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Hernando Today

Gift Of Flag Is Symbol Of Old Friendship

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By Tony Marrero

Hernando Today

Published: September 5, 2008

Brooksville - Flags may fade but memories of friends and mentors do not.

The memories of his own high school buddy still fresh, Army Staff Sgt. Phil Cuthbertson walked up to a Florida rancher on California Street recently and offered a still-vibrant flag that had flown in Iraq to the mother of his late friend.

Marty Tuskes, mother of Jason Tuskes, Cuthbertson's wrestling teammate at Springstead High School back in the 1980s, answered the door and found Cuthbertson standing there in uniform.

The two had never met.

"Jason was a friend of mine in high school, and I really respected him," Cuthbertson, now 38, told her and extended the flag folded into a tight triangle. "I'd be honored if you'd take it to replace yours."

Tuskes was shocked. The tears came, flowing over the good deed and the still painful loss of her son.

Jason Tuskes died in a scuba diving accident in Jenkins Creek in 1987. He'd be 37 this year.

"It's nice that after so many years people still remember him," Tuskes said Thursday. "He's not forgotten."

Cuthbertson, who was raised in Brooksville, arrived at Springstead as a 120-pounder hoping to succeed on the wrestling team.

Jason Tuskes "lived for" wrestling, his mother recalled. He spent extra time with Cuthbertson on the mat, helping him improve his moves.

"I remember he was kind of rough on me," Cuthbertson said with a smile. "He was smaller, but he had the experience. He was kind of stern when you did it wrong, but was quick with praise when you did it right."

While he recalled the shock of his friend's death Thursday, Cuthbertson also remembered how he himself at first seemed destined to squander his own life.

"I was kind of a dirtbag back then," he said Thursday as he sat in his neatly pressed army uniform, his chest ablaze with colorful ribbons.

He dropped out of high school and felt adrift. Then something clicked, he said. He got his general equivalency diploma, enlisted in the Army and specialized in fabricating body parts for helicopters as part of 122nd Aviation Support Battalion of the 82nd Airborne Division.

He's served tours in Bosnia and Korea, twice in Afghanistan and once in Iraq. He has flags from those tours, including one that flew over his unit's aircraft shelter in Iraq.

Now stationed at Fort Bragg in North Carolina, Cuthbertson spent the last month on a temporary assignment to the Brooksville recruiting station, taking pleasure in helping would-be recruits find the same kind of focus that military service brought him two decades ago.

While running errands in Spring Hill, he passed by his old friend's house. He saw the tattered flag.

He called his wife Jennifer back in Fayetteville.

"Mail me my flag, the one from Iraq," he told her.

"I just wanted to do something for someone who was nice to me way back when, and this was my chance to do it," Cuthbertson said.

Tuskes won't use it to replace the one in front of her house.

"This one's not flying," she said. "It's going in front of my son's portrait."

Reporter Tony Marrero can be reached at 352-544-5286 or lmarrero@hernandotoday.com.

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