting the team to join the Army. Lopez
spent more than an hour trying to talk Moon out of his decision.
But Moon's mind was made up.
"He was legit," Lopez said. "I personally
think that if he would have played here three years … I'm not sure he would
have been a big leaguer, but he would have had an opportunity to play
professional baseball."
Less than two years later, Moon was dead at age 20.
"It was hard to imagine somebody giving up what he had
to go serve our country," said Mike Boese, the head athletic trainer at
Tucson High and the man spearheading the memorial. "I always tell people,
Chris Moon was the high school/college version of Pat Tillman."
____________________
Brian and Marsha Moon cried as they watched their son leave
home with an Army recruiter in the early morning hours of a chilly February day
in 2008.
Only two months earlier, Brian was watching TV when Chris
sat down on the couch and said he needed to talk.
"He came to me, I was in the living room, and he sat
down and he said, 'Dad, I know you're not going to like this, but I want to do
something harder than play baseball,'" Brian said. "And then he said,
'I want to join the Army.' It was really difficult because I wanted to do the
right thing as a parent and reflecting on that, that's going to haunt me for
the rest of my life.
"I said, 'Well, you know, you've lived our dream to
now. I guess it's time for you to now go and live your dream. So if this is
what you want to do, then I support you. I don't like it, but I support you in
it.'"
Brian said the family didn't feel the enormity of Chris'
decision until they watched him drive away. Chris was off to Fort Benning, Ga.,
where he would complete infantry training. He then joined the 82nd Airborne
Division stationed at Fort Bragg,
N.C., where he enrolled in sniper
school in 2009.
Chris excelled there, just as he had on the baseball
diamond.
"When we were in sniper school, he was just naturally
good at it," said Chris Rush, who was Chris Moon's sniper partner.
"The shooting, he was good, but just the way he could move around.
"Whenever we'd do stalking, which is when you sneak up
to a target, shoot and you try to not be detected, he'd do it in like 40
minutes when it took the rest of us like three hours."
When Chris Moon told his parents he was joining the Army,
there was always a hope he wouldn't get deployed. He'd stay in the United States,
train, be prepared, but never actually see the battlefield.
But the Moons knew their son better than that. If there was
a chance to get in the fray, Chris would be the first to volunteer.
"We had lots of father-son talks," Brian recalls,
pausing for a moment to hold back tears. "I would tell him, 'You're a
leader and people are going to look up to you. You have to do the right thing.
And when somebody calls someone out to do something, be ready. Be the person
that's ready to do it. Be the one that's ready to step up.'"
Chris got his chance to step up in September 2009, when the
4th Brigade Combat Team was deployed to Afghanistan. Chris kept in touch
with his family as much as possible, sometimes via satellite phone and later
via Skype. He'd tell Marsha he was envisioning eating at his favorite
restaurants or his family's home cooking. He'd remark about the mountains and
sunrises in Afghanistan and
how they reminded him of Tucson.
He'd proudly speak in baby talk to his infant niece, Semira, the daughter of
his sister, Sunday, as his fellow soldiers listened and laughed.
Chris came home for some R&R on Christmas Day of that
year. He showed pictures and told stories.
Brian and Marsha smiled and laughed as Chris spun his tales,
but inside they ached because they couldn't protect their son from the dangers
they knew he was constantly facing.
It was the most helpless feeling in the world.
"We could just sense this enormous severity and I just
said, 'Chris, I wish I could go get you. I wish I could bring you back, but I
can't.'" Brian recalls from a phone conversation. "So I said, 'Just
take care of yourself. Just watch out for yourself. Don't do anything crazy.
Just try to protect yourself.' I didn't know what else to do. What else can you
do in that situation?"
Chris went back to Afghanistan in January and Marsha
couldn't sleep. She was haunted by Chris' stories, which were only enhanced by
her own imagination. He'd call, say the things sons say to their adoring
mothers and she'd tell him she'd pray for him.
