Rod was committed to this new mission, too. He knew that simply by being her calm self, Lucca was helping more people become aware of how vital these dogs are. As he held her leash and looked at her in the pleasant Pasadena sunshine, surrounded by the carpet of red roses, he couldn’t help but think how far they were from that day when she lay bleeding out on that Afghanistan field.
WHEN AUTUMN SWANK was hospitalized with brain cancer at nine years old, she received several teddy bears and stuffed animals from friends and family. Holding them lifted her spirits through radiation and, later, chemotherapy.
One morning as she was taking a walk down the cancer ward, she saw a child, alone in a room, without even a teddy bear for company. The sight saddened her, but she couldn’t give the child one of her stuffed toys because of the possibility of transferring germs to someone who was immunosuppressed.
When Autumn was doing a little better, she asked her mom, Crystal Fenn, if they could help other children at the hospital by giving them teddy bears. Her idea turned into Autumn’s Angel Bears. It became so successful that she had more bears than she could use at the hospital. She and her mom then set their sights on Snowball Express, an annual event that had been taking place for years near their Dallas-area home. Every year more than twelve hundred children of fallen U.S. service members gathered for four days of fun activities and the chance to bond with other children who have lost a parent to war since 9/11.
American Airlines charters planes to pick up children and spouses from ten locations around the U.S. The party always started on the decorated planes, with gift bags, games, and special treats. Autumn and her mom asked if it would be possible to donate a stuffed animal to be put on the seat of every child. When they received a grateful thumbs-up, they started collecting new stuffed toys. For the 2011 event, they collected thirteen hundred. For the 2012 Snowball Express, they were on track for at least two thousand.
Because of her acts of kindness, the little girl with the inoperable tumor on and around her brain stem had been invited to attend Sky Ball. She was looking forward to it and to meeting Lucca. But in October, just before Sky Ball, she fell into a coma and was put on life support. She spent forty-five days in pediatric intensive care at Cook Children’s Medical Center in Fort Worth. She emerged from the coma, which had been far from a sure thing, but still had a long stay ahead of her.
Not long after Autumn came out of her coma, Willingham and Lucca were in Texas again. They’d been flown in from Finland to once again help promote the Military Working Dog Teams National Monument.
Willingham had known about Autumn since Sky Ball and on this trip set aside time to visit the hospital with Lucca. Because of the delicate condition of some of the children in the ward, Lucca couldn’t go upstairs. So Autumn’s mother and a nurse got her ready for her first trip outdoors since the coma. They disconnected her from as many machines as possible, covered her with a colorful quilt, and wheeled her outside the front doors of the hospital.
Autumn still could not speak. Her mother had to cover the tracheostomy tube for her to get partial words out. But she didn’t need to speak. When Lucca walked up to her and stood there wagging, with what looked like a smile on her face, Autumn lit up. It was the first time her mother had seen her this happy since before the coma.
Willingham told Autumn about Lucca and showed her how Lucca could be directed without a leash. “Forward, Lucca,” he told her. Just like the old days, she moved forward. “Left,” he signaled. He called her back, and as she stood close to Autumn, Willingham pointed his finger and raised his thumb to look like a little gun. He aimed it at Lucca and said, quietly, “Bang.” Lucca dropped gently down and rolled to her side. Then, wagging at the joke, she stood back up.
Autumn couldn’t laugh out loud, but it took just one look at her face to know that Lucca had made her happy.
“When that visit happened, I felt I was not alone,” she would write a year later, at age thirteen. “She filled me with joy. I love that she was so brave in war. She inspired me more and I love her.”
“SO YOU KNOW, like many of us here, Chris went to boot camp at Parris Island,” Elden Willingham told a group of about twenty marine veterans and their twenty or so guests at a meeting of the Marine Corps League in Tuscaloosa. Willingham’s time at the embassy in Helsinki had ended after one eighteen-month tour. He had done so well there that he had been selected to spend the second eighteen months in a new position, as recruiting and screening team chief at the Marine Security Guard School in Quantico, Virginia.
