Former Iowa Hawkeyes football player Jon Lazar wants to honor Rockford native Jon Tumilson, the Navy SEAL who was killed earlier this month in Afghanistan in Helicopter crash that also claimed the lives of 37 other people.
Lazar learned, like many of us did, about Tumilson’s Labrador retriever Hawkeye after video and pictures of Hawkeye lying next to Tumilson’s casket during the funeral went viral all across the world wide web. If you watch the clip of Hawkeye ostensibly mourning his owner- I guarantee you will cry.
Tumilson’s Chinook helicopter was hit by enemy fire Aug. 6. A funeral service was held for Mr. Tumilson in Rockford, Iowa, last week and attended by 1,500 people. But to the world Hawkeye might as well have been the only person there, because he laid beside it throughout the service.
Lazar contacted the Iowa football office with a request to have Hawkeye lead the Iowa football team onto the field for a game this season at Kinnick Stadium.
THIS MUST GET DONE! Whether it’s the opener, the Big Ten opener, sometime in 2011. For the program, the state, the conference, the country, the military, the family, the canine, this needs to happen. The wheels are in motion, hopefully this becomes a reality. Video below
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