"His thing was always, 'Oh Mom, don't worry about me,
I'll be OK.'" Marsha recalled. "And even in his deployment, that's
the same thing. 'Mom, pray for my men, pray for my men. And don't worry about
me, I'm OK. I'll see you.'"
But then Chris called a few weeks before his death and his
tone had changed. He was finally opening up about the perils of his situation
as if he knew his remaining time was limited.
"It was not 'pray for my men' anymore," Marsha
said. "It was, 'Mom, pray for me.'"
____________________
Brian Moon considered baseball to be the ultimate father-son
activity. The two were constantly working toward making Chris the best player
in his age group and beyond. Brian recalls cutting a bicycle inner tube in half
and tying one end to the rafters of their garage and the other to a baseball
bat in order to create resistance to make Chris a stronger hitter. Upon trying
it out, Chris, then 10, wasn't ready for the force of the resistance and the
bat snapped back and sliced open his forehead. In the emergency room, the two
thought better of the idea.
 |
| Semira, niece of Chris |
Failed efforts aside, Brian's instruction helped his son
become one of the best young baseball players in Arizona. He was on every all-star team and
in every select tournament. He hit a walk-off home run in the high school
playoffs at Cherry Field in 2006. He threw a complete game one-hitter in the
American Legion World Series in 2007.
Brian said he initially thought his son could be an average
player, but then Chris would shock him with a dynamic play and he started to
believe his son could be a better player than even he imagined.
Oscar Romero, the coach at Tucson High, said he first
noticed Chris as a freshman.
He was throwing the ball from foul pole to foul pole.
"That's kind of the ham that he was in a way, and he
wanted to make sure that we took notice of him," Romero said. "But he
was just so God-given in terms of his abilities."
It didn't take long for Romero to learn Chris' name, but it
did take him two more years to call him up to varsity. Tucson High's team was
packed with talent and Romero wanted to make sure Chris would play every day.
Chris made varsity in 2006, his junior year, and immediately became a star.
Whether it was pitching his team to victory, making the game-winning play in
the field or delivering the game-winning hit, Chris had a knack for coming
through in the clutch.
He finished that season as the Southern Arizona Player of
the Year with a .462 batting average, three home runs and 23 RBI. He also had
an 8-2 record as a pitcher with a 1.21 ERA and four complete games.
"He would find a way to have the final say in
games," Romero said. "He was our guy. That was a talented team, but
he stood out. As the year progressed he became, not a loud leader, just a
leader by example. The kid would hustle like no other. You never saw a lazy
bone in the kid. It was always like it was his first day of practice and he was
so excited to get on the field and play the game."
But as
Chris' profile on the baseball field started to increase, his mind began
wandering to the battlefield. Chris, who was part Navajo from his mother's
side, wanted to get more in touch with his Native American roots. He began
spending time with his aunt's boyfriend, who was Native American and former
military.
It was also during this time that Chris participated in a sweat lodge
ceremony, a Native American ritual that cleanses the spirit and connects
participants to their spirit guides. Chris, who was 15 years old, was given
guidance about his future and met his spirit animal, a hawk, which he would
later tattoo across his back.
Brian said the first time he ever heard his son mention the
Army was around age 16, when he asked his dad if he'd allow him to join after
high school. Chris' birthday was in August, so he'd only be 17 when his time at
Tucson High was over.
Brian remembers being upset with his son and emphatically
telling him he'd never sign an Army permission slip.
"I told him that, 'You already have a challenge, you
already have something that can challenge you. Going into the military is for
someone that doesn't have any other choices right now,'" Brian said.
"That's how I put it; that's how I thought of it."
Graduation came and went and Chris enrolled at the University of Arizona. He seemed to adjust well,
making friends with his teammates while excelling as a pitcher and center
fielder. Lopez thought he'd be a contributor in the spring.
But Chris' spring season never came as he decided to leave a
spot on the University
of Arizona baseball team
and join the Army instead.
Brian often thinks about the day his son announced his
plans. Brian said he could have told his son 'no' like he had two years
earlier, but something told him that wasn't the right decision. It was time to
let his son follow his own path.
