The Rest Of The Story: when even death doesn’t end the struggle

By Liv Stecker

Casey Owens was a decorated Marine who served the United States through two deployments. In September of 2004, barely a month into his second deployment in the Al Anbar Province of Iraq, the vehicle in which Owens was riding in en route to aid an injured Marine struck two anti-tank mines. The injuries to Owens’ legs were catastrophic. He was stabilized at a field hospital and then flown to Germany, where his left leg was amputated below the knee and his right amputated just above the knee. But this was only the beginning of Owen’s very long journey.

Upon his return to the United States, Owens received care for complications from his surgeries at Bethesda Naval Hospital in Maryland, Walter Reed Army Medical Center, and Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio, Texas. His amputations failed to heal properly and resulted in the loss of more of Owen’s right leg. He underwent numerous procedures and therapies, and when his resources through the VA were tapped out, Owens found himself footing the bill with the help of charitable organizations for hyperbaric oxygen therapy in Louisiana as his body continued to resist healing.




In addition to the loss of Owens’ legs, he suffered a traumatic brain injury in the explosion that compounded his mental recovery. Owens battled PTSD and depression in the way that many “recovering” vets do, when all other therapies fail: with a bottle. Interviewed first in 2004, then again in 2009, and finally, in 2012, Owens shared openly his struggle to find help through the available channels at the time, and his return each time to self-medicating. More than a decade later, studies on the correlation between traumatic brain injuries (TBI) and PTSD or other psychological symptoms are just beginning to pick up steam and gain public attention. More data is emerging that ties a direct line between head injuries and depression and suicide demographics.

After Owen’s fourth amputation surgery and self-funded hyperbaric therapy, the Marine was finally mobilized on prosthetic limbs. When he left the clinic in Louisiana in 2009, he shouted jubilantly to the CBS news crew “Free at last!” as he lumbered off on new legs. But his newfound liberty was short lived.

From a wheelchair in Denver in 2012, Owens told CBS that he would never totally released from the experiences that changed his life.

“Nah, no. I don’t think I will ever be free. I don’t think the burden of war is ever gone...I could be in a room with a hundred people, but I’d still be alone,” he confessed. But it wasn’t the people around him who couldn’t see his battle. “I think I didn’t realize what I’d been through, or really what was going on with me.”

When an attempt at college failed due to his TBI, he threw himself into paralympic sports, moving to Aspen, Colorado, where he found an escape from his new reality, one day at a time. But even there, proving himself as an aggressive paralympian, Owens circled back to the thing he confessed helped the most: drinking. After an arrest for drunk driving, Owens went through rehab, and then was able to participate in a recovery program for vets.



 Along the way, Owens crossed paths with Patrick Flanagan, a local Air Force Veteran who had served through four deployments, two to Iraq, one to Afghanistan and one to Kyrgyzstan, as a firefighter for the Air Force. In the time he spent with Owens, Flanagan witnessed the agony of a decade long recovery first hand.

“He used to scream at night because his feet hurt and they weren't there. The Docs couldn't help him because it hadn't been long enough for his meds. It was nuts.” Flanagan’s front line experience resonated with Owens and the two became friends, keeping in contact across the miles and over the years when it was difficult to find veterans with shared experiences nearby. Flanagan explains the daily struggle for vets in finding therapy that helps.

“It's a catch 22. If you get drunk, you have to live with the consequences. If you don't, you have to live in your own PTSD head. There's no coming back home and there's no going back to fight,” says Flanagan. And survivor's guilt might be one of the hardest parts of the battle. “That's the worst thing. Leaving or not being able to go back. I want to be first in and last out. It sucks leaving when boots are still on the ground.”

Owens other friends and family tried to stay connected as he battled through his medical and psychological challenges. But it was not enough. Owens took his own life on October 16 of 2014 at his home in Aspen, ten years after the course of his life was altered in Iraq. He was 32 years old. The news cameras didn’t capture the end of Owens’ story, or the ugly aftermath some years later when another Marine who had served in an adjacent unit to Owens’ borrowed pieces of the late Marine’s experiences to claim charitable benefits for himself.

Former Marine Brandon Blackstone began piggybacking on the story of the anti-tank double mine explosion before Owens’ death, and continued for many years adding layer upon layer of narrative borrowed from the double amputee as he cashed in on a mortgage-free home from a charitable organization and many other perks for his stolen valor. Blackstone was eventually exposed by members of Owens’ unit who recognized the story, and revealed that Blackstone’s brief deployment to Iraq in 2004 was actually cut short by appendicitis. He was there long enough to hear about the terrible explosion that sent Owens back to the states.

