Rebecca Fuller (left) and her sister Jenny Francis remember their younger brother, Marine First Lieutenant Travis John Fuller, who died in Iraq.
Originally aired January 26, 2007, on NPR’s Morning Edition.
Transcript
Rebecca Fuller (RF) and Jenny Francis (JF)
JF: I’m Jenny Francis.
RF: I’m Rebecca Fuller.
JF: We’re here to remember our brother, First Lieutenant Travis John Fuller, who was killed in Iraq.
RF: He was was born immature, as he would put it. He was born premature. And he was always the little guy. Even in the Marines we’d get pictures of him, and there’d oh these 6 foot Marines, and there he was, you know, 5’7”.
JF: Even though he was the younger brother and we were the older sisters, we were always looking up to Trav and trying to win his approval.
RF: When I knew Travis was coming to visit, the first thing in my head was always we have to do something cool.
JF: But he didn’t care…
RF: No, no, he would make a good time wherever he was, it didn’t matter, he would have a friend there in minutes. When mom and dad went to one of his graduations, he took the time to introduce mom and dad to the janitor who played the piano, and the cooks in the kitchen. He took the time to notice the people around him.
JF: How did you feel when you found out that Travis had enlisted in the Marines?
RF: I actually remember this very clearly and it’s one of things that I regret the most. He came home and he had some pamphlets talking about the Marines and I just gave him a real hard time about it. And, he got up and stormed out of the room and went down into the basement. And, it was then that I realized how dedicated he felt about joining the Marines, and, I went down and talked to him and let him know that I may not understand his choice but I’m still gonna love him and be proud of him and, I always hoped that it wasn’t the memory of him running down to the basement that he thought of, but of all the other things that I tried to do to let him know that I was proud of him for everything.
JF: We found out that Travis had been killed in a helicopter crash in January 2005.
RF: It was probably the worst day of my life. My parents found out the news first and then, uh, the next morning came out to get me and, uh, then we drove up to see you, to, you know, deliver the unfortunate news in person. And, um, we were sitting upstairs in this pretty small room, and it suddenly hit me that our whole family fit in this tiny little room, and it was just us, that was it, that was everybody. And, along with losing him, we were losing what our family could be in the future too. We were losing the wife that he might have, our new sister-in-law. We were losing any children that he might have to add to our family. Everyone was in that room and it was so small.