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WAKE I & FUNERAL II

The book begins in the Mekong with the grenade blast that removes B.T. (born Brien Thomas) Collins’ right arm and destroys his right leg. He sits soaked in a pool of blood and the brittle grasses turn red-brown beneath him. His Special Forces medic runs towards him, and he calls out, “T-burg, T-burg! Am I going to die?” His wake and funeral follow…twenty-six years later.

My brother Brien dies not from a massive coronary, but from an overdose of passion for his country and his fellow Americans. He gives in to grief and guilt over all those he left behind in the jungle. He dies from living at a level of intensity so fierce it finally kills him. He is 52 years old.

Five thousand assemble to mourn his passing and the eulogies lay out a life crammed with achievements and antics, quiet deeds and front pages stunts, monies raised, missions accomplished, deplorable language and unforgettable quotes, the most important of which is, “Is the world a better place because you were there?” It was. My New York brother is given a California state funeral. He lies in the Capitol Rotunda. The Bishop of Sacramento and the Jesuit President of Santa Clara University say mass. A Rabbi speaks poetically and with such feeling that those listening are left breathless. A flag draped caisson, a rider-less horse, a missing man military fly over and soldiers, lawmen and politicians of every rank and political persuasion bear witness. Men and women weep and everyone laughs--hard. He had been truly impossible: a stick-in-your-craw, whining, cajoling, hilarious warrior who never forgot a friend or foe.

They are all there. Ed Rollins who made sure B.T.’s letters to Ronald Reagan were actually read by the president. The Special Forces Captain who went AWOL to find him barely alive at an evacuation station, his tent mate in the First Air Cavalry whom he had cautioned two months before his death: “You’ll have to be there, you know. And by the time they get through talking, you won’t be able to tell the difference between Mahatma Gandhi, Mother Teresa and me, baby,” the fellow wounded veteran who had been with B.T. at the Valley Forge hospital for 18 months. “B.T. had seen a lot of action,” he tells us, “most of it with the nurses in the hospital parking lot.” The former California State Treasurer, Tom Hayes tells us of B.T.’s private trips to the tarmac at McClellan to pay homage to the returning MIA’s, his letters to Tom’s parents and children praising him, while telling him to his face that if only his parents had been married, he too, could have been in the Army.

Governor Jerry Brown claims he never actually hired B.T. “He just showed up one day.” In fact, it was Jerry Brown who discovered B.T. appointing him Director of the California Conservation Corps, which resulted in international publicity, documentaries, television appearances and thousands of articles. “He took the spirit of the CCC and made it into a badge of pride,” the Governor tells us. “B.T. Collins was an anachronism in his own time, but underneath, he was a real marshmallow.“ Governor Pete Wilson had named B.T, Director of the California Youth Authority (the juvenile penal system) and later urged him to run for the State Assembly. He reminds us that the site for today’s ceremony, in the park facing the Vietnam War Memorial is well chosen because B.T. played so great a role in its completion. Wilson extols my brother’s many good qualities, twice halting to regain his composure. “If Collins were here,” he quips, “he’d say ‘candy-ass Marine.’” The Governor of California salutes the coffin: “Good-bye, dear friend. I will always remember you with love and with laughter.

The emcee, quinsententially handsome NBC anchor, Stan Atkinson closes with a WWI lament; By your courage in tribulation, your cheerfulness before the dirty devices of this world, you have won the love of all who watched you. You are our clay and our spirit.”

What makes a B.T. Collins? Vietnam changes my brother irrevocably. It cuts a groove in him that no tide of events can wash flat. California gives him the opportunity to strut his stuff. But before Vietnam, before the West Coast, he was a Collins. His parents are lovers: the Anthony and Cleopatra of the 1930’s and for all the 56 years that remain of their extraordinary marriage. Mother’s family is a brainy, wickedly funny clan fond of gathering to sing old songs and party. Strong willed and intensely loyal, Margaret Collins has attitude before “attitude” comes of age. Luckily, she is very brave. Our father’s folks are artists and seamstresses. Jim Collins is both strong and sentimental. Because of his abusive alcoholic father, he never drinks, devoting himself to being the perfect mate and dad. He loves history and reads copiously. A champion of causes, he cries when proud.

My brother (Brien Thomas) is born in 1940, against a backdrop of national peril and patriotism. Hitler rants. Mother hides the nighttime lights from would be bombers. A month after the “Day of Infamy,” my sister, Marialis appears. My cousin Danny Mulligan, only 19, is in the infantry, so at 35, Daddy joins the Navy. We all go to war. As an intelligence officer, he is stationed at various universities. We follow him from base to base, traveling on overcrowded trains, seated usually on the knees of someone in uniform. On D-Day, because of inadequate military housing, we are billeted with a civilian, an old professor in South Bend, Indiana. His son is missing in action. Then Danny is killed at Normandy. We go back East to comfort my aunt. She is on her knees. “Daniel,” she wails, “Daniel!” The sound of her sorrow is with me still. Wide-eyed B.T. is only four. The old man’s son dies as well and the young pilot’s wife and baby move in. And there we all are, total strangers connected by a common misery. In Monterey, the Navy has taken over motels along Seventeen Mile Drive. My sister sleeps on a trunk; my brother shares my parent’s bed. I am on the floor. And then one day, Daddy is gone…to the Pacific. We go back East alone. My mother understands that dying for your country is not just something that happens to other people.

Our father comes home. He speaks reverently of sacrifice and duty to country. Long before John Kennedy is a twinkle in any politician’s eye, Jim Collins tells his kids, “Freedom’s battles will always be fought by freedom’s children; we dare not carelessly enjoy a liberty so dearly won.” Quite simply, as Americans, we owe—big time. He appears at public meetings; he writes to the local newspaper; he defends causes; he writes mayors and governors and presidents. Speak up; speak out; record your thoughts; put them on paper. Let people know where you stand and why. At the dinner table, he baits us with bias statements about Christ being a Communist and the Southerners having an understandable beef with the Blacks. We bite every time: taking positions, arguing, even shouting. When, finally, we leave home, he writes us once a week until his words, like spider prints, trail off the page into nonsense.

Daddy respects women; he honors his country; he adores our mother. He dances with her after dinner, brings home small gifts for no reason, picks up his plate and does the dishes. Mother was the envy of the neighborhood. “I didn’t give you kids much in the way of material things but I sure did give you a good mother! Sometimes,” he writes Brien, “I get to thinking how well you turned out—responsible, honest, upright, with a spit-in-your-eye attitude. I know she had a lot to do with that.”

While Brien and Marialis are still in high school and I am struggling at my first teaching job, Daddy approaches us with a proposition. He wants to buy Mother a mink stole for Christmas—something totally out of our league. He asks how much each of us could contribute by taking extra jobs. The stole is purchased and enfolded in clouds of tissue. The box is big. Mother imagines a bathrobe. At first, she doesn’t even lift it from the box; she only touches. Then she cries. Mother never, ever cries. And so do we. We spoil our mother all the rest of her life, knowing each treat for her is a gift for our father as well. Brien gives and does the best: an open account at Saks--Buy yourself some new dresses; a full-page letter in a Florida newspaper supposedly sent from prison, “Can he send home his laundry?” Trips to Paris and theater tickets. But B.T.’s last and most poignant piece de resistance de Mother appreciation is his commencement address at the university at which I am teaching and from which my mother graduated some 60 years before.

