A New Perspective After Brother’s Death in Iraq

Bill Tessar will spend this day as he has for the last five years, on the Little League field in Simi Valley, putting 40 youth baseball teams through their paces at an annual Memorial Day tourney.

If he’s lucky, the day will be like every other Memorial Day. He’ll be so busy keeping the snack bar stocked and the games on schedule, he won’t have much time to think about the newly planted sapling near Pinto Field that -- depending on your angle -- is either ramrod straight or leans away from the wind.

The tree is a memorial to his younger brother, Army Sgt. 1st Class Jonathan Tessar, who was among four soldiers killed last fall in a roadside bombing while leading a convoy on patrol in Iraq.

The tree also is a reminder of his brother’s devotion to a cause that was beyond Bill Tessar’s ken. Until now.

“I’m embarrassed to say it, but honestly I didn’t pay a lot of attention to the people out there serving our country,” he said. “I never really looked at it as an act of patriotism or bravery until my brother lost his life.”

He carries another reminder in his wallet, a letter from a 7-year-old Little Leaguer from Simi Valley, written after the news of Jon’s death filtered through the community:

“If it was not for brave people like yourself, there would not be a baseball tournament for me here in Simi Valley. And Mr. Soldier, I hope you are in heaven. I am going to give 100% today, and dedicate this game to you.... Thank you men and women for serving in the war and allowing me to make my dreams come true.”

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Growing up in Simi Valley, the Tessar brothers were best friends, but “polar opposites” in everything from political views to favorite sports, said Bill, 38.

Strait-laced Bill -- honor student and athlete -- graduated from Cal Lutheran University in Thousand Oaks with a finance degree, built a successful career as a mortgage banker, married a local girl and settled with their three children in Simi Valley, not far from his childhood neighborhood.

Jon was unconventional, with a rebellious streak. He wore camouflage pants and a flat-top haircut when they were political, not fashion, statements, and left Simi Valley High School before graduation and passed the General Educational Development test so he could join the Army at 17.

But there was no mistaking the boys’ closeness. Bill was so protective of Jon, two years his junior, that anyone who looked cross-ways at his little brother had better be ready to take him on.

Their father tried to corral his younger son. “But my brother started sneaking and dipping chew when he was 14,” Bill said. “My dad would never let him get a tattoo, but the second he went to the Army, he got his first one.” Over the years, Jon added several more, until his upper body was covered with ink.

Jon married a woman he met while stationed in Texas, and the family -- which grew to include three children -- hopscotched among military bases in the United States and in Europe. Jon saw combat in Bosnia, in the Persian Gulf and during three tours of duty in Iraq, where he led a 250-soldier platoon. A Green Beret and Airborne Ranger, he earned so many medals, ribbons and badges that his dress uniform jangled when he walked.

But Jon, who was 36 when he died Oct. 31, missed much of his family’s life -- birthdays, holidays, sporting events. He was in the Persian Gulf when his wife, Nancy, gave birth to their first child in Simi Valley. His brother stood in and coached her through labor.

Bill always struggled to understand his brother’s choice. “I would never, never have signed up” for the military, he said. “I wanted to have the opportunity to do as I wanted, make as much money as I wanted, decide how I was going to spend my time.

“My brother had a passion for it. And I never really understood what that meant until now....

“He really believed he was doing something to make the world a better place. Now, I look at his sacrifice and ask myself, ‘Would I die for my job? Would you die for this story, for your job?’ My brother was willing to die. And he did.”

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As news of Jon’s death spread throughout the community, tributes poured in -- from neighbors who remembered when the brothers would pitch water balloons over their backyard fence onto the 118 Freeway’s passing cars; a grade school buddy who, in an e-mail, recalled a kid so popular that even in second grade “EVERYONE wanted to be Johnny’s friend”; and a high school classmate who reminisced about his last conversation with the new Army recruit almost 20 years ago.

“I ran into him soon after he enlisted,” Michael Garcia wrote in an e-mail posted on a military tribute site. “I was wearing a shirt with an ‘anti-war in Nicaragua’ slogan and I stood outside a store in Simi Valley and discussed the situation with Jon.