A year later, that couch where the family had their initial
talk would be the last place Brian would hug and kiss his son, as he went off
to work and Chris went back to his unit for the last time.
____________________
Chris' final phone call to his family came from the Arghandab Valley
in Kandahar, the southern region of Afghanistan
where his unit was performing its final mission, preparing an untested
artillery unit to replace them and continue to push for control of a key
section of territory.
The fighting had intensified and Chris' company was
incurring severe losses. As chronicled in The Atlantic by Brian Mockenhaupt, more than half of the
unit's 42 men were killed or wounded during their time in Afghanistan.
Chris was no stranger to firefights, but the constant
struggle to just live through the day was taking its toll. His mood grew somber
in late June when a roadside bomb killed his mentor, Staff Sgt. Edwardo Loredo.
The adrenaline rush of being in the heat of battle was gone.
Chris wanted out. He wanted to go home.
During this time, he confided in Derek Storjohann, a close
friend he made at Fort
Bragg. Both were in the Arghandab Valley, but stationed in a different
spots. In the 10 months they were in
Afghanistan, the two never seemed
to be in the same place.
In a chat on Facebook a few weeks before Chris' death, Chris
told Storjohann of the constant danger he faced. Storjohann couldn't believe
it. He was just four kilometers down the road, but the situations couldn't have
been any different. Storjohann's unit was clearing bombs from a school near the
desert and facing little resistance.
Chris, however, was in the middle of a spring offensive in
the part of the Arghandab
Valley that consisted of
pomegranate orchards, wheat fields and vineyards. As the weather warmed and the
leaves and crops grew back, the opportunities for hidden danger ramped up to
unfathomable levels.
All Storjohann could do was tell his friend to stay safe.
In the year Chris was in Afghanistan, he became one of his
company's greatest weapons. He was a talented sniper credited with multiple
kills of Afghan fighters, his sniper partner, Chris Rush, said. While Moon's
precision drew the praise of his men, it drew the ire of Taliban forces, which
often targeted snipers. Rush recalled several instances in which he and Moon
were ambushed yet came out unscathed. And those close calls fueled the duo to
take out more Taliban forces.
On July 6, Moon's unit was out on foot patrol. Moon and Rush
were supposed to be on their way back to the main base three days earlier, but
volunteered to stay behind and help acclimate the new men. Rush said every time
they prepared to leave the compound, they could hear the rampant gunfire beyond
the wall and nerves would set in. They'd attempt to calm those nerves with a
tradition, doing a choreographed handshake and pledging to have each other's
back before stepping into the fray.
This day was quiet by comparison, but tensions were high.
Small comments were made to ease the nerves because they all knew it wouldn't
be quiet for long.
The group stopped at a footbridge that led into a
pomegranate orchard. Moon knelt behind a wall for cover while the bridge was
cleared for explosives. Rush knelt beside him. The two were at the back of the
group.
"We're
on a knee against a wall looking over into the orchards and I mean, I can't
really remember what we said, but I remember the last thing I said was, 'Stay
south more,'" Rush recalled quietly.
He was telling Moon to stay far enough from the man in front
of him to avoid shrapnel in case a bomb was detonated.
"Then we walked and literally 20 meters later it went
off."
Several members of the unit safely crossed the bridge over
an active roadside bomb. But when Moon, who was carrying a long-barrel sniper's
rifle, stepped into its epicenter, a Taliban fighter in the orchard remotely
detonated it. Rush was 10 meters behind Moon – south of him – and was blown
back by the blast.
"It felt like somebody punched me in my face pretty
hard," Rush said. "Just fell back and was kind of dazed for a second.
I heard him calling me on the radio, but I was just dazed and then finally,
finally I grabbed the radio and I could hear him yelling. I called and told
them we were hit. I started crawling to him, but the dust was so bad I couldn't
see anything. And then finally it came down and then I found him. I mean, he
wasn't that far away, but still, I couldn't see more than like an inch in front
of me."
Moon was at the bottom of a crater that was two feet deep
and five feet wide.