Unbelievably, he approaches the podium chewing gum. He then removes the wad and places it carefully on the rostrum before him. “Now that I have your full attention and have thoroughly embarrassed my mother and sister…” My face matches my scarlet doctoral robes and the degree they represent both of which he paid for. He tells the students they have no right to waste their lives; that they owe this country the price of liberty and their parents for giving them life. He asks my mother to stand. “Everything I am; everything I have accomplished I owe to my mother and my father who cannot be with us today. Stand up Ma! Stand up!” Four thousand people rise to give the first standing ovation in the college’s 160-year history to our family’s black sheep. He is now Vice President of Public Finance at Kidder Peabody about to become Deputy Treasurer of the State of California.

“I’ve been thinking,” Mother says at the end of her life. “I’ve been thinking I’ve had it pretty damn good.” And we had until Vietnam.

While others flee to Canada and campuses around the country, B.T. Collins leaves college for the second time and joins the Army. I cannot imagine my brother in the military as he finds discipline in any form abhorrent. My mother has to pour ice water down the middle of his bare back, simply to make him get out of bed in the morning. I wonder if the sergeants at Fort Sill have her patience and sense of humor.

But the boy who would not do his Math or conjugate his French verbs writes well-crafted letters and he asks that we save them. Perhaps, someday they will be my Iliad or Odyssey. Patton once said, “One of the greatest privileges of citizenship is to bear arms freely in defense of one’s flag and one’s country I suppose it better that he did not live to be heartbroken by the hapless naïveté of our foreign policy. There is a drop zone here named Ste Mere Eglise. I asked every guard where this town was and not one of them knew! Yet how many people their age and younger, how many hopes and dreams, how many lives were extinguished in the spring of their years in this small town in France. Nobody knows and more ominously, nobody cares. If it is true that the best go first and the good die young, don’t we owe them something for what they stood for or what they did? All this from a kid who used to make chocolate pudding, eat it from the pot, then store the same under his bed to grow malodorous gardens among his dirty socks.

Brien graduates from OCS, and first assigned to Santo Domingo, he pleads his way to Vietnam. Once there, he has the chance to stay in Saigon but asks for the First Air Cavalry and the real war and gets it. He is an artillery officer in the infantry. He learns that the mud is no careless army slang but the actual consequence of a never-ending rain. His feet peel away in the rivers and rice paddies, leeches crawl up his pant legs, red ants bite and men die and little girls are blown to pieces. The enemy is everywhere and nowhere: under the bellies of cows in the fields, behind a child’s smiling face and a simple basket of eggs, and on the sidewalks of New York. Between missions, he reads and he writes. Our once reluctant student tells us, “No education is wasteful or absurd whether it be Mickey Spillane’s characterization of a whore, or a painstakingly erudite page of St. Augustine’s or the fanaticism in ‘Mein Kampf.’ Everything you hear or see is an education. Been thinking about Ernie Pyle’s words on the cover of “Here’s Your War,” about people back home never realizing how tired these kids are.” B.T. Collins loves these kids, his men. It is a love returned, one that lasts forever.

He is tired of monsoons and malaria, vertical hills and unmerciful heat and humidity. He is furious about the behavior of the politicians and activists back home. “I’d like to put their pompous, theorizing asses in a village under Cong control and have them see these starving bloated bellies. These compromising bastards want to run out on these people. I’ve seen a wounded sergeant, blood flowing out of him so fast, it took four of us to keep him alive while vowing he’ll return. You can’t beat a guy like that. It just gets me down when people act so ignorantly, throwing out the lessons of history. I’ve had to think that all these young Americans over here have died for nothing.”

The worst he shares with my father but there are personal thoughts as well: “For years, I’ve bragged about your dedication. I’m so proud of you. You didn’t have to go and you did. I know we’ve been at odds at times, but you’re more than okay as a man and as a father.” And to Mother, “My thoughts are of you and your crazy Easter hats. I’m aware that my shoes and shirts were many and your hats few and far between. Know this. I remember and appreciate what you have done.”

In every war, there is a battle seared into the memories of those who fight it. For B.T., it is “Crazy Horse. ” As forward observer, his job is to create fire support for his men based on radio messages and maps. He must have a 3-D model of terrain and men in his mind while dodging bullets himself. On May 16^th, 1966, the men of Bravo company are hacking their way up a hill when the enemy lets loose. The fire crisscrosses, catching man after man in its deadly intersections: Hell and Armageddon combined. B.T. calls in artillery. It hits the trees and shrapnel falls upon his own men. He hears their screams. The maps, left over from the French are old, the coordinates off. The troops have climbed the wrong hill. They run out of ammunition and water; it’s fixed bayonets next. A young black soldier drags the dead and wounded by and each time he passes B.T., their eyes lock in shared terror. He pauses for an instant. His poncho hood falls back as he is hit. Randolph Scott takes the bullet B.T. believes was his. Dave Porreca, his tent mate and fellow philosopher arrives in time to save them. The twenty men remaining from the original eighty-five slide down the slime of the hill. Blood and mud-splattered ponchos, under which their brothers lie, deface the ground around them. B.T. reaches out to his radioman and lays his hand on the young soldier’s chest. Solemn gesture: If B.T. can feel Andy’s heart and Andy, B.T.’s hand, then they know they’re still alive. “I’m so tired, I could lie down and weep,” he writes. “If ever I have a family, I will know I did my part, however minute. It’s enough to say I wouldn’t trade this experience for a million dollars.”

Enter Sam Bird. The yellow dust from a helicopter landing clears and there he is. B.T. cannot believe his eyes. Ramrod straight, boots polished, clean-shaven, khakis pressed, his new company commander salutes. Sam Bird, Kansas born, Citadel formed, and God fearing is everything B.T. Collins believes he is not. The first order of the day is a party for his men—men for whom and with whom he will fight. Sam has the qualities B.T. values most: honor, selflessness and meticulous devotion to duty. Both men lay claim to the traits of a different generation: each one grows still at the sight of Old Glory; each sheds a tear when the anthem is sung. Every mission B.T. undertakes all the rest of his life will bear Sam Bird’s indelible imprimatur.

As the end of his first tour approaches, he writes Sam Bird’s mother and father “…To describe him gives me a lump in my throat. He worries about his men like a father. If you could see the way he handles them, you’d burst your buttons with pride. I would follow him to the gates of hell and back. His spirit is undying, his compassion for others, unlimited. Please don’t tell him I wrote this…”

B.T.’s year is up. He returns home via Kansas, stopping to visit Sam’s parents. He comes to northern New York to see me. Never have I seen him so fine, so fit. But he is changed. The class clown has disappeared and in his place is a complex man at whose core are a heartbreaking sentimentality, a lot of guilt and a frightening capacity to care. And then he tells me. He is going back. “I’m good at this, Maureen. I’m saving lives.”

