CNN senior Washington correspondent Brianna Keilar wrote a moving piece for CNN.com out this morning about where she recalls her reaction to Gen. John Kelly‘s recent remarks at the briefing room podium about the 2011 death of his Gold Star son and the deaths of other service members.
Keilar married an Army Special Forces officer this past December who is now on his sixth deployment. This is the first time Keilar “is doing one of these,” and all she could picture while watching Gen. Kelly’s remarks was him.
As I listen to Kelly all I can picture is my husband’s body, packed in ice. I will it to stop. I can’t. I am arrested by this horrific looping video image in my mind and I can’t control the tears. I ask the floor director for tissues. I listen to Kelly hoping that he will talk for several more minutes and I will have time to compose myself so I can speak evenly when I bring my panel in to discuss Kelly’s comments.
AdvertisementFor this moment, as I listen to John Kelly describe my worst fear, I am not a news person at all. I am only a military wife trying not to lose it in front of a panel of my colleagues and experts and our entire floor crew.
Keilar said that when the two began dating, which was before Keilar’s mom unexpectedly died earlier in 2016, he had a policy job in DC, wearing a suit every day and working in an office. Keilar was of course a TV newser.
“I had hoped he might get another desk job for his new billet this summer, a thought that simultaneously filled me with relief and disappointment,” Keilar recalled. “While I want him safely at home, deployments have been such an important and challenging part of his life for the last two decades and without going through one, I may never truly understand what he’s sacrificed.”
Keilar was anchoring CNN Newsroom before and after the Gen. Kelly’s comments. After she tossed to Jake Tapper at the top of the 4 p.m. hour, she went into her office and Skyped with her husband, telling him about the General’s comments and how he instructed the press to watch the 2004 film Taking Chance. The movie tracks the transportation service member’s dead body from Iraq to Wyoming.
Keilar went on to watch the film the following weekend.
“I’m proud of u,” her husband types while Keilar as crying.
And then we move onto other things. We talk about my stepson, who I am caring for in my husband’s absence. I tell my husband how our beloved toddler has unfortunately learned how to take his diaper off so the pajama sack he’s been sleeping in since infancy is no more. We have graduated to footie pajamas and there’s no turning back. I can tell he is bummed out from missing even this small change while he’s gone.
He’s fading and needs sleep so we say goodbye.