A college basketball star turned wounded Army veteran will be the second recipient of the Pat Tillman Award for Service at next month’s ESPY Awards ceremony, designed to honor the year’s best sports moments and personalities.
Danielle Green, an Army specialist who lost an arm in a 2004 attack in Iraq, will receive the award for inspirational service and patriotism at the July 15 awards ceremony, being broadcast nationally on ABC. Hers will be among the first awards presented at the event, before a crowd of professional athletes and celebrities.
In an interview with Military Times, Green called the award a surprise and an honor, especially given its namesake.
“Pat Tillman was an extraordinary human being,” she said. “I remember reading about him 11 years ago, I was hurt a month after he was hurt. So I just feel honored and grateful to be part of his legacy.”
The award announcement Tuesday comes just a few days after ESPN announced it will give the Arthur Ashe Courage Award during the ESPY event to Caitlyn Jenner, the former track and field Olympian who recently went public with her struggles as a transgender woman.
The network received a backlash from conservative commentators for the selection, and criticism within military communities for not honoring any one of numerous service members with links to athletics.
ESPN officials said Green’s honor had no connection to that award, and is the result of months of research along with Pat Tillman Foundation officials into candidates with impressive backgrounds in public service and sports.
Green was one of the first female service members injured in Iraq.
Photo Credit: Courtesy of Danielle Green
Green was a scholarship guard at Notre Dame University in the late 1990s, earning a bachelor’s degree in psychology. She took those skills back to her hometown of Chicago to become a teacher and basketball coach for a few years, but enlisted in the Army after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
As a specialist in the 571st Military Police Company, she lost her lower left arm in a rocket-propelled grenade attack in Baghdad in May 2004. Green was one of the first female service members injured in Iraq, and was medically retired from the service about seven months later.
Since she was left-handed, the injury forced her to relearn thousands of everyday tasks with her nondominant hand. At the same time, she went back to school to earn a master’s degree in counseling.
Today, the 39-year-old works as a readjustment therapist at the South Bend Veterans Center in Indiana.
Marie Tillman, president and co-founder of the Pat Tillman Foundation, praised Green as “unwavering in her aspiration to lift others suffering from the physical and mental injuries of war” and called her “a voice and advocate for this generation of veterans.”
This is the second year the Tillman award has been presented as part of the ESPYs ceremony. Last year, Tillman Foundation officials selected Paralympian and Afghanistan war veteran Josh Sweeney for the honor.