Brien returns to Vietnam as the executive officer of a Special Forces Mobile Guerilla Company in the Delta. He and eleven other Americans will conduct special 30-day missions in territory which is 75% Viet Cong controlled. B.T. is also training Vietnamese soldiers and village health workers, running clinics, and administering payrolls of thousands of dollars. He continues to write. “God, the stink and the poverty! I thank my lucky stars I was born in the good old USA. Would you send my Spanish and French books? Thanks for your letter, Dad. I just wanted you to know I was touched by your remarks. I hope you’ll never have to be embarrassed because of me. About this hero bit…it’s nothing.”

Brien has been awarded a third Bronze Star. Our teetotaler father in shirt, hat and tie appears in one of B.T.’s stateside haunts, a rundown bar that smells of stale beer and cigarettes stubbed. He approaches the bartender, drawing a tissue-wrapped package from his pocket. He unfolds the paper to show the prize inside: the ribbons grow brilliant in the neon light, and the bronze circles shine like new coins in Daddy’s trembling hands. “I believe you know my son,” he says, “I wanted you to see what he has done.”

Then the unthinkable happens. Sam Bird is terribly injured. The soldier who carried John Kennedy’s casket down the Capitol steps will never walk or see clearly, if he lives. Brien is frantic. “He was the finest commander. I believed he was indestructible. Re: your letter, if anything happens, you’ll know about it the same day. I’ve got until December, so maybe I can make a go of this thing yet. As an individual, I can stay alive, but as a leader, I fall far short of what this job takes. I guess I need a lot more self-confidence or I’ll never be good at anything. I understand they’re burning flags in New York. That’s nice, really nice. Fine crop of people you folks are tolerating back there.” They are burning flags in my town too. Some rosy-cheeked draft-dodging lads torch one before my eyes. I call my father 400 miles away. “Daddy,” I cry, “They’re burning the flag!” It is a line never to be crossed, something I, like Brien, cannot forgive.

June 16, 1967. “I’m on operation--waiting to infiltrate fresh troops—very tired—I’m doing okay. ‘Happy Father’s Day.’ Don’t sweat it.” The VC find him, and in the ensuing firefight, a South Vietnamese mercenary hands him a live grenade. His blood flows warm—there is so much blood--but he is ominously chilled. “Give the old man my morphine,” another injured soldier cries.

The intercom in Mother’s second grade classroom tells her to come to the office. Someone is being sent up to cover her class. She meets our father on the landing. It hurts to think what thoughts must pass between them--these lifetime lovers and B.T. their only son. The news cannot be good. Or is it? Who can imagine the life that is to follow?

They lift him gently, sliding him now silent across the blood-greased surface of an olive poncho. Above the noise of the helicopter, the pilot pleads, “Stay awake, Collins! Stay awake!” I hear my father’s sorrowful rendition of the telegram we prayed would never arrive. “It is with grave concern for the life of your son, Captain Brien Collins, after the double amputation…” I say that I’ll come home. “Not now,” my father whispers, “When he dies, you’ll come for the funeral.” My mother grabs the phone: “They always put them in a hospital near their families. You can come home then.” She sounds so positive my heart re-starts. I hang up, fall to my knees and weep, until fat-lipped and slit-eyed, I am no longer recognizable.

Fellow Special Forces Officer, Ruben Garcia finds B.T. in a Quonset hut on the eve of his evacuation. Seeing him, B.T. begins to cry. His young face is pulled back against its own bones, his usually raucous voice hoarse from vain protests against an almost constant agony. Ruben, filthy from the field, cries too--his tears washing white rivulets down his blackened cheeks. He sits gingerly on B.T.’s bed: one listens and the other tells the story. B.T. calls the nurse to “powder his butt.” When Brien reaches Japan, he suffers two cardiac arrests. “Patient admitted in profound hemorrhagic shock with severe fragment wound to the right leg and traumatic amputation of the right hand and forearm. Prognosis grave.” They remove his leg. The weary nurse on duty turns him over to another, saying, “Let this one die with you instead of me.”

We see him first in transit in a hospital at fort Dix, New Jersey. The room is flooded with sunlight—bright backdrop for the living remains stretched out before us. I see something—paper-like in human form, a nearly see-through silhouette beneath some sheets. Two bandaged stumps are exposed and he smells of rot. Fat tufts of hair surround his cavernous face. His sweat is yellow and his eyes roll back white. There are no tears. It is all too terrible for tears. I run to find a nurse but bodies are arriving and everyone is very busy. Finally, I secure a pair of scissors. If I cut away that tangled mat of hair, I think, I can find my baby brother. Mother has called his friends and they march in laughing with beer and cigars and he tries valiantly to smile. “I was glad,” one tells me later. “He was so badly hurt, he would not be able to go back.” The family goes home to pack for Valley Forge.

B.T. will spend 18 months at this hospital that specializes in amputees. This first day we hear in detail about the hideous treatments that are to follow. Brien’s wounds will be debrided, a term that means scraped free of infection and the debris from the Vietnam jungle. The process will be repeated until the sites are clear. There will be multiple surgeries and later, physical and psychological therapy. They will graft one leg to another to secure the needed skin to close his gaping holes left by the grenade. We meet his doctors. Handsome, young Jim Sargent, the orthopedic surgeon, drafted over the phone, tells Brien he will live. “You’re too ugly to die!” he jokes. He looks down at his plaster-splattered shoes. But when he lifts his eyes, I see that they are filled with tears. My mother’s pushing mashed carrots between Brien’s cracked and peeling lips. “Carrots make your hair curl,” she tells him.

Pain is a great leveler. It respects neither rank nor status nor intellectual worth. The trick when night comes is not to scream—not to scare the other patients. Most of the time, B.T. makes it. He makes his men laugh. If they’re laughing, they can’t be crying. He wheels himself into a heretofore silent therapy session and announces, “Hey, I miss my arm; I miss my leg; tell me everything is going to be alright.” His candor breaks the ice. Hospital humor is irrevocably black. His Irish friend, Patrick asks the nurse, “When I get my new legs, can I have hair on them?” John Philp, the Silver Fox, so named because of his prematurely white hair informs him, “You are a walking, limping advertisement for the oxymoron, ‘combat safety.’” But John is there when B.T. wakes up after surgery. On crutches, he leans forward to take B.T.’s hand and to hold it. It is his birthday and he is supposed to be in Ohio on his first trip home.

Six hundred letters from parents and former students sit on my father’s principal’s desk in Rye, New York. People remember the letters sent home on Veterans’ and Memorial Days. Now Daddy writes: “I see a chubby little boy trying to tie his shoelaces. Now grown to manhood, he is learning all over again using one hand and a hook—evidence of his contribution to freedom among men.” After weeks of late-night rehearsals, B.T.’s friends fill buses with singers, dancers, and musicians and travel from New York to Pennsylvania to put on a show for the men of Valley Forge in honor of B.T.’s birthday. Over 350 guests attend with or without arms, legs, hands or feet. The show, reviewed in the New York Daily News, is repeated at Christmas.