“I remember on the day he left, Martha and I were going to go to the recruiter’s station to see him load the bus and tell him good-bye. Chris said, ‘Okay, but no crying,’ and Martha agreed. It was tough but she didn’t cry. We told him good-bye, watched him load the bus and start his journey toward Parris Island and the Marine Corps. I reminded Martha to be strong and not cry.
“Once we got back in the car it was a different story. There was crying and boohooing and sobbing. And someone asked, ‘Is Martha OK?’ I said, ‘I don’t know how she was taking it, but that was me.’”
The room filled with laughter, and his son, who was visiting with his family for a few days, took the podium, with Lucca at his side.
After Willingham’s short talk, the clapping, and the questions, a couple of board members presented Lucca with a Purple Heart plaque. The wooden plaque featured a Purple Heart in the center and stated that the award was “for courageous service for country and corps.”
Willingham was delighted that Lucca was being recognized. The military doesn’t officially bestow medals and ribbons on dogs. If any are given, it’s usually because someone in a senior position happens to think the dog deserves one, or a group like this wants to do something special. But the Department of Defense is never behind it. Willingham knew that it didn’t really matter to dogs whether or not they got awards. But it made handlers feel good, and that dumped down the leash to the dogs. So indirectly, at least, the dogs did benefit.
It was Lucca’s first Purple Heart. The second came shortly after. Gunnery Sergeant Erik Housman, who also worked at the Marine Security Guard School, was a two-time Purple Heart recipient. When someone receives a second Purple Heart, it has a star on it. Houseman kept the original one, and an extra, in the little tackle box where he kept spare ribbons, medals, and insignias.
Willingham was bringing Lucca to the office once a week, and in exploring around, she wandered into Housman’s office. Willingham came to check on her. Housman loved dogs and wanted her to stay.
“Has she got a Purple Heart yet?” he asked.
“She got a real nice plaque with one from the Marine Corps League down in Tuscaloosa.”
“Well how about a Purple Heart she can wear?”
Housman pinned it on the back of Lucca’s harness. When Willingham saw the purple ribbon on her black harness, he felt proud that she could wear something she deserved so much.
A few months later, after a barbecue at the Veterans of Foreign Wars post in Fairfax, Virginia, the men gathered underneath a tree, and three VFW officers presented Lucca with a plaque that briefly told her story and proclaimed that “Lucca is hereby given an honorary position at this post as Combat Veteran War Dog while in good standing with all the privileges and honors afforded her. Her actions brought great credit upon herself, the Marine Corps, the U.S. Military, and Her family.”
The men told Willingham that to the best of their knowledge, Lucca was the first dog inducted into a VFW. They shook her paw and welcomed her to the club. She focused on them as they talked to her, but when they were done, she went back to staring at the barbecue grill, which had been the center of her attention that day.
THE SIGN THAT wounded Navy SEAL Lieutenant Jason Redman wrote in Sharpie on orange-red poster board is now part of a permanent display at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, where he wrote it. It was signed by President Geor
ge W. Bush and matted and framed behind glass.
ATTENTION to all who enter here. If you are coming into this room with sorrow or to feel sorry for my wounds, go elsewhere. The wounds I received, I got in a job I love, doing it for people I love, supporting the freedom of a country I deeply love. I am incredibly tough and will make a full recovery. What is full? That is the absolute utmost physically my body has the ability to recover. Then I will push that about 20% further through sheer mental tenacity. This room you are about to enter is a room of fun, optimism, and intense rapid regrowth. If you are not prepared for that, go elsewhere. From: The Management.
It’s a fitting sign to have hanging in the hospital’s physical therapy room, which is a bustling place with amputees in various stages of recovery trying to get their strength back and learning to maneuver with prosthetics.
The morning Willingham brought Lucca to pay a visit, six amputees were going through physical therapy routines. Several family members sat and stood nearby, encouraging them, talking with one another, comparing notes. When Lucca walked through the door, everyone stopped what they were doing and all eyes were on her.
