Guarding a legacy

The Air Force lost a hero at Roberts Ridge.
She lost more.

By Karen Jowers
Times Staff Writer

VALDOSTA, Ga. - Just before leaving for his first and last combat mission in Afghanistan, Senior Airman Jason Cunningham picked a desert flower, placed it inside a card and mailed it to his wife.

Cadet Theresa Cunningham received it after his memorial service.

"It was a good thing to know that ... he was thinking of us," said Cunningham, an ROTC cadet at Valdosta State University in Georgia.

Not that she ever doubted that.

To the world, Jason Cunningham was a hero in the bloody March 4 battle on Afghanistan's Roberts Ridge. Enemy forces surrounded him and his colleagues as the pararescuer feverishly worked to save lives in the back of a crashed helicopter atop a frigid, snow-covered mountain.

About four hours after the helicopter hit the ground, Cunningham decided it had become too dangerous for his patients to stay there. He dragged the troops away from the helicopter to safer ground, crossing the line of enemy fire seven times. Hours later, even after being wounded, he continued to treat patients until he became too weak and bled to death.

He became the first pararescue jumper to die in combat since the Vietnam War. For his bravery he was awarded the Air Force Cross.

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But Jason Cunningham was a hero to his wife and daughters long before that.

"He chose to follow what he wanted to do, but we were the most important thing to him," Theresa Cunningham said. He spent every possible moment with her and their daughters, Kyla, 5, and Hannah, 2.

Losing him was devastating. "But I'm motivated every day by him," she said. "They say that when a tragedy happens, people find a purpose. People are alive today who wouldn't be if Jason hadn't been there. That matters, and that's a huge difference. But I want it to matter more."

She said Jason constantly urged her to look out for her enlisted people. "Jason used to say, 'Don't be one of those bad officers,' " she said. "Someone's got to come get you when someone is down."

She wants the world to know military people make huge sacrifices, that they are heroes who decide beforehand to make those sacrifices.

Before she entered the ROTC program - and before he became an Air Force PJ - they were both enlisted sailors.

Theresa Cunningham met Jason on Sept. 21, 1995, when she got off the plane in Naples, Italy, her first duty station as a sailor. She still remembers the wide smile on his face that day, the first sign of his infectious enthusiasm and ability to motivate people.

Both left the Navy in 1998, shortly after the birth of Kyla in 1997. But both still were interested in the military.

When he heard about Air Force pararescue, "that was it," she said. "He was a lifeguard, a volunteer firefighter when I met him. This was even more exciting because he got to jump and dive and do medicine."

He entered the Air Force in 1999; she became an ROTC cadet at Valdosta State when they moved to Moody Air Force Base in the summer of 2001.

Today she does what she can to keep his memory close. She has saved every note Jason wrote to her while they were dating and after they married, and carries some of them everywhere she goes. She had the last flower he sent her professionally framed, and she wears his gold ring on a chain around her neck.

Jason's death has changed how she views her career. She will graduate in the spring and is considering going into public affairs or military intelligence.

"I want to do the best I can. But if it interferes with being home with the kids, I wouldn't want to do it," she said.

Jason "would want me to still pursue my dreams, but keep the kids first in mind," she said.

Her daughters like to see her in her Air Force uniform, "but when they see me in my BDUs, they think that's daddy's uniform."

Cunningham vividly remembers the day that set in motion the events that led to her husband's death. Like millions of Americans, she watched the news in tears. Jason was away training at the time, but when he returned, they talked about it "in terms of the families, the families who didn't get the opportunity to talk about things like we did," she said.

Jason had trained with paramedics in New York and often wore one of their sweatshirts. "We felt blessed we had the time together, but at the same time, we knew he was going to go."

On Sept. 11, "that was the day it happened to someone else," she said. "Now I look at the people who lost loved ones September 11 and think, 'They're all like us.' "

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