Brien comes home. Daddy must dress his wounds. I don’t know who hurts worse. We go to mass. We are all so proud, my father nearly cries. Returning, we sit down for dinner and if nobody counts limbs, it’s just like old times. But the phone rings and I go to answer. A tiny voice is at the other end—a child’s voice. My chest begins to hurt. “It’s for you, I tell Brien. It’s Sam, Sam Bird.” He gets up slowly. He doesn’t yet have his leg. No one speaks. When he returns, we can no longer swallow. The meal is over.

In time, he is walking, looking eye to eye instead of up. But on the eve of the final surgery, he almost quits. “I’m tired of not having an arm and a leg,” he tells Jim Sargent. “I’m especially tired of you and your goddamn dressing changes!”

“Getting killed is one thing, Dr. Sargent replies, “Coming home like you is something else.” Brien tells him to “Get lost!” The following morning, he hemorrhages as they remove six more inches from his femur and very nearly dies. “I’m living proof” he tells the nurses, “that only the good go young.” Finally, he looks down at the wad of flesh that was once his thigh and realizes this is as better as he’s going to be.

Before leaving the hospital, a single hurdle remains: B.T. must face the real world. Denying his pain and his altered appearance, he’s been hiding within a cocoon of those similarly scarred. A childhood friend forces the issue taking Brien to a public restaurant. It’s his first firefight all over again. He takes the plunge and never looks back. He leaves the New York cold that hurts his missing limbs, and the cries of “Baby Killer” that follow his uniform, and heads for California and the nation’s greatest concentration of anti-war activists. He makes the trip alone, driving an specially equipped car, stopping to see Sam Bird along the way. The sight of the once handsome Captain, grown old, paralyzed, and blind nearly shuts him down. But “shutting down” has never been a B.T. option. And he hits the golden state, on his own, if not his own two feet with his uniforms, war maps and an American flag on the car’s backseat.

Brien has managed to get accepted at Santa Clara University. In reality, he is going back to war. Only now he is a private, a beginner without rank, approaching a mental rather than topographical minefield, which in the past he has never successfully reconnoitered. He needs to establish a new corps to mobilize for the common good, all the while adjusting to life without dying—life without the fear of failing to protect those who depend on him. If my brother is little prepared for academic life, Santa Clara is certainly not ready for the likes of B.T. In time, its sacred halls will ring with his balls of brass and students and faculty alike will knuckle under the weight of his searing wit. But in January of 1969, their newest student is simply scared to death.

To his first classmates, he is somewhat intimidating. There is an aura about him—worn and wise beyond his years, a human leftover from the war whose persona says, “Look at me. I am the real world.” He has only been on public display for a short time when he arrives on campus. And he feels alone both physically and ideologically: still learning to walk, writing with the wrong hand, running under the crossfire of what he believes are misguided theories of duty and country. He finishes his undergraduate degree and goes to law school.

His fellow students, universally against the war, have never seen a bad accident, let alone stand in the moist rain of human remains. Would-be lawyers traditionally eat each other alive. But B.T. Collins gives them pause. They realize the tall redhead with his Pinocchio parts needs them. He wins them over by example. They follow him from bar to bar and get him safely home. They keep him awake to pummel him with questions for upcoming exams. They do not follow him to the Presidio in San Francisco where he holds the hands of those whose limbs have been stolen in battle. “I made it,” the loudmouth whispers. “You will too.” They do not follow him to the ski slopes where he manages to break what’s left of his right arm. He lies there in the soft snow minus prostheses and says absolutely nothing. The ski patrol is nearly faint with anxiety. “How could this happen?” they exclaim, looking at his half body. “He fell so gently!”

The fabric of life on campus begins to come apart at its dignified seams. Redheaded professor, Lillian Bevier, asks B.T. Collins a question, to which he responds that he is unprepared—the worst of sins. “But,” he adds, “That’s a mighty fine purple sweater you’re wearing.” It was and Professor Bevier wore it to perfection. Every member of the class, female and male explodes with laughter. The professor laughs as well. Later, she comments: There was this quality about him…He just poked fun at himself and at an enterprise that too many took too seriously. You realized how far he must have come to recover his spirit. It made you think about the war; if a man this good has suffered this devastation and still is not bitter, then it can not all have been for nothing.”

He is a friend. A classmate tells of a letter written after a family tragedy: “If you’re thinking about quitting law school because of some social stigma, you’re selling us all short. I’ve learned it’s never half as bad as you think it’s going to be. Whatever you decide to do, I’ve got a closet full of booze and my f… door is always open. B.T.”

B.T. is chosen by acclamation, rather than academic rank, to be the commencement speaker. He starts by telling stories. The graduates howl with laughter. Behind him the seated monsignors literally slap their scarlet thighs with glee. He pauses; he grows silent; the laughter dies. “Six years ago,” he says softly, “I was lying in a hospital in Vietnam. I was in a lot of pain and I believed I was dying. A friend came to see me and, at the sight of him, I began to cry.” I watch the listeners come unhinged. He has sunk his shining hook and they are goners.“ He told me,” he continues, “that it was okay to cry, that there was a long hard road ahead of me. But it has not been hard because of…” He calls out name after name after name. I swear to God, I think the crowd will stand and cheer. But he is not finished with them. He pauses again—a long pause, and leaning across the podium, chin thrust forward, he looks at those tear-stained faces and he smiles. “Now,” he asks, with mock sarcasm, “Is everybody happy?”

'You’ve been one of my heroes since that unforgettable speech on graduation day,” one of his liberal, democrat classmates writes. And he adds later in an obituary. “Like the blinded heroes of Greek mythology, B.T.’s loss of limbs caused him to grow beyond his destiny, to become larger than life. You made me cry that day, old friend, and now you’ve got me crying again. Farewell, Elliot Daum”

He is the subject of many alumni roasts. “When B. T. was brought in from the Mekong by the medics,” law professor Marc Poche recounts, “he had no vital signs. It was on that basis that Santa Clara accepted him.” “I met him in the library,” Pat McLaughlin recalls. “He said, ‘I’m rounding up everybody who is a Communist or Socialist or those who didn’t register for the draft, for a blood drive and you’re going to be first!’ I was. Then he asked me if I drank and I said, ‘well I’ve had a few beers.’ So we went to this bar and B.T. introduced me to Tanqueray. I think we were there about two weeks.” None of this explains why Brien later holds up pictures of McLaughlin’s children and claims to be their biological father.

Marc Poche arranges for B.T. to meet Governor Jerry Brown to which he replies: “I don’t know the Governor; I’ve never been to Sacramento and I’m a Republican.” He has not voted for Brown, the story goes, because he never votes for short ex-Jesuits.” Political and religious positions aside, my brother is thrilled to have this chance to serve. The B.T.-Brown combination opens a new, highly productive, sometimes hysterical era in California politics. The genius and the orator/warrior—it works.

