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Father finishing book by son killed in Iraq

Oct-23-2007 » Filed Under: 3/2 SBCT

Mike Gilbert at FOB Tacoma points to the following article in the LA Times regarding SSG Darrell Griffin and his father's promise to finish his book. You can read more about SSG Griffin in our archives.

By James Ricci, Los Angeles Times

Darrell Griffin Sr. has gotten down to work on his final collaboration with his son and namesake.

The book taking shape beneath his hands is a compendium. It will blend an account of a father's melancholy journey to Iraq with the dire experiences and searching meditations of a son, the latter written down by Darrell Griffin Jr. before a Sadr City sniper's bullet pierced the back of his head in March.

Darrell Jr. was an Army infantry staff sergeant, 6 feet 2 inches of muscled warrior. Married, with no children, he'd been an emergency medical technician in Compton before finding his life's work as a soldier.

Although he had eschewed college, he was an avid reader, the owner of -- among hundreds of other books on religion and philosophy -- a 23-volume set of the works of John Calvin.

Known in the family as Skip, he was strong-willed and tough-minded from an early age.

"He was always stretching the limits of authority, always testing the environment," his father recalled. "I didn't win an argument with him after he was about 8 years old."

Darrell Jr.'s death at age 36 left his father grieving and feeling helpless. It was Darrell Sr., a small-business consultant in Sherman Oaks, who had suggested that his son keep a journal in Iraq, and who had promised to help him put it in book form when he returned from his second combat tour.

"I thought it would be a great thing for a father and son to do, and at the same time it might help him keep his sanity while he was going through all that over there," Griffin said.

So, hoping to somehow soften his anguish, Griffin resolved to go to Iraq to get a sense of the final phase of his son's life, to speak with the men he died fighting alongside and "to feel a little of the danger."

He reasoned that it would help him write the book, which would be the fulfillment of a promise, a kind of gift to his son.

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