Both of his legs were gone — his right leg severed at the
knee and his left at the shin. Both of his forearms took shrapnel that left his
bones in splinters. He was missing a thumb and his eardrums were blown out.
Tourniquets were applied to his legs and bandages to his arms. He was given an
IV to replace the lost blood and he was shouted at to stay conscious. He was
carried to a medevac where fellow soldiers shielded his body from gunfire.
Rush stayed with him the entire time.
____________________
The Moon family had just returned from a Fourth of July
vacation and Marsha was home unpacking and overseeing a wrought iron door being
installed.
A sheriff pulled up to the front of the house and asked for
Brian or Marsha Moon.
The sheriff handed her a card with an Army telephone number
on it and told her the Army had been trying to get in touch with her family.
Marsha nearly fainted. She sat, started guzzling water and breathing into a
paper bag. She refused to take the card or call the number. Instead, she
directed the sheriff to call her husband at work.
In between the crackling of the inflating and deflating of
the paper bag, she heard bits and pieces of the sheriff's conversation. She
told her husband to come home. But he had to make the call first.
Brian won't read The Atlantic article that chronicles his son's death. He
doesn't have to. He heard the grisly details that day and has no desire to go
back to that place.
"They called me and Marsha made me talk to them and
they called me and I got all the details," Brian said. "I don't know
if anybody can imagine, but hearing that about your child, it's like, when
people say 'surreal,' that's surreal. Like, I can't believe you're telling me
this. And just how gruesome [the] details were. And I had to keep that to
myself. Marsha didn't want to hear about it."
Chris Moon survived the blast. Doctors had to amputate his
legs even more than what the explosion had taken.
They repaired the damage to his arms and for all intents and
purposes, he was stable. They transferred Chris to Landstuhl
Regional Medical
Center in Germany. It was a good sign.
After almost a week of waiting, the family was given the green light to come
see him.
____________________
The family — Brian, Marsha and Chris' sister, Sunday — sat
in various seats on a plane bound for Germany. Marsha spent much of the
flight praying and crying. On the morning of July 13, she raised the shade next
to her seat and looked out onto the clouds. The sun's rays created a
near-heavenly experience as the plane flew over the Atlantic
Ocean.
Marsha began to pray.
She looked at the monitor in front of her and saw they were
nearing London.
It was 9:30 a.m.
"The
whole flight I had this ache. I had this huge ache and it just stayed
there," Marsha recalled somberly. "I was just a ball of hurt. And
then all of a sudden, as I'm sitting there at that time, I begin to feel like
these flutters and all of a sudden that hurt and that ball just went away. And
at that moment I'm thinking, 'OK, I think he's gone.'"
The Moon family arrived at Landstuhl Regional
Medical Center
that evening and was immediately ushered into a side room where a man dressed
in Army regalia handed them paperwork. The tears and wails and sobs came fast
and hard and were uncontrollable. They were too late.
Chris had passed that morning — around 9:30 a.m. — from a
blood infection.
Chris Moon was less than a month from his 21st birthday and
a month and a half from going home.
____________________
It's May 2015. Brian Moon sits in his living room, talking
about his son and staring at the couch where he last saw him alive. While he
observes his son's passing on July 13, he says his date will always be Jan. 12,
the day he said his final goodbye.
Marsha and Brian didn't look at their son on the day of his
passing. They couldn't. They wanted to remember him as the son who liked to
lounge with his shirt off and sit on his mom's lap, even at 6-foot-2, 230
pounds, and have his back scratched and head rubbed.
The son who enjoyed long drives with his dad and was always
ready to play catch in the yard.
The only time Brian and Marsha looked at their son following
his death was in determining whether to honor his final wishes for an open
casket. They kept the casket closed.
More than 3,000 people showed up for Chris' funeral. Even
though it seemed strange to some,
Marsha hired a photographer to chronicle it.
She had chronicled nearly every moment of her son's life before he went to war.
He was back now, and in some ways chronicling the occasion seemed like the
right thing to do.