Brown is known for his austerity, B.T. for his generosity. It follows that their offices are very different. B.T.’s space is a regular souvenir junction, every inch a memory. A hanging tee shirt proclaims, “Kill a Commie for a Mommie.” Giant jars of Midol, deliberately sexist, and Aspirin for whiners adorn his desk. But on its corner, there’s a business card holder bearing the date he was wounded and the inscription: “The golden thread of courage has no end.”

B.T. cannot believe the Governor’s bare walls. “What will people think?” he whines. “Who’s gonna believe in you with no legals, no diplomas, no nothing?” So he goes to a flea market and buys some framed credibility: congratulations from the Pope on Mary Murphy’s First Communion and Joe somebody’s longest drive in the American Legion Golf Tournament and more. With help, he hangs his finds on the Governors walls with a “Wadda ya think?” Legend has it Brown never blinks.

Brien’s first post is as Deputy Legislative Secretary. He will run interference for the Governor on the Republican side of the assembly. “He chose me for the job, B.T. jokes because nobody’s going to hit a one-armed man.” His penchant for political incorrectness draws widespread public attention. In the beginning, the legislators think he’s just one giant put-on, but his need to tell the truth wins them over. He does, however, refer to the assembly as “an adult day care center” and gives the lawmakers nicknames like “Mother Superior,” “Jar-head,” “the Oreo Kid.” He calls himself “the House Nazi.” His message, lighten up. Take the problems of those you serve more seriously and yourself, less so. “Better than psychotherapy and a lot cheaper,” says a fellow lawmaker. He keeps track of personal information. People on every level begin to wait for his birthday calls. They know he will be there when a family member is hurt or dies. Both sides pour out their troubles to B.T.’s sympathetic ears—make that “ear.” The grenade also cut his hearing in half.

Governor Brown has a pet project whose demise is imminent—The California Conservation Corps that operates like a civilian workforce charged with civic projects like clearing streams, fighting forest fires, and picking the spoiled fruit during the Medfly crisis. Corps members are housed in camps in the California hills. B.T. dons a field jacket and flies to the camps in the middle of the night. On site, he kicks the door open and shouts, “Get up! I’m going to work you to death. These 1,600 kids age 18-21 think they’re having a bad dream. He explains they will register for the draft and give blood. They will write in a journal every day and learn to read at a sixth grade level, rise at 5:00 and run two miles before breakfast. “Do not tell me you are oppressed. I don’t care. I’m not your mother. You don’t like it? The bus leaves tomorrow.” Some do leave but soon there is a waiting list of over 1,500 people. When he stands before them next to claim he doesn’t care, they cheer. He crafts a corps motto: “Hard Work, Low Pay, Miserable Working Conditions.” When they fear contamination from working with fruit sprayed with pesticides, he remembers the rules: Never ask the troops to do what you wouldn’t do yourself. He drinks Malathion in front of them—on the steps of the Capitol. A crazy stunt but it sure gets their attention. His antics appear in every major newspaper. “Did you hear about that idiot in California?” someone asks me. “I lived with him for 22 years,” I reply.

He then conducts a blistering campaign on behalf of the Corps in the legislature and the media. Texaco produces a three-hour video called Fire Season. He’s featured in our and the Japanese issue of American Wildlife, in The Smithsonian and in People magazine. NBC’s Garrett Utley says, “He works the corridors of power like a fox in a chicken coop.” The California legislature hears both good news and bad. When a female corps member is raped, they are informed immediately. He speaks anywhere and to any group that will listen. Thousands of articles are written. William F. Buckley includes him in his book, “Gratitude.” Tom Brokaw calls the CCC “the best program of its kind ever created.”

The corps is based on Brien’s belief in mandatory public service. All Americans owe. “Today’s front pages,” he thinks, “are a tragic account of a society at war with itself, of a get-by attitude that has spread to the backbone of our country which has begun to excel at mediocrity.” The CCC’s budget is approved and increased. And my Republican younger brother becomes chief of staff for the Governor of California, a Democrat.

The story is told on the front page of The Wall Street Journal. “He runs things,” the paper says, “like a one-man mob leading a cavalry charge. The Brown-B.T. combination is like a cup of herbal tea with a bourbon chaser.” “We were really shook up when we first heard about his appointment,” Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi remembers. “But after ten minutes in his presence, we couldn’t remember what the fuss was all about.” B.T.’s style is a little different. “How about getting me some coffee?” he calls out to his assistants. “Get it yourself!” they answer. “Gee, I would, but I got my arm and leg blown off in the war. Remember? When you guys were in Washington with all those signs?”

Brown runs for the Senate and looses; B.T. plans to run guns to the Falkland Islands but chooses Wall Street instead and a salary of substance. Brown’s biographer suggests that what the governor needs most is for someone to bring him down off the mountain. B. T., for a time everyone agrees, has brought him closer to earth.

B.T. enters the corporate quiet of the button-down, look-out-for-yourself world of boardrooms and eventual boredom. A talent for charming manipulation is an asset on Wall Street. Otherwise, a brokerage house does not seem the likely choice for a personally penny pinching, yet give-to-any-cause Lochinvar with a loud mouth and too many principles. It no longer matters what he stands for, but whom he knows. And B.T. knows everybody. He’s an expert in the inside machinations of government--what works and what doesn’t and how to interface the two. An investment banker he is not.

Minus a public platform, B. T. spreads his message through letters, interviews, and speeches wherever and whenever his Kidder Peabody responsibilities allow. Like our father, he has been writing letters for years. Denied the opportunity to make a difference, his letters grow more passionate and presumptuous. He reaches out to the powerful and the powerless. He writes Ronald Reagan and the President writes back:

“‘You and I don’t count anymore—it’s the grandchildren that are important. Don’t weaken, don’t falter and forget about the popularity of your decisions.’ I will always, Please God, be guided by these words of yours. They are words of wisdom—a wisdom hard won through your own sacrifices in the service of our country.” Ronald Reagan

When Reagan lays to rest Vietnam’s unknown soldier. B.T. writes to thank the President. “All that soldier really wanted was for someone to say ‘thank you and well done.’ After the ceremonies, I cried my eyes out. I never knew I had such bitterness stored up in me.” Again, the President responds:

“If I have done anything to help bring a proper focus on the noble purpose you served so well, I’d be more than proud. You fought as bravely and as well as any American in history literally with one arm tied behind you. The tragedy—indeed the mortality of those years was that for the first time in history, our country and our government failed to match that sacrifice. This must never happen again.” Ronald Reagan

To Ed Rollins who is hand delivering the letters to the President, he writes less politely: “Please note New York Times photo of you enclosed. Are you aware that nine out of ten of the last mass murders and child molesters are bald, and wear thick glasses and beards?” He communicates in much the same manner to the Secretary of the Navy, Jim Webb. Of course, Webb is a combat veteran. “Since I am a flagrant name-dropper,” B.T. admits, “I would like something on my wall to prove you appointed me to the Naval Post Graduate Board. Know that there are many of us who, although we think you are a pig-headed son-of-a-bitch, will be lining up to walk precincts for you.”

