With her desire for uncovering the truth unwavering over the past nine years, Mary Tillman spoke vehemently to a captivated crowd Monday, with as much determination as if her son’s death had happened yesterday.

Tillman, the mother of late U.S. Army ranger and former NFL player, Patrick Tillman, shared his story with an audience of 130 people at CSU East Bay on Monday night as part of the Kinesiology Department’s Center for Sport & Social Justice.

She answered questions about the suspicious circumstances surrounding her son’s death, the alleged army cover-up, and her and her family’s subsequent campaign to uncover what really happened to her son.

“I do think he was murdered,” said Mary Tillman. “Initially, the family did believe that Pat was killed by a fratricide situation, a friendly fire situation, and that it was covered up. They wanted to use the situation as a propaganda tool…but it did not take us long to realize that there probably could be something more nefarious that happened.”

Patrick Tillman, who spent four years playing football for the Arizona Cardinals, walked away from a $3.6 million offer for three years with the Cardinals to enlist in the Army in 2002.

On April 22, 2004, he was shot in the head and killed while on patrol in the hills of Sperah, Afghanistan.

The Army Special Operations Command originally reported as many as 20 enemy insurgents ambushed Tillman’s squad and he was killed by enemy fire. For his part in the action, Tillman received a posthumous Silver Star.

Shortly after his funeral, it was revealed that his death was the result of fratricide, not an enemy ambush.

Since that time there have been two military investigations and one congressional inquiry into the events leading up to the ranger’s death and how the Army handled the incident.

Mary Tillman expressed her discontent with the military officials that led the congressional hearing; she called it a “donkey show.”

“[During] the first hearing the congressional committee deemed there was indeed a cover-up,” said Mary Tillman. “There was no doubt there was a cover-up. They just didn’t go out of their way to find out the source of the cover-up. It didn’t uncover anything and I don’t think they wanted to uncover anything. I think it was just trying to appease us and ‘ok we did what you want now go away.’”

The military, which used his enlistment and later his death to help counter public discontent with an increasingly unpopular war, began painting Patrick Tillman as a mythical figure.

“Pat was simply an army ranger, that’s it,” said Mary Tillman. “But he played football and that says a lot about our culture and that’s where the whole sports and politics and social awareness comes in…But Pat’s voice was very powerful because he was a football player and that would sadden him more than anything.

“The fact that his death spurred a lot of young men to enlist would have been devastating to him. I know of three of those young people who have actually died since and his death was their impetus to enlist. That’s horrible.”

Since 2001, the NFL has been building its brand through military showcases, and Patrick Tillman’s death was no exception, further infuriating his mother.

“I think the militarism and football has always been kind of there mingling but I think it’s gotten worse,” said Mary Tillman. “In part because I think they like to promote football players as warriors. I don’t like to diminish what they do, but they’re not in war situation, it’s not the same.  To try and equate the two is kind of ludicrous.”

Earlier this month, sports journalist Professor Kevin Blackistone expressed his frustration with the military branding and rhetoric used by the NFL, when discussing Northwestern University’s new American flag themed football jerseys on ESPN’s “Around the Horn.”

“You should also be selling the rest of the military symbolism embrace of sports, whether it’s the singing of a war anthem to open every game, whether it’s going to get a hot dog and being able to sign up for the army at the same time, whether it’s the NFL’s embrace of the mythology of the Pat Tillman story… it’s time for people to back away,” said Blackistone.

When the show’s host, Tony Reali, defended a military presence in sports, Blackistone replied, “You are conflating a war anthem with a simple game, and when you have military fly-overs and all the other military symbolism that goes on in sports, I think you have a problem.”

According to ESPN, more than 108 million people watched last year’s Super Bowl. Mary Tillman wishes they had used this influence to help secure the release of reports and information related to her son’s death.

“I don’t know how to put it, they have had a lot of memorials, they’ve done all these things, they never lifted a finger to try and help us find out what happened to him,” said Mary Tillman.

“They professed to care greatly for him… A lot of his teammates tried to do things on their own, not to take that away from them, but the institution itself did nothing. It is interesting how much they profited from his death. They had George Bush on the jumbo screen, which absolutely infuriated me.”

In the years since 2004, Mary Tillman has worked tirelessly to find the truth about her son’s death. Professor Rita Liberti, director of CSU East Bay’s Center for Sport and Social Justice, says that her persistence is very compelling.

“Though reluctant to identify as an activist, Mary’s efforts nonetheless speak truth to power, by questioning common practices and assumptions held by us as individuals and a collective nation,” Liberti said.

What is most important to Mary Tillman, beyond investigating the reason behind about her own son’s death, is how his story can help others.

“It’s simply that we have a voice and that voice can possibly help someone else because they are all special,” she said.

The event was streamed live on Pioneer Web TV and can be watched online at www.pioneerwebtv.com.