Casey Owens sacrificed his life for a nation. When his legs were gone and his body failed him, he laid his soul bare for audiences across the country to hear the heart cry of soldiers and Marines like him who fought the same battles that he did when they got home. When his struggle became more profound than he could bear, the audiences abandoned him, just like hope and health had. Other than his closest circle of friends, some of whom learned of his death only after he had been buried, there was no hero’s fanfare for the fallen warrior. There was only the quiet grieving of an unsurprised family, while a vulture preyed on the bones of Owens’ suffering even after his death, capitalizing on a story that he couldn’t possibly grasp the depth of. Owens’ end was a far cry from the young Marine, saluting in his dress blues from a wheelchair at George W. Bush’s second inauguration.



As a nation we struggle to understand how to recognize the suicides of our veterans as the true battlefield deaths that they are. We cannot see the invisible scars that don’t heal over years, a deadly gangrene that began in combat. Owens demise seems too tragic to herald as a hero’s death, and yet it was. He gave all, even after his return from war, and more than ever we owe it to him to understand that - for the ones that he left behind who are still giving.

Should Auld Acquaintance Be Forgot…

By Liv Stecker

The Changing of the Guard at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier

As families across the nations trundle into airports and minivans to make their annual pilgrimage home, I found myself boarding a plane eastbound to Washington DC with my two youngest girls this December, to visit my family and make the obligatory rounds in the District of Columbia.

On our first night in The Capitol, we paid a visit to the Arlington National Cemetery, where we caught the last shuttle through the monument for the day. I hadn’t visited the ANC since I was a little girl, when I remember feeling awestruck at the somber ceremony for the Changing of the Guard at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. At the time, my very loose grasp on what it all meant made it difficult for me to sit still, except the sense of peace and tranquility and the respectful energy emanating off of the crowd in the warm, early summer air, made it feel very important to me to keep my restless, eight-year-old mind still. Now, 32 years later, I stand next to my 14 and 17-year-old daughters, knowing they understand more clearly, what the empty tombs in front of them represent.

One is for the unidentified World War I soldier, laid to rest without a name, to honor the thousands of others like him, who, without the aid of DNA identification, were disfigured or destroyed beyond recognition, separated somehow from their dogtags and any other evidence of who they once were. And then, in front of the marble sarcophagus, the three flat gravestones that represent the Unknown Dead of World War II, the Korean War, and one to represent the many thousands of missing service members in all conflicts, whose ends remains unknown. The fourth tomb was formerly the Unknown Soldier of Vietnam, but in 1998, the remains were exhumed and using newly developed DNA analysis, 1st Lt. Michael Joseph Blassie of the United States Air Force, who was shot down near An Loc, Vietnam, was identified and returned to his family for proper burial.

a view of Washington DC from the cemetery

Behind the four tombs, rows upon rows of white headstones sprawl out above the DC skyline. As the sun began to set, the glow backlit the Washington Monument and the Capitol dome that were nestled into the cityscape beyond the eternal flame where John F. Kennedy is buried with his family. These 624 acres hold more story in them than an entire nation can bear to hear. More than 400,000 honored dead find their final resting place at ANC. Nearly 30 burials a day are conducted at the cemetery, some, as aging warriors spend their final hours peacefully at home, and others, younger, who have met violent deaths in far away places - and a few at home.

After we watched the final Changing of the Guard for the day, it was nearly dark and the cemetery staff was eager to escort us all out through the gates so they could close, but I had one last mission to accomplish. I have been working on a story about a friend of a friend. A Marine warrior who lost his life in 2014. A hero who had received a Purple Heart after he lost both legs when two anti-tank mines exploded under his transport in Iraq. A fighter who went on to compete in the paralympics as a skier and a marathon runner with prosthetic legs. Casey Owens died in October of 2014 by his own hand after years of fighting a greater enemy than the one that blew him up in the middle east. He is memorialized by a simple white headstone at Arlington National Cemetery, and after learning Owen’s story, I was intent to find it and pay my respects.

