Homegrown hero
Ronan, Mission Valley rallies around local Marine wounded in Afghanistan
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Sangin, Afghanistan:
When Marine Lance Corporal Thomas C. Parker awoke in the Helmand Province of Afghanistan on the morning of Dec. 11, he had no idea his life was about to change forever.
It started just like any other day. Wake up, eat breakfast, get ready for another patrol along the main road that separates the green from the desert brown.
Life in the embattled country hadn’t been easy since his arrival Sept. 28, but not as bad as it could have been. Just the week before, Tomy had been able to call his mother every day via the satellite phone that circulated among those units out on patrol in the Afghan countryside.
Sure, there had been the rough times. Earlier in the week, Parker had been on patrol with his “brothers,” as they like to refer to each other, when an improvised explosive device, or IED, had detonated amongst the group. Tomy was one of four Marines knocked from their feet by the explosion, including the team’s field medic, who was knocked unconscious by the blast. The other two Marines had it far worse, their legs severely mangled by the bomb. Tomy did what he would later describe as “what any other good Marine would have done;” he grabbed the medic’s field bag, applied tourniquets and started IVs for the injured men.
The two young men lost their legs, but were rushed back to the U.S. for treatment very much alive, thanks to Tomy Parker. Tomy just dusted himself off, picked up his gear and went back to work. He had been lucky.
That luck run out four days later.
It was an eerily similar situation that awaited Tomy that Saturday evening a few days later. An undetected IED exploded beneath the lance corporal’s feet, changing his life forever.
“We were out on a patrol. We were on our way back and I stepped on it (the IED). It was buried in the dirt,” Parker said from a hospital bed in Bethesda, Maryland, Sunday. “I stayed conscious through the whole thing. I stepped on it, and I hadn’t realized what had happened. I felt weird. I looked down and I could clearly see that I was not on the ground anymore. I remember thinking to myself, this is going to hurt when I hit the ground. I crashed down onto the ground and started screaming. The next thing I knew, the guys were there and they started treating me and they took me to the helicopter.”
Tomy was beginning the same journey his injured brothers had taken just a few days prior.
Ronan, Montana:
Dec. 11 was a busy morning for Lisa Jennison.
Things could get busy at the diner inside the Lucky Strike Lanes in Ronan. This was one of those particularly hectic mornings. The Great Falls High School junior varsity basketball team was passing through town on the way to Pablo to face SKC in an exhibition basketball game and had chosen the diner for their pre-game breakfast.
Dozens of hungry teenagers can be distracting, and it was no wonder she missed the initial call to her cell phone that morning. When the phone rang for a second time, less than an hour later, she just happened to hear it chiming away from inside her purse, but she was unable to reach the phone in time to answer the call.
She wasn’t sure why she had put the phone in her purse that morning. She usually kept it in her pocket in case there was a chance call from her son, Tomy, who was serving with the Marines in Afghanistan.
When she saw the missed call identified as originating with the United States Marine Corps, Lisa cursed herself for having missed a chance to speak with her son.
Then she listed to the message that had been left and her world turned upside down.
The message was short.
“This is the United States Marine Corps trying to get in touch with Lisa M. Jennison. We need you to call us back as soon as possible.”
According to Lisa, her heart stopped the minute she heard the message. She knew that whatever came next was not going to be good. She was right.
When she finally got the Marine Corps on the phone, the news was straight forward and to the point. The person on the phone explained to Lisa “that her son had been wounded in combat and that he was alive, but had lost both of his legs and his left hand.”
The news was almost more than she could bear.
“You just go into shock. I was numb and I started crying uncontrollably,” she said Sunday. “It’s one of the worst things a parent can hear. It was so surreal. Especially for the first five days. I got the call on a Saturday and I kept thinking that I would wake up Sunday and it would have all been a horrible nightmare. But it wasn’t.”
Bethesda, Maryland:
Fast forward two weeks and Tomy is on the road to recovery in the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland.
While Lisa admits that Tomy has his good days and his bad, she was proud to report that Sunday was one of his better days.
“The past two days were pretty rough with it being Christmas Eve and Christmas,” she said. “He has been very tired. Didn’t feel like talking, getting up or eating.”
Lisa said she got a good sign Sunday morning when she walked into her son’s room and heard him calling his roommate, who is also his team leader, a rather colorful word.
“I thought to myself, now there’s Tommy feeling better,” she said.
Tomy is now rooming with the two fellow Marines whose lives he helped save just days before being injured himself.
While not the Christmas gift Lisa would have hoped for her son just a few weeks ago, she was thrilled to see Tommy up and using his wheelchair on Christmas Eve.
“It was amazing. It was quite an accomplishment for him. He hasn’t even been here two weeks yet and he can already move around by himself with the wheelchair,” she said.
At this point Tomy is taking it one day at a time. However, he said that continuing his career in the Marine Corps is not out of the question. He made that known last week when Four-Star General James F. Amos, the Commandant of the Marines, visited the hospital to award him the prestigious Purple Heart.
“When the commandant gave him his Purple Heart, Tomy told him he was thinking about staying on in the Marine Corps,” Lisa said. “The Commandant said that if Tomy decided to stay, he would find him a job.”
Even though the road to recovery will be a tough one for Tomy, he said he is honored to have received the medal.
“It was nice getting the Purple Heart. There is a lot of honor that goes with that,” he said. “It’s the thing that everyone wants but doesn’t want to go through what it takes to get one. There seems to be a lot of respect that comes with it, though.”
While Tomy continues his recovery and ponders his future, the support from back home and around the world pours in. It is impossible to drive through Ronan, Pablo or Polson without seeing the numerous signs in support of the wounded Marine.
“Oh my gosh, the response from everyone has been so amazing,” Lisa said. “The hospital has been beyond amazing. The people here are just fantastic. Tommy has a page on Facebook that we have put up since the injury, as of a few minutes ago he already had 1,798 followers. That is one of the joys of living in a small town. Everyone knows you and supports you. I don’t think I could have gotten through all this without all of the support from back home.”
Tomy and his family will continue to need support as the rehabilitation process continues. Tomy is scheduled to spend at least the next month in Bethesda before moving to an inpatient rehab center in either Maryland, Florida, California or Texas.
Tomy says he would very much prefer to do his rehab in California so that he can meet his brothers when they return from Afghanistan, an event that may happen as soon as April.
While an event like this can turn even the kindest heart sour, Tomy’s family reports that he has stayed in good spirits and is still the same old Tomy that everyone back home remembers.
“His left leg is gone. Most of his right leg is too and it’s the same with his hand,” Lisa said. “That’s all that is gone, though. He’s still our same loveable, arrogant kid he was before he went over there,” she added laughing.
As for his hero status, that’s the one thing Tomy may not yet be ready to accept.
“I don’t see what I did that makes me a hero,” he said from his hospital bed Sunday. “What I did was not an act of heroism. I was just doing my job. I just did what anyone else who faced that situation should have done. Nothing more.”
Despite what Tomy may think of himself or the situation, it’s apparent that he’s a hero in the eyes of our nation and in the hearts of everyone back home.
