Abilene native and retired U.S. Army Command Sgt. Major Gretchen Evans has never considered herself a hero.

Not when she led troops out of a combat zone in the rugged mountains of Afghanistan, nor during her inspiring recovery from injuries suffered in 2006 when the blast from a mortar round left her with serious internal and external injuries that required months of hospitalization and therapy.

But on the evening of July 20, 2022, Evans was introduced to the world as a hero as she was the recipient of the Pat Tillman Award for Service at the 30th annual ESPY Awards at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood. The awards show was broadcast live on the ESPN network.

Evans was introduced by Denver Broncos’ quarterback Russell Wilson and his wife, music superstar Ciara, and her story was then told in a seven-minute video. Everyone watching learned about the woman who commanded all 30,000 ground troops in Afghanistan. And learned of how in 2006 was blown headfirst into a building by a mortar round, an incident that left her deaf, with shrapnel wounds all over her body, and with Traumatic Brain Injury and severe Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).

After the video finished, Wilson and his wife brought Evans to the stage, and she and her service dog, Rusty, made their way through the crowd for her acceptance speech. As she was walking to the microphone, ESPN college basketball analyst Dick Vitale – who himself has been through a very tough 18 months as he battled cancer – pointed to Evans and said to someone close to him, “That’s a hero.”

An Abilene native who attended Jane Long Elementary, Mann Junior High, and graduated from Abilene High in 1978, Evans doesn’t consider the hero title for herself, deflecting that praise to others, although the people in attendance that night and those watching from their homes would most certainly disagree with her self-assessment.

Evans, who has a brother still in Abilene, won the award because of the way she fought back from an injury that robbed her of a 27-year military career and because of her extensive work with disabled veterans.

What follows is the conversation between Abilene ISD’s Lance Fleming and retired Command Sgt. Major Gretchen Evans.

Q: Take me back to growing up in Abilene and what you remember the most about living in Abilene in the 1960s and 1970s.

Evans: I was born in Lubbock, but we moved to Abilene when I was three years old. I went to Jane Long Elementary School and Mann Junior High before I went to Abilene High School. All my siblings were the same. We lived on Delwood Street on the north side of town. I loved growing up in Abilene. I remember playing on the streets at night and riding our bikes and going up to Sonic and the movie theater. It was idyllic. It really was idyllic. In junior high, I was on the tennis team and ran track, and then at Abilene High, I was on the tennis team. Both of my brothers were Abilene High School football players. They’re both big Texas boys. They still live in Texas and will never leave. My youngest brother, Eric Watson, is a partner in an insurance company in Abilene. My oldest brother, Kurt, lives outside of Austin. My sister (Dana) graduated from Abilene High School as the salutatorian and then went to Texas Tech and then to UT law school; she now lives in South Carolina. Texas is my home, and it’s where my heart is. I still have so many fond memories of Abilene and Texas. I try to get back as often as I can. I love the Abilene Eagles. After 27 moves because of my career, I think I still have my letter jacket somewhere. I’d love to come back for a Friday night game sometime and take all of that in again.

Q: You suffered severe injuries in 2006 – both internally and externally – and went deaf from the blast and being thrown head-first into a concrete building. Walk me through your recovery from those injuries as well as learning how to live with a service dog, first Aura, and then Rusty.

Evans: The physical injuries were the easiest to recover from because doctors know how to treat brain injuries, and they know to pull shrapnel out of a body,” Evans said. “That wasn’t hard. What was hard was the grief suffered from losing my career and not being able to serve my country anymore. That was something they couldn’t fix, and that brought me to my knees.

At lip-reading school, I had to learn to re-wire my brain,” she said. “PTSD was a challenge because I had probably suffered with it for years, but because I had to be stoic and I was in a leadership position, I had not dealt with all that stuff until suddenly, I had to deal with it. Peeling back the layers of that onion was very painful and scary and hurtful, and that took some work.

Q: For almost 30 years, your identity was as a leader and as someone who got things done from a military perspective. Now that was gone. How did you deal with that?

Evans: My whole identity was tied up in being a soldier and in being in the military, so I had to reinvent myself. I was 46 at the time, and re-inventing myself at that age is challenging. And I had all those injuries on top of everything else, so it stunk for about five years. It took about five years between the injury and the grind of physical, mental, and emotional healing before I felt like I had my mojo back and was stepping forward. Every day I had to find a reason to live, a reason to get better, and to work hard to survive.

Q: During all of this, you’ve said that everyone needs their own “rope team,” or a strong support group surrounding them. How and when did you come to that realization, and how did that lead to the formation of Team UNBROKEN?