Brian Kolfage, a former Security Forces airman who lost both legs and his right arm after a rocket attack in Iraq on September 11, 2004, had brought them to the hospital with him. Kolfage had met Willingham and Lucca at Sky Ball. When Willingham contacted him again to see if he could help them get in to visit wounded warriors, he said he’d be happy to oblige next time he was in the Washington, D.C., area. It’s where Kolfage had done his own recovery, and he visited whenever he could.
Kolfage was passionate about helping other amputees see the light at the end of the tunnel—that life can be great, even without most of your limbs. He was living proof, strolling in on his two microprocessor-controlled prosthetic legs, drinking from a water bottle he held in his high-tech right hand.
“You have to look forward to what you can do, not to what you cannot,” was his message. He walked the walk. He was most of the way through architecture school at the University of Arizona and had married the love of his life a couple of years earlier.
As families and amputees gathered around Lucca to meet her and learn her story, Kolfage marveled at how quickly Lucca’s presence brightened the room. Lucca made the rounds, at home among her fellow wounded warriors.
“They loved seeing her happy ending,” Kolfage told Willingham after their four-hour visit. “It doesn’t matter that she’s a dog. She made a difference.”
Kolfage loved dogs. And now that they were done with the visit, it was time to cut loose with Lucca. Using a combination of dog-play body language and an excited tone of voice, he got her fired up. She ran around the nearly empty lobby in tight circles, stopping suddenly, looking at Kolfage, and plunging into the puppy play position—chest down to the ground, hind end up, tail wagging like mad.
“Lucca, you want this?”
He was waving his hand. Willingham looked at what he was offering Lucca but didn’t see anything in his hand. But Lucca looked like she wanted whatever it was. Willingham watched in amazement at what came next.
Kolfage pulled the lifelike cosmetic cover off his bionic hand prosthesis, waved it in his left hand, and tossed it to Lucca. The silicone rubber hand—it looked just like a hand, except it was almost pure white—bounced low, and she caught it, trotted a few steps with it, and lay down with her prize. Then she held it between her paws and began mouthing it.
It happened so fast that it took Willingham a few seconds to realize what had just transpired and that Lucca was now using Kolfage’s hand as a Kong substitute. It wasn’t the high-tech, robotic-looking hand itself, but no matter. He didn’t want Kolfage walking around with holes in his hand.
He hurried over to Lucca, who looked up at him and wagged, proud of her fun new toy.
“Lucca, no, ma’am. Ma’am, let me have his hand.”
Before she could consider negotiating, Willingham grabbed the hand. He didn’t see any tooth marks, but it was coated with Lucca’s saliva.
“Can I wash your hand?” he asked, realizing how strange that sounded.
“That’s OK, I was going to wash my hands anyway,” Kolfage said.
He gave Kolfage back his hand. Lucca didn’t let it out of her sight until they parted.
IT WAS THE perfect backdrop for romance: The sun was shining, the grass was cool and green, the Lt. Dan Band was playing in the background, and the smell of grilled meat was in the air.
When Lucca laid eyes on Isaac, a yellow Labrador retriever service dog, at a wounded warrior fund-raiser, Willingham saw her excitement. After the mandatory standard dog greeting, she got down in the puppy position to play, but Isaac just stood there. She inched toward him, tail wagging, and he hightailed it under a table and hid behind the tablecloth.
Undaunted, she peeked under, then backed up. He poked his head out, and their eyes met. Eventually he came out, and they lay down close together.
Willingham had been talking with Isaac’s owner, Army Captain (Ret.) Leslie Nicole Smith. While deployed to Bosnia, she developed a blood clot in her leg and was flown to Walter Reed, where she was diagnosed with a blood disorder, possibly caused by exposure to toxins in Bosnia. A severe reaction to the medication resulted in the amputation of her lower left leg, complete blindness in one eye, and 95 percent blindness in the other. She spent seven months at Walter Reed during her twenty surgeries.
