Chuck Williams: 'I just want to see the world the way Corey saw it'
Sometimes brothers come from different mothers.
That was the case with Staff Sgt. Jonathan Shuskey and Master Sgt. Corey Hood, two U.S. Army lifers who formed a friendship and bond 11 years ago when they were in a unit that was deployed to Afghanistan.
Shuskey, the big one at 6-foot-3. liked to say his pal Hood was "5-foot-nothing."
Shuskey was Infantry, never jumped out of a plane in his life. Hood? Airborne all the way to the end.
And don't even talk about college football. Shuskey was Michigan. Hood? Of course, he was Ohio State.
"There were a lot of things about us that were the opposite," said Shuskey, 33, as he drove Monday morning from Cincinnati to Fort Bragg, N.C. He was somewhere in eastern Kentucky, closing in on West Virginia. The cell phone coverage was spotty.
"I am taking a shortcut Corey told me about," Shuskey said.
The last week, it's all been about Hood.
And, damn, it hurts.
Nine days ago, Shuskey got a late-afternoon call from a mutual friend who told him Hood had been injured in an accident.
"What kind of accident?" was all that went through Shuskey's mind. "How bad?"
You see, Hood was a parachutist with the Golden Knights, the Army's elite jump team.
Hood and the Golden Knights, along with the Navy's jump team, performed Aug. 15 at the Chicago Air & Water Show.
What should have been a routine jump went sideways, and it didn't take Shuskey long to get the details. A few months ago, he went up with Hood and the Golden Knight during an air show in Dallas, Ga. He became friends with a few of the Golden Knights, so he started working the phone.
The details were ugly.
Hood and a Navy jumper collided in midair, and the impact knocked Hood out. Hood's reserve parachute opened, but he couldn't steer it and clipped a building rather than the planned soft landing on the shore of Lake Michigan.
For a day, Hood was in a coma in Northwestern Memorial Hospital. Shuskey, stationed at Fort Benning, hopped a flight and got to his buddy's bedside the next afternoon.
"I got to Chicago just before 3 and got to the hospital about 3:45," Shuskey said.
He spent 20 minutes with his friend, though for the first time it was a one-way conversation. At 4:05 p.m., doctors pronounced Hood dead.
"I am so glad I got to say goodbye," Shuskey said.
The last week has been a long and difficult goodbye. Shuskey was the only pallbearer who wasn't in a Golden Knights jump uniform Saturday at the packed Lakota (Ohio) West High School football stadium. In his dress blues, Shuskey stood out.
"He always called me his Dirty Leg friend," Shuskey said of the phrase that some in the Airborne community use for those who have don't jumped.
Shuskey has spent the week thinking about his friend, many times posting those memories to Facebook.
They were in the same unit, based in Hawaii, when they deployed to Afghanistan in 2004. Shuskey, a native of Thomasville, N.C., was talking to some guys about North Carolina. Hood overheard the conversation and asked Shuskey if he knew where Kernersville, N.C., was.
"Are you kidding?" Shuskey responded. "I could throw a rock from my hometown and hit someone in Kernersville in the back of the head."
A friendship was born. They talked well into the night, and almost every day for the last 11 years.
Many times, Hood would be on a video chat with his wife, Lyndsay, who grew up in Kernersville, N.C., back in the states, and Shuskey would join the conversation. Just pop right into the picture.
When they got back from their deployment, Shuskey, a single guy at the time, moved in with Hood and his wife for more than a year.
The men were closer than many brothers. Since they met, not a day went by that they didn't talk, text or connect in some way.
They both found themselves back in Afghanistan in 2012, though in different roles and different places.
"If a truck was coming our way, he would get the guy in charge, throw a few extra cans of Red Bull his way and tell the guy to find me," Shuskey said. "He was always looking out for me."
Two years ago, the Army sent Shuskey to Fort Benning and Hood got his dream job, jumping for the Golden Knights.
Hood had about 85 jumps before he joined the Golden Knights and many of those came at Fort Benning where he was an instructor at the Airborne School. In the last two years, he had jumped more than 400 times, Shuskey said. "It was the perfect job because he loved being in the air," Shuskey said.
And he got to land in some pretty cool places. Last month, the Golden Knights jumped into Yankee Stadium, and afterward Hood texted a photo to his buddy back in Columbus.
Last week, the Yankees honored Hood by putting his photo on the big screen and asking for a moment of silence.
"He was always taking me along for the ride," Shuskey said.
Back in the spring, Hood literally took Shuskey along for the ride. As the Golden Knights jumped into Dallas, Ga., Shuskey was in the plane and watched an air show from the best available seat.
When they got to the ground that day, Shuskey saw just what his beer-drinking and college football buddy had become.
And it was impressive. "He was a rock star," Shuskey said. "He was signing autographs and taking pictures with people. And he would always talk to the kids. I am convinced there is some 10-year-old kid out there who is going to join the Army and go Airborne one day because he got a chance to talk to Corey. He was the best face the Army could have."
Wednesday, Shuskey will attend a memorial service for Hood at Fort Bragg, where the Golden Knights are based.
Then Thursday, it will be back to Fort Benning -- and back to work.
But there is one thing left for Shuskey to do to honor his brother. The two were planning a tandem jump before Hood died. Now, some of the Golden Knights have vowed to find a way to get the Dirty Leg his first jump.
"I just want to see the world the way Corey saw it," Shuskey said, "even if it's just one time."
This story was originally published August 24, 2015 at 9:31 PM with the headline "Chuck Williams: 'I just want to see the world the way Corey saw it' ."