Today is December 5th, the 339th day of the year. It's 20 days from Christmas. Martin Van Buren, Christina Rossetti and Little Richard were born on this day; Mozart and Shoeless Joe Jackson died on it. On Dec. 5, Christopher Columbus set foot upon what is now the Dominican Republic and Haiti. On Dec. 5, future Roman emperor Charlemagne ascended the throne as king of the Franks.
These are random facts, connected only by the fact that they took place on December 5.
December 5, 2001 had its own set of random facts that greatly affected myself and my family. This story is not about me. But I did play a very minor role in it, and so the details of my involvement are relevant and part of my remembrance of a man I never met, but consider a hero; his family, who did me a great kindness in a desperate hour; and my 10-year-old goddaughter.
It was the day my first and oldest niece was to be born. And I should have been at the hospital with the rest of the family, supporting my wife's sister as she was giving birth to the little girl we would soon be calling “Peanut” because she was such a tiny baby. (She's not small anymore. Not a bit.)
Instead, I was somewhere on Mass. Route 8 northbound, abruptly called into work on a day off for The Associated Press and headed to Cheshire, Massachusetts.
Eighty-five days earlier, two jet airliners had been flown into a pair of skyscrapers in New York City and a third into the Pentagon. That, in turn, led to a “war on terror,” which, in turn, led Sgt. 1st Class Dan Petithory of Cheshire, Mass., to Afghanistan with the U.S. Army Special Forces, to root out and kill members of the organization that had planned and executed the events of that horrible day.
Berkshire County, Massachusetts, the place where I grew up and still call home, might be a small place, but I didn't know Dan Petithory.
But Michelle Maher had gone to Hoosac Valley Regional High School with him.
Michelle Maher and I had gotten married 102 days before Dec. 5, 2001, when Sgt. 1st Class Dan Petithory was killed along with two other members of the U.S. Army Special Forces, north of Kandahar, Afghanistan, when a U.S. bomb carrying 2,000 pounds of explosives missed its target and landed 100 yards from the soldiers' position.
And Michelle Maher's sister Kim was giving birth on Dec. 5, 2001 in nearby Pittsfield. Thus connecting a random set of unrelated facts and leading me north on Route 8, full of guilt and dread.
Guilt, because someone else's misery was all but certain to result in a national byline, and because I had just told Michelle that one of her friends from high school had been killed. Dread, because it was all but certain to result in a national byline.
Hoping to put a grieving family at ease at a moment they would have been completely justified in telling me and any other reporter to go to hell -- and knowing that I had to make this happen, because my bosses would not readily take no for an answer -- I had been able to tell them, as I informed them I was a reporter for The Associated Press in Boston, that I was Michelle Maher's husband (which, to this day, I am still not certain was the right thing to do), that I used to work for The Berkshire Eagle, that I was in Pittsfield and could I please come talk to you?
In the very worst of circumstances, Dan Petithory's family graciously allowed me to sit on their porch and told me who he was, how much he loved what he did and that he had indeed given his life for his country. They took the time to make sure I understood and had the facts right, which is the most important thing. And most importantly, they trusted me. (I might have been Michelle's husband but I was also a member of the media. Our reputation rightly precedes itself.)
I don't remember the experience as well as I should; it's kind of a blur to me now. So I hope that I properly conveyed at the time how very grateful I was that they shared Dan's story with me. And I want them to know I am still very grateful for that trust and kindness. I will remember it as long as I live. And I will always remember Dan, even though I never met him.
After I was done with the assignment, I got in the car, turned off the radio as I tried to make sense of it all and drove back to Berkshire Medical Center to find my niece Alyssa, just a few hours old, in the nursery.
A series of random, unconnected facts, most of them far beyond my control and comprehension, had become a circle because on this day, Alyssa had come into the world.
There was no way I could ever see her birth as anything less than a part of the story.
It had been 85 days full of death and destruction. A "war on terror" with no obvious endpoint and the unsettling likelihood that it would somehow extend to Iraq and who else knows where.
And yet here was a brand-new little someone. As if to remind us that even amid such fighting and hatred, even when that fighting and hatred touches our lives directly, life offers us hope that things will be better.
It bears mentioning that three years later, on the exact same day, my wife's cousin – also a graduate of Hoosac Valley High School – gave birth to a daughter.
So Dec. 5 is not just another day on the calendar. It's a day to celebrate a birthday. A day to remember the sacrifice that one of our own made on our behalf in an uncertain hour. And a day to reflect upon how connected we all are.
