Pelican Dispatch - Spring 2010 - Keep Trees
Pelican Dispatch - Spring 2010 - Keep Trees
Pelican Dispatch - Spring 2010 - Keep Trees
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Of Of Soldiers Soldiers and and Saints:<br />
Saints:<br />
Louisiana Louisiana Guard Guard helps helps one one of of its its own own realize realize football football dream<br />
dream<br />
By 2nd Lt. Alex Juan<br />
159th Fighter Wing Deputy Public Affairs Offi cer cer<br />
WALKER, La. – Saints fans knew that the road to the Super<br />
Bowl victory would go through the New Orleans Superdome,<br />
but for one Guard family, an incredible gift helped them “be in<br />
that number.”<br />
In July 2009, Sgt. 1st Class Peter L. Turnage, a member<br />
of the Louisiana Counter Drug Task Force, was diagnosed<br />
with adenocarcinoma, a stage<br />
IV bone cancer. Since then, the<br />
cancer has spread into almost<br />
every bone in his body.<br />
Master Sgt. Dean W. Davis,<br />
Joint Forces Headquarters<br />
operations sergeant, has known<br />
the Turnage family for 20 years<br />
and was moved by a statement<br />
made by Turnage, planting the<br />
seed that helped this dream<br />
fl ourish.<br />
“I was at Pete’s house one<br />
Sunday watching the Saints<br />
game, and he was telling me<br />
that the simple things in life were<br />
starting to get to him,” said Davis.<br />
“Things like never being able to<br />
take his son to a Saints game.”<br />
“That statement would enter<br />
my mind every time I played<br />
with my little girl or would<br />
watch a football game,” Davis<br />
continued.<br />
Davis relayed this to Command<br />
Sgt. Maj. John Kling III,<br />
of the LANG’s 199th Regional<br />
Training Institute.<br />
Sgt. 1st Class Peter L. Turnage<br />
awaits the big game while taking a<br />
ride to the New Orleans Superdome,<br />
Jan. 16. Turnage and his son Eli<br />
were given two 50-yard-line tickets<br />
and field passes to the Saints vs.<br />
Cardinals football game. Fellow<br />
Guardsmen helped make this<br />
dream a reality for Turnage, who is<br />
currently battling bone cancer.<br />
Courtesy photo/released<br />
14 <strong>Pelican</strong> <strong>Dispatch</strong> / Winter/<strong>Spring</strong> <strong>Spring</strong> <strong>2010</strong> <strong>2010</strong><br />
Kling immediately replied, “Dean, what’s the problem? Let’s<br />
make this happen!”<br />
Turnage has an incurable type of cancer – only two percent<br />
of all cancer patients are diagnosed with this type. The lesions<br />
that he has developed attack the bones like termites attack a<br />
house, according to his wife Noel.
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