Justin Paterson
March 23rd, 2013
Commemorative speech
Best Friend
He is rough and
tough a leatherneck a jar headed Marine. He is a purple heart recipient and my
best friend. Today I am gong to tell you about my best friend Brian or as most
people call him Big red. Brian is a hard person to explain but I will do my best
to tell you why he is my best friend and the greatest person to know. I am
going to tell you about background he came from, the type of things we would do
together, and a little bit about his military service.
I met Bran my
freshman year in high school. I didn’t know anything about his past up to that
point all I knew is we both loved working on cars and playing football. It
didn’t take long before we became inseparable. It was then that I started to
learn about the things he went through. I never went over to his house and he
seemed to always want to stay at my house and my parents were ok with that. My
parents had a rule that our friends were always welcome over as long as we
cleaned up after ourselves. So Brian would spend almost every night at my
house. For some reason I never asked him about his parents or anything like
that. I guess you could say it never came up. Well that is until my parents
asked him about it. I could tell at that moment that there were some things
that he had gone through. He finally told us that he never knew his dad and
when he was in 8th grade his mom just abandoned him. Not telling him
where she went or if she would ever come back. Well to this day I have never
met his mom she would come to town on occasion and then just leave again with
out any word. He told us that he was living with his ex stepdad and his ex
stepdads new wife. He told us that even though they never said it he could tell
that he didn’t belong there and that he felt that our house was more of a home
to him then he has ever had.my parents went out and bought another bed to put
in my room and told him that this could be his home. From that day which was at
the end of our 9th grade year he lived with me. He is my best friend
and even though we are not blood and have different last names he is my
brother.
Even with his
past he is one of the best persons to know. He always put others before him and
he makes sure they are taken care of. He had every opportunity to go down a bad
road however he would tell you that even though he had a rocky childhood he
want to make this world a better place. Now with that being said there are a
lot time where him and I would go get in trouble together. We were your typical
high school kids. I remember we had this great idea to prank our teacher. We
showed up to school early and snuck in to his classroom and siren wrapped all
the chairs to the top of the desks and did a little decoration to say the
least. We ended up in the principal’s office waiting to find our punishment. He
couldn’t stop laughing. He would look over at me and say something along the
lines of that was brilliant idea or it was totally worth it. We became the
school pranksters. I would come up with ideas and he would come up with plans
on how to pull it off. We did everything from zip tie peoples drivelines, which
would make a beating sound when they are driving but it would do no damage to
the cars, to one day we got to school extremely early and put big rocks in
front of all the teachers parking spots. Almost every time we would end up in
principal’s office and it was great I couldn’t think of a better person to
serve detention with. To put it in terms that you could all understand our
junior year we both got about 35 detentions it was bad enough that we got on a
first name basis with the detention coordinator and every time we would go in
he would have us tell him the story of our pranks. We would never do damage to
anything or put in someone in harms way so the school officials were ok with it
as long as we did our detentions.
It was funny
though even with all of our pranks we both ended up wanting to serve our
country and be apart of something bigger then us. I went in the navy while he
went to the marines. I didn’t know it when we left but Brian would end up being
my hero. We only saw each other once in three years but we would talk as much
as we could with us being on different sides of the world one day I got an
email from one of his guys while he was in Afghanistan they were photos of his
Humvee and of him. He hit an IED or roadside bomb as you might know them as and
it tore everything up. It was at that moment that my heart stopped. I thought
the worst. I thought I lost my brother, however as I continued to scroll down I
finally saw some writing it said don’t worry big red is alive and he will make
a full recovery. He wanted you to have these pictures. It continued on to
explain why he wanted me to have the pictures but that’s something cant share.
But what I can tell you is he is my hero. Brian ended up doing two tours in
Afghanistan. I was thankful that he made it through his second tour with out a
scratch. He ended up doing a little over four years in marines and then he was
discharged. His contracted ended and he couldn’t reenlist. He lost most of the
hearing in one of his hears and his back completely messed up but he never lets
that get in his way.
Now that he is out we talk everyday. It seems that even
though we were apart for so long that nothing between us changed. We are still
best friends and talk about everything. But what can we are family and he is a
rough tough, leatherneck jar headed marine a purple heart recipient and my best
friend.
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