A Journal for Jordan A Story of Love and Honor

by Canedy, Dana

• ISBN13: 9780307396006
• ISBN10: 0307396002
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2009-10-13
• Publisher: Crown

Summary

"This book is a gift, and not only to Jordan."USA Today In 2005, First Sergeant Charles Monroe King began to write what would become a two-hundred-page journal for his son in case he did not make it home from the war in Iraq. He was killed by a roadside bomb on October 14, 2006. His son, Jordan, was seven months old.A Journal for Jordanis a mother's letter to her son about the father he lost before he could even speakincluding a fiercely honest account of her search for answers about Charles's death. It is also a father's advice and prayers for the son he will never know. Finally, this is the story of Dana and Charles togethertwo seemingly mismatched souls who loved each other deeply and lost each other too soon.

Author Biography

DANA CANEDY is a senior editor at the New York Times, where she has been a journalist for twelve years. In 2001, she was part of a team that won a Pulitzer Prize for national reporting for "How Race Is Lived in America," a series on race relations in the United States. Raised near Fort Knox, she lives in New York City with her son, Jordan.


From the Hardcover edition.

Excerpts

One

Dear Jordan,

If you are reading this book, it means that we got through the
sorrowful years, somehow, and that you are old enough to understand
all that I am about to tell you.

You are just ten months old now, but I am writing this for the
young man you will be. By then, you will know that your father was
a highly decorated soldier who was killed in combat in October
2006, when a bomb exploded beneath his armored vehicle in Iraq.
You were six months old.

You will know that he left a journal for you, more than two hundred
pages long, which he handwrote in neat block letters in that hot,
terrifying place. What I want to tell you is how the journal came to be
and what it leaves unsaid about your father and our abiding love.

Before he kissed my swollen stomach and left for the war in
December 2005, your father, U.S. Army First Sergeant Charles
Monroe King, had been preparing for the promise of your new
life and for the possible end of his own. Even before he boarded
that plane headed for danger, I worried that he would be killed. So
I gave him a journal. I hoped he would write a few messages, perhaps
some words of encouragement to you, though you were not
yet born, in case he died before you knew each other.

We did a lot to prepare for the possibility that your father
would miss out on your life, including finding out if you were a
boy or a girl before he left; he was thrilled to have an image of
you in his mind and kept your sonogram pictures in a pocket in
his uniform the whole time he was in Iraq.

And then there was the journal. Writing it would be a way for
your dad to help guide you through life if he did not make it home
to us. He wanted you to know to pick up the check on a date, to
take plenty of pictures on vacations, to have a strong work ethic,
and to pay your bills on time. He wanted to tell you how to deal
with disappointment, to understand the difference between love
and lust, to remember to get on your knees and pray every day.
Most of all, he wanted you to know how much he loved us.

So, late into the night in Iraq, after he had completed dangerous
and often deadly missions, your dad returned hungry and exhausted
to the relative calm of his room and wrote to you before he
slept. His grammar was not perfect and his handwriting at times
suggested that he was tired or rushed. But he put so much thought
into the beautiful messages he wrote, things like:

Be humble about your accomplishments, work harder
than the man next to you, it is all right for boys to cry.
Sometimes crying can release a lot of pain and stress.
Never be ashamed to cry. It has nothing to do with
your manhood.

Your father mailed the journal to me in July 2006, shortly after
one of his young soldiers was killed in an explosion eerily similar to
the one that would claim his own life. He was so shaken after
pulling the young man’s body, piece by piece, out of a bombed
tank that he sent the journal to me, unfinished. He had more to say,
but that would have to wait until he came home on a two- week
leave to meet you, six weeks before he died.

I read the journal in the calm of night on the day it arrived, with
you sleeping next to me, and fell in love with my gentle warrior all
over again. He was the most honorable man I have ever known,
and the most complex. I do not want to portray your dad as a saint
whose example you could never live up to. He was not. He was
gentle, benevolent, and loyal, but he could also be moody, stubborn,
and withholding. He would brood for days over a perceived
slight, like the time I spent my birthday with my sisters and girlfriends
instead of with him. He put his military service ahead of his
family.

I also want you to understand me— an imperfect woman who
deeply loved he

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Excerpted from A Journal for Jordan: A Story of Love and Honor by Dana Canedy
All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.