But Brien Collins is a hero who has heroes, among whom are Admiral James Stockdale and the nurses who served in Vietnam. The Admiral, a guest at the famous Hanoi Hilton, bashed his face with broken glass, and beat his body so that he could not be used for propaganda purposes. “You are your brother’s keeper,” Brien tells the Admiral. “I can not straighten your leg. I cannot give you back lost years. All I can do is say, ‘Thank you and well done!’ How soon we forget!” Of the nurses he writes, “Those 19-20 year-old women saw more bloodshed and more horror every night than any one of us soldiers saw in our entire tour. And we who were there will simply never, ever forget them.”

Another double amputee, Herman Woods has returned from Vietnam, dreaming of a California Vietnam Memorial. California, which has lost more men than any other state, has built no lasting tribute to their sacrifice. The legislature establishes a War Memorial Commission to which B.T. is appointed by the state’s new governor, George Deukmejian. The B.T. touch is evident. The monument will be the first to recognize women. A giant bas-relief will reproduce the cover of the book, “Bloods,” which celebrates the heroism of American blacks; there is a seated POW, and a time capsule containing James Webb’s “Fields of Fire.” B.T. is in charge of raising the necessary funds. His efforts to that end become unhealthily furious. Diagnosed with a heart condition and diabetes, he stops drinking and smoking. Exhausted, he realizes, he must take a vacation so he returns to Vietnam twenty years to the day after he nearly died. It is his first “time-off” in eleven years.

The tall, pale redhead with the wooden parts attracts considerable attention. Everywhere, the sights and sounds reduce him to tears. Sores rise along the leather strap that holds his “arm” in place. The jolting journey over thousands of miles of poor roads shreds the stump of his leg. His closest friend, television anchor, Stan Atkinson, is there with a film crew and on June 20, 1987, after floating down a narrow, muddy river in a hand carved wooden boat, they find the spot where the grenade exploded. Their North Vietnamese guide had, unbelievably, been there when it happened. Cameras rolling, the crew watches B. T. remove his Special Forces pin from a tired baseball cap and offer it to the enemy captain in honor of their mutual sacrifice. Those witnessing the crushingly poignant moment are dumbfounded. “There’s just one more thing,” my little brother asks. “There’s something I’ve been looking for, for years. Have you seen an arm—with a hand—five fingers?” As they round the bend on their return, a pyramid of children waits on the bank to give B.T. a standing “O.” “They must think we’re the Russians,” he quips.

Back in the states, the film crew accompanies B.T. to the Wall in Washington. Sam Bird has died of his wounds and his name has been added to that giant slab of Granite. It’s a snowy day, cold for Californians and B.T, makes his way cautiously with a cane. He leans forward to trace Sam’s name and whispers, “When I am 85, I shall come here to this sacred place and say proudly I served with this man.” Then he turns to Stan Atkinson, puts his head on his shoulder and sobs. Even the snow-padded ground cannot muffle the bitter sound of that mourning. It rings out in that white silence, the lament of love and friendship lost, all the pride and sorrow stored for twenty years let loose in that hallowed air.

The tape of his return to Vietnam and the visit to Sam’s grave is distributed. Brien calls in all his markers. He gives 20-30 speeches a month. Whatever the topic, he manages to include the Memorial. “These boys we seek to honor, these dead kids, standing side by side would make a line seven and one half miles long. And you have forgotten them. It’s too late to say ‘you’re sorry,’” he admonishes. The money flows in. The monument is dedicated in December, 1988. The touching ceremony is not without B.T.’s wit. While an interpreter is signing for the hearing impaired, he raises hand and hook. “Good thing I’m not doing this,” he jokes. “You’d only get every other word.”

In the fall of 1989, the State Treasurer, friend Tom Hayes, asks B.T. to return to government service as Deputy Treasurer. For B.T., working with Tom is his chance to “walk with the angels” although he quickly explains to reporters that Hayes is “as dull as oatmeal.” He leaves fat expense accounts and 70% of his salary behind. Raising money for the Women’s Memorial in Washington, he takes on the cause of battered women. He continues to speak up and out as my father taught us. When Colin Powell is named chairman of the Joint Chiefs, B.T. sends the following congratulations: “Who cares if you’re the first black to head the JCS? I think it’s great that we have a combat commander and a Vietnam vet with a CIB (Combat Infantrymen’s Badge). Nice going sir!”

He is now able to accept only one out of every three invitations to speak. He has a message: service, service, service, loyalty and anti-up. His trademark is self-depreciation. “I’m no hero; I throw grenades like a girl. I make Joe Biden look like George Washington—every idea I have came from someone else.” But there are other thoughts as well: “We’re so concerned with rights in this country, we’ve forgotten about obligations. The American dream is that you can do anything you want, but you’ve got to give back instead of constantly taking out. Never lie,” he remonstrates. “The truth and the press are not alwaysfaithful companions. When you tell the truth and they are expecting lies, it’s unsettling.” Most often he speaks about Sam Bird and his voice grows hoarse and the room goes still. Those listening hurt for him and with him. Finally, he writes an article about his beloved commander which is published in Reader’s Digest. The response is tremendous, sometimes scribbled on scraps of soiled paper, sometimes on the embossed stationery of three and four star generals, words from Vietnamese refugees and West Point women. There is a favorite:

“Having been a career officer for over twenty-five years, I felt there was little if anything that could soften the heart of one who had seen hell from a front row seat. I was mistaken. After reading your article, I cried. My eldest son, a graduate of West Point, was mortally wounded in the Central Highlands. Your story has eased that pain.”

There is so much left for B.T. Collins to say, so many lessons and less and less time to teach them. “I can’t impress upon you people enough how short life is, how incredibly short. So just go ahead and say, ‘This is what I believe before it’s too late.’”

December 1990. Tom Hayes has not been re-elected. B.T. is out of work. Protestors mass and pundits parley. In B.T.’s mind there is no need for debate; it is a nightmare re-visited. He believes we are paying the price for our lack of resolve 25 years earlier. He also detests the prettying up of war: “Winning a war doesn’t mean beating your opponent in a debate. It means killing the other guy. Losing means coming home minus an eye or a leg or even your country. War” he says on the Larry King Show “is about breaking things and killing people.” And he remembers Sam Bird, brain bulging out of that clean-shaven Kansas head. He worries that when the troops return from the Gulf, they will be treated badly so he writes an article for Reader’s Digest which the magazine uses for a full page ad in the New York Times. “The soldiers of Desert Storm have paid another installment on a great debt—one that will never be erased as long as there is tyranny in the world. They reported for duty with a kind of street-smart understanding about Hitlers and Husseins who turn up to remind us that some things are worth dying for.” Brien asks his fellow Americans to step up and cheer. This time they do.

