Army Wife's Memoir Details Life Of Late Husband
PITTSBURGH (KDKA) - "Once in a while, right in the middle of ordinary life, love gives us a fairy tale."
So begins a memoir written by a young Army wife from Beaver County.
She began writing it as her husband lay dying because she wanted her baby daughters to know about the incredible man who was their father.
The memoir became a book and that's just the beginning of the story.
Like a lot of little boys, Ryan Means wanted to grow up to be a soldier. After filling out a recruitment card he'd found in a magazine, a couple of Marines came knocking on his mom's door looking to see if he had the right stuff.
He was 9-years-old.
Ryan found his best friend in the first grade.
Adam White died on Sept. 11, 2001, and Ryan made this entry in his journal:
"First time writing since World Trade Center attacks. Adam was on floor 105 and certainly killed. I've now officially given up and simply ask that my best friend watch over me - as he always did."
With Adam's initials tattooed on his rib cage in memory of his friend, Ryan Patman Means enlisted in the Army and eventually became a Green Beret.
He took Neil Young's "Rockin' in the Free World," as his anthem.
"When 9-11 happened, it just sparked something that just changed something inside him. We never talked about it a lot," Heather Means said.
While on leave from Special Forces training, he met Heather Hohman from Beaver County. In 2007, Ryan asked her to marry him.
"Did not take no for an answer. He kept at it and the rest is history," Heather Means said.
Ryan signed most of his e-mail home with his initials R.P.M. and the song title.
It became the title for Heather's book - an amazing story about the short life they shared told through their letters, e-mails and Ryan's journal.
The birth of a baby girl made the Means a family. Ryan barely got to know Elizabeth when he was deployed to Iraq.
Between short hops back home, Ryan was to serve three tours of duty in all.
By 2009, Heather was pregnant again when Ryan began suffering serious medical problems overseas.
"He was telling me that his skin, his eyes were starting to turn yellow. His skin was itchy all over," Heather said.
In May of 2009, a call came in the middle of the night from a hospital in Baghdad.
"He called me and his voice was cracking - and I've never heard fear in his voice," Heather said.
It was a very rare form of liver cancer.
Ryan was 35-years-old. Two days later, Ryan was flown to Walter Reed Army Hospital and then to Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York.
He would live only one more month, but his second daughter, Sophie-Ryan, came early.
"This baby really looked like him and he got to bond with her as quickly as possible," Heather said.
Heather kept asking him to write one last letter to his girls.
"He just looked at me and grabbed my hand and said, 'If you don't know how much I love you by now, you're never going to know,'" Heather said.
Soon, it was time to begin turning off the machines that were keeping Ryan alive.
"And did it bit by bit, and got to say goodbye and look at him one last time," Heather said.
Special Forces Staff Sgt. Ryan Means was buried in Arlington Cemetery.
The final line in her book reads:
"In the end, if everything is not okay it is not the end."
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