“He was a great kid, an All American boy. He went through Pennridge High School. He was a varsity football player, defensive end. That was his passion.”
Bob Mininger’s mother Paula said he also had an interest in computer engineering and went to Montgomery County Community College. “Then he realized he didn’t want to sit in front of a computer 24 hours a day.”
Bob said he wanted to join the FBI or CIA and he read a military background would help. Bob was twenty years old when he enlisted in the Marines. “I didn’t want him to go. My ex (husband) was talking to him. We fought tooth and nail on it. I was not one of those people to run to Canada, to do anything like that. When you have your oldest son, one out of two sons talking about going into war in a foreign country, that’s totally out of your control this unknown hanging over your head.”
After two weeks at home at Christmas 2004, Bob was sent overseas after New Years. “He didn’t have any specialized training then. It was more or less, I’m going there and they’re going to train me over there. I was like, I don’t know about this.”
Bob went through the interview process in boot camp to qualify to work at embassies but wasn’t selected. He chose the infantry to learn from the ground up. Once he was deployed to Iraq, Paula was able to speak with him. “He called about every ten days. We weren’t allowed to speak about any specifics (about Bob’s missions). So we had almost like a code as far as what he was doing, where he was, that type of thing.”
Paula spoke with Bob about two weeks before he was killed. Then came the visit every parent fears. Paula is a nurse and was living in the Hudson Valley of New York. They were having work done on a deck in the back of their house. She saw a truck in the driveway and thought it belonged to the contractor. She asked her husband to tell the contractor to move his truck. “He said just come on down. Then he came up to get me and we walked down the hill to the house. He says, ‘I don’t know how to tell you this, but there are two officers inside waiting for you.’ And that was it. I knew right away. I remember letting out a loud scream, falling to the ground outside.”
Then came the wait for answers. “We had seventeen hours of a black hole where we didn’t know much. We had questions and I wasn’t getting answers. I wasn’t called at the time of his incident from the combat support hospital as some people are notified. I was not.”
Because Bob’s primary residence was in Lansdale, Pennsylvania, the crisis officers there would be taking the lead on getting Bob’s body home. Paula went down to Pennsylvania to meet with the officers and things didn’t go well. Bob’s body was coming into Dover Air Force base in Delaware. “At that time, family wasn’t allowed to meet the body. Parents were not allowed to see the plane land or see the casket escort off the plane.”
Paula and her husband had a difficult time with the crisis officers in Pennsylvania. “I would be calling my guys in New York saying you need to help me with this. The Pennsylvania crisis officers tried to talk us out of burial at Arlington. They said there are other national cemeteries to go to, like Gettysburg. And I said no.”
There were delays getting Bob’s body back to the United States. Paula couldn’t get straight answers when asked when the plane would arrive. They told her, “Well, you know we can only estimate because things might happen. My husband jumped down one officer’s throat and said what do you mean? Because there’s no gas station in the Atlantic.”
Paula said they were finally able to get approval for burial in Arlington. She was grateful for the Marine who accompanied Bob’s body back home. “She was unhappy with the way the crisis officers were handling the case. She wanted me to write a letter and she was going to put it with her report. That captain was eventually demoted.”
Four months after Bob’s death, Paula was back at work and she got a phone call. “I got a call on the road from a stranger…I’m driving down a highway and he says to me, are you the mother. I said yes. He says I don’t know how to tell you this. You’re never going to believe this, but we have footage of your son. I lost it. I had to pull over to the side of the road. I’m crying. I said what do you mean you have footage? He said we were over there and he explained everything.”
Jon Alpert and Matt O’Neill directed and produced a documentary for HBO called “Baghdad ER”. They were shooting in the military hospital when Bob was flown in by helicopter. Bob was wounded when his Humvee was hit by an IED (Improvised Explosive Device). He took shrapnel to the chest and survived through surgery.
“The producers actually made an appointment and they came to our house in New York and they sat down with us. They wanted to use it (the footage) because, he was clean. He wasn’t really dismembered or anything like that. One of the things that they caught on camera was between the surgeon and the chaplain. When they were over Bob and the chaplain actually said to the surgeon, ‘This is a senseless war.’
At first Paula was hesitant, “I said this is a private matter. I really didn’t want this out in the public eye. It’s not meant to be seen by anyone else. We want to keep it private. And my husband is the one who actually convinced me. He says Bob represents everybody. Bob represents America. America needs to see this. I went back and said okay with some creative editing. I don’t want any face shown, no tattoos, nothing recognizable and no name.”
Paula and her husband were invited to HBO to meet with Sheila Evans the Vice President of Documentaries. They were shown the edited version. “After that, she said okay I’m going to play something for you, this is the unedited version and she left us alone in her office. Oh boy, she gave us everything.”
I asked for her reaction. “Well, I’m sitting there crying, but it gave me a lot of peace. I call it my gift from God because not every family gets this. I was able to see him in the ER, go to surgery. I was able to talk with the surgeons, meet the nurses, see his after care. The average person doesn’t get to see that.” Baghdad ER” won a Peabody and Emmy award.
Three months after Bob died his brother Greg joined the Marine Reserves. He left Widener University and moved to Georgia and became a police officer. At Greg’s Marine graduation, she met the Marine Commandant, General Amos.“He came up to me and said thank you for letting us have your son.” She replied, “Let me get something straight, you took one son, you’re not getting another one.”
Greg’s unit was not sent to Iraq, but was going to be sent to Libya. Greg didn’t care if he went or stayed home. Paula said, “I’m telling you, the bear is coming out in me and you’re not going.” She managed to get in contact with Greg’s colonel who tried to tell her the base in Libya was good and she could even visit Greg there. “I said to him, look, if it was your son, and you already lost one in Iraq, do you really want your second son to go? He said no. I said then I want your full support.”
Paula made multiple inquiries to get help, She finally wrote a letter to the Marine Corps Commandant who she previously befriended. She came home one day to find a message on her answering machine from Greg’s colonel. She called back. He said, “We decided Greg is not going to go.” Paula replied, “What do you mean you decided Greg’s not going to go? The colonel said, “There’s been a lot of phone calls going back and forth. I said what prompted the phone calls out of the blue? We’ve been sitting on this for months. He said your letter did it.” She saved one son.
I asked her what she thought Bob’s life would have been like. “Would he be married now? Most likely, he had a girlfriend. They were very serious. He talked about when he gets out he was going to get engaged.”
Paula tried to stop Bob from joining, but he loved the Marines and she admits he thrived there. Because of a one in a million coincidence, Paula got to see her son take his last breath. She fought to save her other son and must live with the memory of the one she lost. She is immensely proud of what her sons accomplished as Marines and patriots. Bob gave his life for his country and his family will love and cherish his memory forever.
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