“He was as kind and thoughtful as always, and he ended our conversation by shaking my hand and saying, ‘Our opposite views are what make America great! That’s what I want to defend.’ ”

Garcia is a veteran of antiwar vigils and protests against the war in Iraq, but Jon’s death offered a reality check, a different vision of the soldiers holding the guns. “Jon had a good heart and everybody knew it,” said Garcia, who grew up in Simi Valley and now lives in Eagle Rock. “His life, and his death, remind me that there are some very, very good, sensitive, wonderful individuals serving as soldiers overseas. And they really believe they’re doing the right thing.

“I don’t have to agree. I’m 100% against the war, any war. But when I share with my friends who Jon was ... I tell them he was the kind of man you would want a young soldier to follow.”

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Since this holiday last year, more than 750 American troops have died in Iraq, leaving their families and friends to face their first Memorial Day when the true meaning of the day set aside to honor fallen troops cannot be avoided.

Jon Tessar’s widow and children still live on the Army base at Ft. Campbell, Ky., where “the outpouring of love for my brother was so strong.” Bill Tessar is confident they’ll come through the holiday all right.

“I don’t know if the true impact has hit them yet,” he said. “But they’re very resilient -- probably stronger than I am. And back there, there’s a huge support system.”

For Bill, the path through grief is mostly private and solitary, and sometimes veers close to denial.

Although Jon spent almost two decades fighting on dangerous battlegrounds, “my brother getting hurt never, ever crossed my mind,” Bill said, leaning back in a chair at his Calabasas office last week, his jaw tight and eyes locked on a spot on the wall.

The day before Jon died, Bill received a final e-mail from his brother. In it, he asked that Bill send care packages to some of the soldiers in his unit, and sent a message for Bill’s children, who worried about their uncle:

“There are a lot of bad people here,” he wrote. “But there are more good ones. We’re trying to make the country safe for them, one road at a time, one alley at a time, one house at a time.”

Bill took the news of Jon’s death hard.

“It was Halloween, and I was driving home from work,” he said. “I had just purchased a mask so I could go trick-or-treating with my kids, and was on the freeway when Nancy called. She said, ‘Bill, I have some bad news.’ But it never occurred to me that she was going to say Jon died. I had to pull over to the side of the freeway when she said it. I just collapsed.”

He couldn’t wrap his mind around the thought. “I couldn’t call anybody to tell them,” Bill said. “I knew it was my job, but I just couldn’t. I just kind of cocooned, by myself or with my family.”

He flew to Ft. Campbell, where he delivered the eulogy at his brother’s military funeral. Then he returned to Simi Valley -- and flew Jon’s body home -- for a second service attended by hundreds of relatives, neighbors and friends. Finally, he traveled to Arlington National Cemetery, where Jon was buried.

Nowadays, Bill Tessar’s office resembles a shrine to his younger brother, with photos, mementos and military gear lining the walls, shelves and file cabinets. Rather than succumb to grief, he said, “I just surround myself with pictures of him. Fools me into believing he’s here.”

Their mother died in 1995; their dad -- a military veteran himself -- died a year ago, three days before last Memorial Day. Now that he is the only surviving member of that family, Bill must redefine himself.

Are you still a big brother when your little brother is dead?

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To honor Jon, the folks in Simi Valley planted three trees -- at Jon’s elementary school, at a community center and at the Simi Valley Little League, where Bill Tessar sits on the board, runs the annual Memorial Day tournament and managed a team that went to the Little League World Series two years ago.

The league dedicated its tree in March, on the season’s opening day. It is not a crowd given to maudlin displays, “but there wasn’t a dry eye in the house that day,” Bill said.

He believes his brother’s death has sensitized many whose comfortable lives have not been touched by war and the sacrifices it requires.

“What my brother gave up in the form of missed birthdays and holidays and sporting events, that was so that all of us could spend those moments with our wives and our kids and our friends,” Bill said.

Now, when he sees someone in uniform at a mall or outdoor event, “I will go out of my way to go up to them and thank them.... They’re always surprised, which bothers me, because all of us out here owe them a great deal of gratitude. They shouldn’t have to die to get that.”