Brian and Marsha had a hard time deciding where to bury
their son. They had been told many times their son died a hero, but they didn't
want him at Arlington National Cemetery. Chris outlined in his will a desire to
be buried in Tucson and his parents agreed.
Emotions were still raw as they searched for a place to lay
their son to rest. As they stopped to look at a plot at East Lawn Palms, a gust
of wind kicked up around them and circled the group before disappearing
completely. The plot was near a tree with a beautiful view of the mountains
Chris loved so dearly. It was perfect.
His black headstone is a bronzed collage of photos representing
his near 21 years of life.
In the nearly five years since Chris' passing, Marsha has
been the family rock. She's become a member of The American Gold Star Mothers,
Inc., which is a support group for mothers of sons or daughters who have lost
their lives in service to their country. She's helped other mothers get through
tragedy.
Brian's journey has been different. He freely admits that
he's not a people person, so he's kept his emotions about his son's life and
death mostly to himself. He still cries, but he does so alone.
"I put [my pain] in a box and I put it on a shelf
because I don't know what to do with it. So it just kind of has its own
compartment," Brian said.
It's the same type of tough-love approach Brian had always
used with his son. Being emotional didn't help anything or change anything; you
still had to move forward. It was a similar trait Chris took on in the Army as
he watched many friends leave the compound and not come back.
Both Brian and Marsha don't like to deal in what-if's, though
Brian sometimes can't help but revisit conversations he had with his boy while
he was molding him into a man.
"I always told my son to be the one to step up when
someone asks for a leader," Brian said. "And maybe I shouldn't have
said all that kind of stuff. I should have told him, 'Be smart and don't raise
your hand.'
"I would love to be seeing him play baseball right now,
of course. I would love to see the rest of his life."
____________________
The life-sized statue of Chris playing baseball and a bronze
plaque that will bear his likeness and tell his story — as well as bear the
names of every other Tucson High grad who died during military service — hasn't
been built yet. But friends and family have been working with Legacies
Alive, a nonprofit organization that supports efforts to keep memories of
fallen heroes alive, to help raise the money for the project.
The high school also hosts a memorial baseball tournament as
a tribute to Chris, and the Omni Hotel hosts an annual golf tournament in
Chris' name to help collect funds. The baseball program also has red camo
uniforms it wears for special games. All of the jerseys bear Moon's last name.
His No. 11 is retired.
Overall,
the memorial will cost an estimated $60,000 and the fund is nearing $20,000.
Any excess will go toward a scholarship fund in Chris' name.
"We have a name on our scoreboard at Cherry Field, a
former baseball player that died in a motorcycle accident, and nobody knows who
he was," Boese said. "And I don't want that to happen to this kid.
"I want him to be a reminder and a role model for our
Tucson High kids and every kid that comes to Cherry Field to practice or play a
game."
Derek Storjohann rubs a metal bracelet with Chris' name on
it as he talks about his best friend giving him a direction in life. When
Storjohann left the Army, he moved to Tucson, enrolled at Pima Community
College, and spent a lot of time with the Moon family. He ultimately
transferred to Colorado State where he graduated last weekend with a degree in
health and exercise science. He has an internship this summer.
Just a couple months after Chris died, Strojohann and Rush
got tattoos of hawks. Rush's is on his back shoulder. Storjohann's runs the
width of his chest and has Chris' initials and the Arizona flag in it.
They'll carry his memory forever.
"I don't want to define him by his death," Brian
Moon said. "I define his life by how he lived and the kind of person he
was and the good things that people tell me about him because obviously as a
parent, the most important thing is what people tell you that he's doing when
you're not around. That's what defines what kind of child you have.
"Everybody thinks that their children and grandchildren
are special, but I always knew that there was something special about him and
the way he handled himself. I'm sure there's a lot of people in the military
now that are active, and families that have lost kids that were in the
military, that can say probably the same kinds of things about their children,
too. Just kids that were willing to be accounted for and step up and do things
that others wouldn't.
"I think it's an important thing to go into the
military and he thought it was an important thing. He wanted to do something
important. And he did."
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