B.T. is not long unemployed. Governor Pete Wilson appoints him Director of the California Youth Authority, in which position he will be in charge of the state’s 8,642 youngest criminals and those who work to rehabilitate them. The California Corrections Officers, actually cheer upon hearing the news. He describes the inmates as “the most vicious people he’s seen outside the state legislature.” He demands that they learn to read, to write and to spell, encouraging his wards to take advantage of the facilities available to them—libraries, dictionaries and teachers. B.T. claims he will attend only to complaints written so that he can read them. “I just hope the ACLU sues me for depriving them of their right to be ignorant.” It does. The resulting furor attracts ABC television and earns B.T. a spot on the evening news. To the delight of those who dislike the ACLU, a letter from its lawyers is shown on camera in which the word “grammatical” is misspelled.

Actually, Brien has been editing for a long time. Letters to legislators and reporters with spelling errors and typos circled in red, not to mention round criticism of their views are regularly returned to senders. They love it and fire back, establishing a long-term, love-hate relationship. “When he didn’t like a column, a furious scrawl reminiscent of a hoe taken to hard dirt followed.” Jim Trotter of the San Jose Mercury News recalls. “The first time I met B.T. Collins,” writes George Skelton of the Los Angeles Times, “he was threatening to run his hook up my nose—something about my being a reporter. We sat there, boozing, yakking and began a 16-year friendship. Later, he wrote a moving eulogy for my former wife, also a reporter.”

The ACLU withdraws its suit and California stands to have another model institution for its youth. To date, no one has expected these hoodlums to give, to do, to be responsible for their own actions. But B.T. Collins is someone they can’t bullshit, a man who cares nothing about their pasts and everything about their future. As the head of a state agency with a sizable budget, he has the power to change their lives dramatically. Give my brother a telephone and some clout and he can coax a Mother Teresa into coaching the Follies Bergere. Inexplicably to some, Governor Wilson has other plans.

Pete Wilson asks B.T. personally to run for the state assembly. Those within Brien’s inner circle plead with him to think of the consequences to his health and his finances. Constantly taking reductions in his salary and giving to multiple causes has wreaked havoc with his resources. It is well known that B.T. could talk a nun out of her rosary for a good cause but that he would absolutely deplore raising money for himself. And he is seriously ill and in constant pain--the latter known only to his closest friends. However, Brien’s answer to the Governor is finally a “yes.” Wilson is a former Marine and he needs him. B.T. is incapable of turning down his company commander.

Both men take unpopular positions for the good of the state. Wilson prizes discipline over passion, while B.T. Collins’ entire being is passionate born and passionate bred. He has spent a lifetime trying to keep his intensity under control. And if Wilson’s youth is remarkably without escapades, the record of B.T.’s shenanigans reads like the rap sheet at an Irish police station. Nevertheless, B.T. was the Governor’s logical choice for the legislature because his vast experience far outweighs that of any other candidate. He has been lionized in the media as a tough-talking, straight-shooting, no-nonsense patriot. There are problems, however. His proclamation of atheism, made only to annoy, labels him “a raw-boned, red-in-the-face, flashing-eyed non-believer.” He is Wilson’s personal choice which one constituent says, makes him a pimp for that whore of a governor. “Won’t he owe Wilson?” the opposition taunts.” “Owe him?” B.T. mocks, “taking a 50% pay cut and allowing people to abuse me? I think it’s the other way around.” One campaign flyer shows him wearing his Green Beret, walking with a cane in a Veterans’ Day parade. He is accused of trying to get a sympathy vote that someone explains is irrelevant because he never actually served in Vietnam, and his wounds are self-inflicted. While he portrays himself as inordinately cavalier, such criticism makes him sick. “I have to tell you,” he sighs. “It really gets me down. And I’ve had to raise two million dollars, Maureen. Do you know the good I could do with that money?”

He is up against the Christian Right and their comments appear to be anything but Christian with one exception. A woman named Joanna Wilson writes that she looks beyond labels, that what she has seen of his public life is worthy of respect and he responds: “You don’t have a clue what you have done for my morale. Your letter brings me to tears. The CCC and the Memorial are two efforts of which I am immensely proud. About the Memorial, I cannot forget that I lived and those kids died. I think of them every day and they are always 19, skinny, scared, brave, and kind to each other beyond description.”

There are other supporters. Then congresswoman, Nancy Pelosi, tells him he will have no problem getting elected to which he responds, “ My only problem will be if they figure out I gave a contribution to a left-wing, San Francisco, pinko Democrat like you.” For the record, he has given her money, and she’s not a Communist. B.T.’s definition of the latter is anyone who teaches sociology, wears a beard or dares to disagree with him. Eighty-year-old Eleanor Walsh writes in the Sacramento Bee, “Every time B.T. Collins opens his mouth, he speaks my mind.” She lambastes one of his female critics who called him a “vicious, arrogant pity-seeking, cunning politician” “What’s the matter?” the octogenarian wonders in print. “Did she (the critic) get dumped by B.T. ? I love you,” she adds in a personal letter. “Don’t get all excited--I mean as a mother.” Strong, if less serious backing is found in the voice of Peter King of the LA Times. “This town needs every character it can muster, even one-legged, foul-mouthed vets with bad hearts and diabetes. If state government can’t be important, let it at least be fun.”

Brien wins all his elections: primaries, run-offs, midterm and full term. In the space of two years, he raises money and runs five times at a personal cost never to be recovered. Unbowed, if exhausted, he carries on. In a lead article in USA Today he criticizes Army officers who collected combat pay without ever coming under fire. “I take issue with those Saigon warriors who lived in air-conditioned trailers with cold beer and pretended they were at war.” B.T, says that he has no regrets about his own service, that he can look the past generation in the eye; that he would do it again—in a heartbeat. Mark Helprin at the Wall Street Journal asks, “Are you sure you’re not the re-incarnation of Teddy Roosevelt or George Patton?”

He also finds time to defend Jerry Brown who is seeking the Democratic nomination for president. The former Governor’s detractors are spreading rumors about partying and drugs. “The story,” Brien claims, “is ludicrous because Brown is too cheap to have a party; he has no friends, no TV and not enough forks. As for drugs, the police who like me would have told me and I would have put a stop to it.” All this in print.

Meanwhile, the California Legislature machinations drive him crazy: “It’s downright awful. The rooms are full of arrogant people who do nothing but talk. The problems are enormous, the phone calls, nasty and nobody is in charge of anything.” This frustration doesn’t help his mental or physical state. He now has a hiatal hernia and a bleeding ulcer. His schedule does not allow for well-balanced meals or time for him to check his need for insulin. The stump of his leg reduced to pulp requires surgery. He refuses to use a wheelchair. While in DC, he suffers severe chest pains and is sent to Walter Reed. He is unable to make a dinner with Rush Limbaugh as a result, and Rush announces over the air that B.T. Collins has collapsed at “The Wall.” The switchboard at the hospital is jammed. He returns to Sacramento for the required angioplasty. He doesn’t want to die away from home.

Brien feels the need to report to his constituents on his health which he does in Brienese: “I’ve been told by my doctor that the trauma to my heart is a direct result of my heavy smoking, hard liquor and sneaking out to Jimboy’s to pork down the daily special. I guess I’ll have to slow down. Just remember the killer blues and the great buns are still the same.” To law classmate, Dick Cunha, he writes: “The overwhelming mandate I received in my election leads me to believe I can solve all the problems of the world. Please call if you have any. If you will send me $5,000, I will include you in my daily prayers. If you can’t come through with the dough, I’ll take your first-born and teach him to be a politician. God Bless America!”