Her challenges didn’t keep her down. In her conversation with Willingham, he learned that she was a spokesperson for several nonprofit organizations, including Canines for Veterans, the USO, the Fisher House Foundation, and the American Veterans Disabled for Life Memorial.
“Lucca, you always choose boyfriends with absolutely amazing parents,” he told her later.
He thought about Billy Soutra and Posha. Soutra had received the Navy Cross the previous year, but Posha wasn’t there to get it with him. He had lost a fight with cancer a year earlier. At the Navy Cross ceremony, Soutra was still in pain from the loss.
“Posha made me the marine I am today,” he told reporters.
Soutra keeps Posha’s ashes in an urn next to his bed, so he’s never far away. Soutra has made it clear to his loved ones that he wants to be buried with Posha when his time comes, so they’ll always be together.
He wrote a tribute to Posha after he died.
I wish I could tell you that it’s going to be okay, but the truth is you’ve always been the one to pave the way.
You were always two steps ahead making sure that the paths we traveled were safe.
And although you’ve done enough already, I ask that you still watch over me, making sure the roads I travel without you are safe.
LUCCA WAS USED to wearing eyewear. When boarding the helo after every air assault mission in Iraq, Willingham had her wear Doggles so the sand and dirt kicked up by the rotors wouldn’t hurt her eyes. She didn’t seem to mind them at all.
But the eyewear she wore for the photos at Times Square the afternoon of New Year’s Eve was another story. As her eyes peered out from circles cut into the colorful “2014” cardboard glasses Chris and Jill Willingham had bought her, she sat stone still. One ear stood up normally; the other angled slightly to the side. It had gone a little off-kilter after minor surgery removing a hematoma the previous month, and the vet had said it was probably always going to be a little wonky. They’d found it endearing, but now it added to her woeful expression.
“Poor Mama Lucca,” Jill said. “Take the photo and let’s end the torture.”
“Aw, she knows we’re just creating happy memories,” Willingham said.
The photo session done, the glasses came off and she went back to looking like her usual confident self, angled ear and all.
Jill had never been to New York City, and before Willingham left for a six-week Marine Security Guard recruiting trip, he wanted to show her the
town. He figured Lucca could be just as good a tour guide. It was her third trip to the Big Apple in four months.
In September, they’d come to Manhattan to receive the American Kennel Club Heroic Military Working Dog Award. It took them ninety minutes to make their way through the crowd at the end. That same weekend, they ran and walked with some 250 wounded warriors who kicked off the 12th Annual Tunnel to Towers 5k Run and Walk, in memory of those who were killed on 9/11. As they emerged from the 2.7-mile Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel, they passed 343 firefighters lined up in dress-blue uniforms. Hanging around each of their necks, so their white-gloved hands could be free to clap for the runners, was a large sign with the name and photo of one of the 343 firefighters who died that day.
Willingham, who knew too well what it was like to have a brother in arms perish at the hands of the enemy, felt their losses sharply.
The next month, it was time to co-parent again with Rod. They had been asked to take part in the Veterans Day Parade, so for the fourth time in a year, Willingham handed over Lucca’s leash to Rod, who couldn’t believe his luck. Lynda Thompson, community coordinator for FDNY, which supports many veterans causes, saw to it they had a memorable visit.
Along with two other dog handlers from their old platoon, they got a VIP tour of 4 World Trade Center, which hadn’t yet opened. She also managed to get them—four marines, two dogs—into the Foxwoods Theatre to see the musical Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark. Lucca stretched out and slept through most of it. Willingham tapped her lightly with his foot whenever she started snoring.
AS OF EARLY 2014, Kevin Wiens had been driving the same concrete mixer truck for nearly eight years. He could have gotten a new one from his company after three years, but he kept coming up with reasons why he didn’t need one. This one drove better, or was more comfortable for his tall frame, or, simply, it was perfectly fine and the company didn’t need to invest money in a new one.
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