I met Bill Cahir in 2006, when I was serving as press secretary for a member of Congress and Bill was a reporter for a Pennsylvania newspaper. Although he spent his days telling other people’s stories, it was his own that amazed me– and just about anybody else who ever met him.

After the 9/11 attacks, Cahir enlisted in the Marine Corps…at the age of 34, which required an age waiver. He went on to do two tours in Iraq before resigning his newspaper job to run for Congress in Pennsylvania, unfortunately losing in the Democratic primary. His deployment to Afghanistan came a year later. Like hundreds of others in D.C., I attended his