Humor almost aside, he invites all those who did not vote for him to a series of public meetings for “one free punch.” There are to be no ringers. His guests are to tell him what they’re worried about and why they didn’t vote for him. He wants to know. The only stipulation is that those who attend must have voted. It is an event unheard of before or since in the political arena.

B.T. is known to cut to the core of an issue. He makes the inflexible flex. My brother is scrupulously honest. When the budget fails to pass, he refuses his salary. He’s told he must accept a check so he demands that it be written without funds. Because both our parents were educators, he makes a vow to visit every school in his district. He feels it’s critical for kids to meet a real live politician; to understand that integrity and public service are not an oil and water mix.

Brien continues to support and to honor the veterans and casualties of the war. For years he has remembered the young black soldier in the Battle of Crazy Horse whom he believes was killed in his stead. He establishes a scholarship in the boy’s name. He opens the fund with an initial gift and asks Sacramento’s Black Caucus to match it. A note accompanies the announcement of the first winner: “My money, not campaign money; my commitment is for five years; I am a wonderful human being.” Later at a Republican fundraiser, he remarks sarcastically, “I don’t know about the rest of you but I see entirely too many white faces in this room.”

Like our father, he reveres women and writes to commend them for a myriad of accomplishments all the while teasing them with deliberately sexist remarks. “Your contribution to my campaign would be greatly appreciated or you could sleep with me,” he tells a friend. Yet, his record with women in the workplace is spotless. “I commend you for your promotion and your poise,” he writes the new woman Brigade Commander at Annapolis. Better than some of the admirals I’ve seen.”

But the women to whom he gives the most support are those who cannot seem to fend for themselves. B.T. becomes a member of the board of WEAVE, an acronym for Women Escaping Violent, Abusive Environments. He becomes the group’s chief fundraiser. He emcees their auctions at which he sells his ties, himself and his used parts. On his 50^th birthday, he throws a party and for $50 a head and practically nothing to eat, he raises $53,000 for battered women in a single evening. Admiral Stockdale is there with his wife. There is a printed program. Nancy Pelosi takes out half a page: “If you were a Democrat, I would have taken a full page,” she teases. There are tables designated for special guests. The one for Hanoi Jane is littered with his old prostheses. The celebration of my younger brother’s faults and foibles is the evening’s entertainment. His present to himself is jumping out of an airplane at 8,500 feet strapped to Special Forces buddy, Ruben Garcia.

Passion is expensive. Thankfully there is a woman in his life—a tall and lithe Californian who is as at home in a designer gown as she is in faded jeans. She laughs often and has a wicked sense of humor. Working in government for most of her life, she knows all too well the pound of flesh it demands of the most dedicated. She knows about the midnight hours, dinners on the run, and listening to the same speech a hundred times. Most important she knows the drill—Never say, “I love you.” There was another one several years before. He almost got married. She too was kind and gentle and beautiful and very smart. She lived too far away. And great distance is a destroyer.

Brien’s greatest fear is that he will run out of time. The gift of life is a debt neither easily nor quickly paid. He maintains his killer schedule. He now wears rather than swallows his nitroglycerin. He is light-headed and his upper arms ache without reprieve. He has recurrent episodes of arrhythmia. In January of 1993, he has another angioplasty. On March 9^th, he sees the doctor again, this time for swelling in his remaining leg. Somewhere the piper plays and he will be paid. And I, on his orders, am left completely in the dark.

Then, on March 19, 1993, he does absolutely the worst thing. He dies...after promising me he will live forever. Though medics bring him back, and doctors work on him all day, he was gone the moment he hit the floor. I know this because the nurse who immediately gave him mouth-to-mouth resuscitation was a honey-skinned, 5’8” California girl with a yard of molasses colored hair. He loved long hair. Machines make him breathe. Machines make his heart beat. But he has fought the battle brave and lost.

He was always in such a hurry. Saving the world took so much time and he had known there would never be enough. “Gotta go,” he’d announce too soon after he’d arrived. “Gotta go, gotta go.” We never thought he meant forever.

Sergeant Linda McClenahan whom Brien bullied into accepting the chair of the Memorial commission is a nun. She didn’t travel from Wisconsin to the funeral. She could hear him in his gangster voice saying, “Ya gonna waste $400 dollars to fly to California when you could give it to the poor? So she and her fellow sisters gather at the chapel, balloons in hand to celebrate the man and pray that the Almighty was equal to what lay ahead. They let the balloons go. She says they headed west.

The Women’s Monument has been dedicated. His favorite Army nurse wore his field jacket in the parade and the standing bronze figure will wear it in perpetuity. It was used to make the casting. The official program carries his picture and a full-page reprint of the letter he wrote about the role played by these valiant women.

There is one New Yorker’s name on the granite surface of the California War Memorial. Buildings, parks, fields, scholarships, even prisons have been named for Brien. Just days after the Nicole Brown Simpson murder, WEAVE opens The B.T. Collins Memorial Center for victims of violence and sexual assault. Even the Army’s new reserve training facility, the most modern of its kind in the world, bears both his name and his likeness in a statue at its entrance. Applicants for Santa Clara University’s Captain Hook Scholarship must explain why B.T. Collins would want them to receive the money. “He was blind to limitations,” one writes. “Every word on my application has been spelled correctly,” another reports. “I met him once. I told him I had truly tried to model my life after his,” a young woman recalls, “He must have been having a really bad day because he got very quiet. I felt I’d touched him deeply.”

On Election Day in Maine, everyone has been urged to vote. My husband and I approach the polls. Ahead of us, a rickety man pauses to catch his breath. He’s ninety if he’s a day and wherever he’s going, we wonder if he’ll make the trip. My husband reaches out to steady him.

“Looks like you could use some help,” he offers. “Where are you going?”

“To vote,” the old man wheezes. “Got to vote. Always vote.”

This man’s always has been a long, long time. I see Brien take his other arm.

“Hey, young fella. It’s a great day to be an American,” he suggests, his “New York” cutting through the New England air.

“Eya,” the man answers with a Mainer’s yes. “Eya, always great to be an American.”

I wonder if the rickety man knows what he’s done to keep my brother’s dreams alive. I remember the Rabbi’s hauntingly beautiful eulogy: B.T. believed in small things: a simple stripe of white, a smooth slash of red, a star-lit field blazoned with blue and you and you and you...”

I’m thinking. Once we were a nation of Patrick Henrys and Nathan Hales, of give me liberty or give me death, of regrets that we had but one life to give to the nation. It wasn’t necessary to defend defending our country. Too often lately, telling the truth or taking a stand pales in the glare of personal gain. My little brother believed we are better than that. He was a man with a message.

But in the end beneath the hoopla and the hurrah, beyond the warrior, inside the hero, he was only human. “I just hope,” he confided, “I just hope they won’t forget me.”

Never.