NASCAR honors Orlando soldier
Bianchi: Orlando’s Patrick Deans killed by Taliban suicide bomber
A few weeks before he made the ultimate sacrifice for his country, Corporal Patrick Deans, a 2006 graduate of Orlando’s Timber Creek High School, wrote this on his Facebook page:
Thankfully, Jimmie Johnson as a driver and NASCAR as a sport remembers.
They always do.
They always have.
Every one of NASCAR’s pre-race ceremonies is built around paying tribute to those who serve our country. Before the Daytona 500, NASCAR always honors Congressional Medal of Honor winners. And on this Memorial Day weekend, just like every Memorial Day weekend, NASCAR refers to Sunday’s Coca-Cola 600 as “600 Miles of Remembrance” with every driver in the field having the name of a fallen soldier scripted across the top of his windshield.
“Our sport always does a tremendous job of recognizing those who have served our country and made the ultimate sacrifice,” Johnson told me earlier this week. “On this Memorial Day weekend, it’s my honor and my team’s honor to have the name of Corporal Patrick Deans on my car. His bravery, the price he paid, receiving the Purple Heart and many other accolades; this young man sounds like he was an amazing, amazing person.” Oh, he was amazing all right. How amazing?
You know how you sometimes hear football players compare themselves to soldiers by describing a tough, loyal teammate as “someone you want to go to war with?”
Patrick Deans was so amazing that he postponed his discharge from the Army because he really was a soldier who wanted to go to war with his teammates one more time.
One last time.
He grew up in East Orlando playing baseball and football through high school. His mother Robyn graduated from Florida State and, as a result, he became a huge Seminoles fan who idolized FSU’s former Heismanwinning quarterback Chris Weinke.
His dad Pat is a former Marine who recently retired from the Orange County Sheriff ’s Office, and Patrick wanted to follow his father’s footsteps into the military and into law enforcement. He joined the Army right out of high school and was a soldier in the elite 101st Airborne Division known as the “Screaming Eagles.”
Former U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates once referred to the 101st Airborne as “the tip of the spear” because they are the soldiers who strike first and pave the way for the rest. Here’s all you need to know: It was the Screaming Eagles who parachuted into Normandy during World War II and cleared the way for the 1st and 4th Infantry Divisions at Omaha and Utah beaches.
Corporal Deans had already done one combat tour of duty in Iraq right before his three-year Army enlistment was about to expire. His unit was getting ready to deploy back to Afghanistan when he decided to extend his enlistment. His father asked him why and he responded, “I need to be with my guys.”
That’s right, Corporal Patrick Deans chose to be sent into Middle of Nowhere, Afghanistan, where he died in a mud hut.
In December 2010, Deans and his regiment had pushed into Taliban territory, driven the enemy out and occupied a large mud-walled building near the village of Sangsar. Working with the Afghan military, they set up a defensive perimeter, with Afghan soldiers manning the guard shack.
It was about 9 a.m. when a Taliban suicide bomber came roaring down the road in a van filled with 2,000 pounds of explosives. The van rumbled past the guard shack without much resistance — a fact that caused the New York Times to report: “It was not immediately clear how the van managed to get so close without being challenged or stopped.”
By the time American soldiers opened fire, it was too late. The bomber detonated the explosives just outside the mud building Corporal Deans and the Screaming Eagles were trying to protect.
“The blast could be heard eight miles away, and it sent a dusty cloud towering over the surrounding farmland,” the New York Times wrote. “The explosion blasted a hole in the thick wall of the building, causing the roof to collapse on the soldiers inside.”
NASCAR star Jimmie Johnson will honor Orlando native Patrick Deans.
On Dec. 12, 2010, two days before his 23rd birthday, Corporal Patrick David Deans and five other American soldiers died inside that mud hut. Deans’ body was flown home aboard a C-17 cargo plane to Dover Air Force Base in Delaware, where his parents waited on the tarmac for his body to be carried off the plane in a flag-draped metal box.
“I’ll never forget how cold it was that night when I watched my son’s body being unloaded from the plane,” Pat Deans says. “Those were the darkest days of my life.”
But Sunday, Jimmie Johnson and NASCAR will do their part to brighten his life and the lives of many other families of fallen soldiers. Johnson’s No. 48 Ally Chevy Camaro will have an olive drab military paint scheme reminiscent of an old-school Army tank — except it’ll be traveling at 200 mph.
Johnson will have a matching militarygreen racing helmet with the name of his paternal grandfather, a World War II veteran, on the back of it. Johnson says he’ll be thinking of both of his grandfathers, his grandmother, his brother-in-law and many of his boyhood friends — all of whom served in the military.
And when he really needs inspiration and motivation during NASCAR’s longest race of the season spanning 600 miles, all he needs to do is look up and see the name “CPL Deans” affixed to the top of his windshield.
“I’m so thankful NASCAR is doing something to recognize my son and all the others who have fallen,” Pat Deans says. “It means so much to keep my son’s memory alive and to remember the sacrifice he made.”
600 Miles of Remembrance.
A NASCAR tradition on Memorial Day Weekend.
To paraphrase Gen. George Patton, this is a time not to mourn those who died but to thank God they lived.
Somebody wise once said, “Our flag does not fly because the wind moves it. It flies with the last breath of each soldier who died protecting it.”
Soldiers like Orlando’s own Patrick Deans — a brave, loyal young man who needed to be with his guys and decided a decade ago to write a blank check payable to the United States of America for an amount up to, and including, his life.
Let us always remember.