Evans: We all get kicked to the curb at least once, if not more. What I’ve learned is that how you get yourself back up is not with one person. So many people contribute to that, and for me – I call it my ‘rope team’ – those are the people who rallied behind me as I was struggling to regain my life, my independence, my passion, and my purpose, and forming Team Unbroken and competing in the ‘World’s Toughest Race.’ I certainly didn’t do all of that myself; it took a lot of people helping me along the way.

Q: During your healing process, you resumed your passion for running, competing in marathons and ultra-marathons. That led you to reach out to the producers of the “World’s Toughest Race” asking for a chance to compete in the race. (Note: The “World’s Toughest Race” is a multi-terrain, multi-day, non-stop excursion over mountains, jungles, and seas, and is a made-for-TV reality show). After learning of your physical disabilities, producers denied your request. What led you to go back to them and eventually earn a spot in the show (which is currently available on Amazon Prime)?

Evans: I recruited Keith Mitchell Knoop, who was wounded by an improvised explosive device (IED) in Iraq, then added type 1 diabetic and Veterans Administration employee, Dr. Anne Bailey, and finally enlisted Hal Riley, who has a severe back injury from a skiing accident. I told the producers if we flamed out, it would be on us. But don’t shut the door on us. We’ve had so many doors shut on us because of our disabilities, people telling us you can’t do this because you’re deaf, or you can’t do that because your right leg doesn’t work, or you can’t do that because you have a traumatic brain injury. And these doors keep slamming in our faces. I’m asking you to take a chance on us.

Q: Since participating in the show, Team UNBROKEN has continued to participate in races all over the country, despite the many physical challenges your group faces. What have you learned about yourself and your team?

Evans: I’m certainly not glad I got blown up; I wish it hadn’t happened, but it did. Honestly, though, it made me a better person because, at that moment in my life when the rug was pulled out from underneath me, I learned there were a lot of people out there willing to walk the journey with me. But you have to be humble enough to ask for help. You have to have your grit and gumption because there will be some days when it’s just you. I want to inspire people and let them know that stuff happens to everyone, and it can knock the wind out of you,” she said. “But in my own experience, I know you can come out of it, and you come out of it best when you have your own ‘rope team.’ When you surround yourself with people that care.

Post-Script
As Evans wrapped up her speech at the ESPY Awards, she left the audience with words that caused NBA superstar Steph Curry, Vitale, and acclaimed actor Jon Hamm, among others, to thank her for her words of inspiration after the show concluded.

“The Pat Tillman Award for Service comes with a responsibility that I welcome,” Evans said with her service dog, Rusty, by her side. “I will strive to live a life worthy of Pat Tillman’s legacy, to put others before self, and to make the world a better place. I will try to live a life worthy of his sacrifice and his family’s sacrifice. To anyone listening tonight who is in a dark place, I ask you to find that flickering light that’s inside of you, whether you’re a star athlete or a wounded veteran facing shattered bones. And crushed spirit.

“Embrace your struggle for what it is but know you don’t have to do this by yourself,” she said. “Find your ‘rope team;’ those trusted friends that will never let you down, whether they be two-legged or four-legged. Let go of that burden and hold onto that rope with them. Alone we might want to give up but together we are unafraid, we are unstoppable, and we are unbroken. And we will banish loneliness, combat hopelessness, and bring the light to the darkness in each other’s lives because what is in us is stronger than anything in our way.”

About the Pat Tillman Award for Service: The award was established in 2014 to honor the life and legacy of Pat Tillman, a former NFL defensive back who enlisted in the United States Army in May 2002 in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks. His service as an Army Ranger included several combat tours before he was killed in the mountains of Afghanistan in a friendly-fire accident in April 2004.

Past honorees include U.S. Paralympic gold medal sled hockey player and Purple Heart recipient Josh Sweeney (2014), former Notre Dame basketball player, Iraq war veteran and Purple Heart recipient Danielle Green (2015), U.S. Army Sgt. and Invictus Games gold medalist Elizabeth Marks (2016), Purple Heart recipient and Invictus Games gold medalist Israel Del Toro (2017), Navy-Marine Commendation Medal recipient, Sergeant and founder of Team Rubicon Jake Wood (2018), former Marine and founder of the Kristie Ennis Foundation Kristie Ennis (2019), healthcare worker and boxing champion Kim Clavel (2020), and Manchester United football player Marcus Rashford (2021).

ESPY Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vowgsLMQtSg

Gretchen Evans Acceptance Speech: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZatoatmTm_I