My girls were up for the adventure when we snuck past the cemetery guards ushering guests out and trotted off into the darkening gravesites. The last supermoon of 2017 was rising overhead as we followed the directions to his grave, giving us some light as all of the street lights in the cemetery area were turning off. It was an eerie sight, rows of glowing white marble in the chilly moonlight, our breath puffing out in big clouds was the only company as we moved through the graves.

We passed an open area about the size of half a football field that had exposed dirt and a couple of freshly opened grave spots. I realized that we were in the area where soldiers who were recently killed would be buried, and the space was ready to welcome the latest fallen heroes. My heart tightened at the thought of that space filling up, and the new graves that had just been dug, running through a catalog of the recent fallen in my mind.

My daugther found Owens’ headstone, where a little American Flag sat quietly at the base, as if lying peacefully out of the breeze so as not to disturb the resting Marine. Owens died at his own hand, but he was no less the warrior, and no less dead for his service than any other hero laid to rest in Arlington. He lays among ancient sailors from generations ago, and soldiers from the Revolutionary War. He rests among United States Presidents, astronauts, and I am sure, more than one or two scoundrels in the 400,000 graves interred there with the heroes and their families.

Owens, like so many others, will not be with his family this Christmas. No airports or minivans or sleeping on the couch. But in addition to the warriors like Owens who lie at rest in Arlington, we have more than 1.3 million active duty troops stationed around the world, including my own brother-in-law, and the son of one of my best friends. Most of them are away from their families this holiday season, but our earnest hope and prayer is that it will be one of the last holiday seasons they spend apart from us, and that their place at Arlington National Cemetery will remain empty for a very long time, until, like many of the Cemetery residence, old age peacefully beckons them to the halls of Valhalla.

Until then, remember our troops deployed, or on duty while visions of sugarplums dance in our heads. Remember the ones fallen, and the ones who were overtaken by the enemy after they returned home. Reach out to the soldiers and veterans you know, thank them for the holidays that they have missed so that we never miss one.  

If you’re interested in volunteering for the Wreaths Across America program, placing a wreath at the gravesite of every fallen soldier during the holiday season, visit www.wreathsacrossamerica.org where you can sign up to hang wreaths locally or donate to support the cause. Join us in remember our troops this holiday season.

Happy 241st birthday to the Few and the Proud!

By Liv Stecker


In 1775, the Continental Congress directed in a resolution that “two battalions of marines” should be raised to serve as protective landing forces and shipboard security for the foundling US Navy. The United States Marine Corp was formally established on November 10th, 1775, and newly commissioned captains, Samuel Nicholas and Robert Mullen, recruited the early marines directly from the pubs of Philadelphia, enticing them with promises of adventure at the high seas over tankards of beer.


The first battle fought by these “sea soldiers” happened on March 3, 1776, when a force of 220 Marines under the direction of Captain Nicholas staged an amphibious assault on the beaches of Nassau in the Bahamas, capturing the two British Forts on the Island and a sizeable collection of heavy artillery.


After the revolution, the marines were briefly disbanded, until a scourge upon American merchants and traders emerged in the form of Barbary Pirates. In the first ever battle won by American Forces on foreign soil, the marines joined mercenary soldiers under the command of a naval officer and marched for 50 days across the desert in what is now Libya to overthrow the Barbary ruler in Tripoli, a successful campaign immortalized in the Marine’s Hymn with a nod to the “shores of Tripoli.”


Trained specifically for land invasions from the sea, the Marines were conspicuously absent from one of the most historic amphibious assaults in history, on D-Day when the Allied Troops invaded the beaches of Normandy. The assault, directed by Army Commanders, was executed by the army and navy, branches of the military that could provide the sheer numbers that the Marines couldn’t, especially considering the bulk of US Marines were already fighting in the Pacific. In reference to a unit of Marines aboard the USS Tennessee during the Normandy invasion, a journalist jokingly commented that they weren’t sent ashore lest headlines later read “Army Rangers saved by Marine”, a jab at the long running rivalry between the Army and the Marine Corps. There was, however, at the time, a contingency of Marines behind enemy lines in France working as observers for the OSS (pre-runner to the CIA and Secret Service) to assist with the allied paratrooper landings.


The Marine Corps have served the United States under the banner of fearless devotion and relentless conviction, maintaining the reputation of a fierce battle force on land and sea in all of our foreign wars. From Guadalcanal to Beruit, Iwo Jima to Fallujah, US Marines have paid a high price for their passionate pursuit of victory in conflicts throughout history as the few and the proud.