When I asked
Did Afghanistan Vet Tim Poe "play wounded" on America's Got Talent? the answer turned out to be yes he did. What made all of this worse was that Poe had used pictures taken by Staff Sgt. Norman Bone, passing them off as his own. I thought it was about as bad as it could get. I was wrong.
'AGT' FRAUD Family is Getting Death Threats
The family of the stuttering veteran Timothy Poe who sang on "America's Got Talent" tell TMZ they have been receiving death threats since our stories revealed Poe is a fraud.
As we reported, Poe gave producers of "AGT" a photo which he claimed showed him in Afghanistan, but in reality the pic is of someone else. And Poe could produce no documentation to prove he suffered a debilitating brain injury in the war -- as he claimed on the show.
Poe's family tells us ... several family members have been getting death threats. We're told Poe's sister-in-law went to the store Thursday with her kids and someone came up to them and said, "We're going to kill you and the whole family."
read more here
STUTTERING 'AGT' CONTESTANT On the Chopping Block OVER LIES
I went on to read some more stories, but this one stuck in my head. I am very careful about pulling stories from around the country and only use sources I trust, like newspapers covering their local heroes. This time, when I watched America's Got Talent, I didn't even bother to check Poe out. I praised him in
Afghanistan wounded veteran Tim Poe on America's Got Talent
"Last night Tim Poe's story made me cry.
He was wounded in Afghanistan and left with traumatic brain injury that causes him to stutter. As I listened to his story, I thought about the great courage he showed knowing that some small minded people would laugh at him. I thought about his attitude and how his smile was so warm no matter what he faced. Then he opened his mouth to sing. I cried harder but this time with joy!"
Aside from feeling like a fool, I had to search my heart to discover why I wanted to believe this story was true. It is because I track these stories, it all seemed so possible.
I read stories like this everyday, usually in small town news sites, reporting on the under-reported men and women coming back from serving this country.
While we think of all of them as heroes, some are called heroes by their own peers because they did something even they didn't expect. Some end up needing help from their communities to have the quality of their lives made better even though their limbs cannot be replaced. Some of them need help recovering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and Traumatic Brain Injury, wounds no one can see with their own eyes. Some, sadly, discover sometimes the hardest battle to fight is the one going on inside of themselves. For whatever reason, and there are plenty, they thought they had to fight it alone. Some lost hope of finding what they needed to heal and took their own lives.
Those are the stories that break my heart but then I find great joy when I am able to share stories offering hope. Some of them want to tell their own stories of recovering and healing so that others can find hope for themselves. Some families are talking about someone they loved so that other families don't have to feel the way they do.
Poe's story got to me because I read stories just like his all the time and know that while the major newspapers pass by fantastic stories all the time, they live as quiet heroes. The last thing I thought was that some man would go up in front of the world and lie so that he could look cool for his kids.
What was he thinking? Did he think of the men serving in Afghanistan, away from their own families, risking their lives? Did he think of the wounded in military hospitals? Did he think of the hundreds of thousands of TBI or PTSD veterans searching for hope or how they would feel when the truth came out? Obviously with the Internet, the truth would come out sooner or later. When someone left a comment on my blog, I didn't want to believe the comment. I wanted to believe Poe was telling the truth.
For me, it seemed I was always more able to find excuses than courage. The people showing up on America's Got Talent all have the courage to show up. Sometimes they have a huge ego but no talent, other times they have a lot of talent but have had no opportunity to show it. Here comes a man with a humble attitude, a heart tugging story of going through something few others will ever know and rising above it all to go on a national TV show to let the world hear him stuttering to get words out and then singing with a wonderful voice. Who wouldn't love it? There was hope in it enough to think that anyone can rise above what has happened to them in their lives if they only believed in themselves.
When the news came out that this was all a lie, I received this comment on my post.
BNG said...
Chaplain Kathie,
You have just identified where I have the issue with him claiming his injuries and duties.
If enough of this goes on, people like you might get ticked off one too many times and stop doing the great works.
I thought that wasn't going to happen but I find myself wondering if the story I'm hearing is real or not now. I wonder when I get emails from veterans needing help if they are telling the truth or not. After all, I have no idea if they are telling me the truth or, most of the time, who they are aside from a email user name. Then I wonder what they have to gain by lying to me, so I move past any suspicion I had. They have nothing to gain by lying to me except my time. When they have the courage to talk to a reporter, they usually have little to gain other than attention for what they are talking about. Most of the time talking about something like PTSD comes with grief from idiots but they are willing to face them so they can help someone else. So I'll worked past my doubts on what I'm reading and remember how many wonderful men and women I read about all the time and admire.
Poe got the attention of the country for a while but I doubt this is the kind of attention he thought about. He wanted to look cool to his kids and now they are being threatened on top of being ashamed.
UPDATE 12:33 est
This story just got worse.
'America's Got Talent' contestant's tales ignite a firestorm
By Amy Forliti and Steve Karnowski
Associated Press
Posted: 06/08/2012
Timothy Michael Poe won over the crowd and the judges of NBC's "America's Got Talent" even before he began to sing with his moving story of blocking a grenade blast in 2009 to save his buddies in Afghanistan -- an act of heroism he said broke his back and left him with a brain injury.
When a judge remarked during the episode broadcast Monday, June 4, on the disappearance of Poe's stutter during his cover of a Garth Brooks song, he spun another tale: He discovered his talent only after his speech therapist suggested he sing in the shower to help with the stutter.
The truth, said an ex-wife, was that Poe not only was never hurt on the battlefield, but that he had been singing "pretty much his whole life" and spent four years fronting an alternative rock and cover band in Rochester, Minn. A MySpace page last updated in February 2009 for the Rochester band Crawl Space lists Poe as vocalist.
click link for the rest of this.
