Dr. Edward Jackman

Dr. Edward Jackman sat down with me for Heroes I Know. Ninety-three minutes. West Point. Cold Steel. Emergency physician.

Massachusetts. New England kid. Grew up poor. Welfare on and off. Government-surplus grilled cheese. Voc-tech. Joseph P. Keefe Regional Vocational Technical High School. One week class, one week trade. He is still the only kid from that school to go to a service academy. He clawed into West Point.

Surrogate parents. First Sergeant (Retired) Joe Gerard and his wife took him in at fourteen. They still split New Hampshire and Florida. He calls them his people.

Cold Steel. Best year of his life as a platoon leader. Attached to 1-505. Colonel Fonda Cara. Russ Bodine. Frankie J. Cook. Top Lopez. Chief Sam. Tony Kayansky. Al Labella, the former Navy enlisted first lieutenant who looked fifty-two. They rented limos. They did things that are still stories. Then Alpha Battery XO, ninety-six to ninety-seven.

Jumpmaster meant more to him than becoming a captain or a major. Elite crowd. Trusting the equipment and the man at the door. 3-4 from the mid-nineties to ninety-seven. Colonel Younger. Then Third ID. He learned there is the 82nd and then there is the Army.

September 11 while he was teaching ROTC at Wake Forest. Afghanistan. They told him to try emergency medicine. He started medical school at thirty-six. People called him an idiot. Six years short of a pension. He went anyway. Four years. Residency. Fellowship. The best part of the job is old veterans coming through the ER. Thank you, Doc. That is why we hit record. Get the story on tape before we are too old or too sick to tell it.