Losing Jenna

Driving back from Orcas Island two weekends ago, totally relaxed and appreciative of the wonderful week we'd spent at our cabin, we were roughly 30 miles from home when Lori's cell phone rang. We pulled off the freeway and there, on the darkened asphalt slab of a drive-thru espresso stand, we heard news that jolted us to our core.

Jenna Wilcox, a 27-year-old U.S. Air Force captain, and the wife of fellow USAF officer Scott Wilcox, the son of our good friends in Portland, had been critically injured. Our first thought: that she had been wounded in battle in Afghanistan, where she and Scott had been stationed for the past year. But, no, she hadn't. In one of life's cruel ironies, the young couple had completed their service in Afghanistan a few days earlier, been reunited at their home near Cambridge, England, and were enjoying a well-deserved vacation in Scotland when tragedy struck.

They had stopped their sports car to change a tire and because there was no room in the luggage compartment for it, they had placed the bad tire on Jenna's lap and resumed driving. The tire exploded and Jenna took the full force of the blast and sustained massive internal injuries. Scott, miraculously, wasn't seriously hurt.

All this we heard through sobs from Scott's mother, Sue.

How could this be? We'd seen Scott grow up in the neighborhood, two streets away, as our families grew closer by the year. We'd met Jenna and her parents when they came out from Buffalo, N.Y., to Portland shortly after she'd married Scott. An impressive young woman, she was smart, genial and athletic, a former gymnast who went to graduate from the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs.

Their careers had taken them to Korea, England and, most recently, Afghanistan. They had been separated for most of their four-year marriage by their differing responsibilities but now were looking forward to time off -- together. (Jenna had even escaped injury during a roadside bomb attack during her tour of duty.)


Jenna succumbed to her injuries on April 1, five days after being rushed to the hospital. Poor Scott had to confront end-of-life decisions at the too-young age of 27. Jenna, however, had specified her wishes in an advance directive and Scott's dad, Eric, was there for support, having immediately flown to Scotland to be with his oldest son.

How could this be? No parent ever expects to bury a child. No parent of a service member expects their child to lose their life from non-combat injuries. No one who follows news of the violence in Iraq and Afghanistan could have imagined death would come from an exploding tire on a friggin' vacation.

How unfair, how random, how non-sensical life can be. To have such an outstanding young woman taken away so young is a loss to all of us.

On Saturday, Britain's Daily Mail published a news story about Jenna, which has gotten wide readership on that side of the pond. The piece ended with a quote from Jenna's March 21 entry on the blog she maintained while abroad: "This will be my last entry. Both Scott and I are home, safe and sound and I no longer have a reason to continue with this blog."

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1263095/U-S-Air-Force-captain-Jenna-Wilcox-holiday-Scotland-dies-freak-accident-sports-car-tyre-explodes-lap.html#ixzz0kOWS5MGg

To view Jenna's blog: http://jennawilcox.blogspot.com/

May she rest in peace.