RYAN
Ryan can best be described as your average all-American young man. Born in a small pocket town in Michigan, he moved with his family at age 11 to the historic and equally small town of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. Raised in a close family of five and surrounded by marble reminders of America’s most pivotal battle during the Civil War, it was impossible to not be exposed to patriotic tales and lessons of the American fighting spirit.
In high school, joining the military was never a serious option for Ryan until the day that changed the lives of so many — September 11, 2001. Fueled by the unyielding desire to be able to take the fight to the enemy, Ryan decided to “put boot-to-ass” and join the United States Army as an infantryman. His first hard fight came with convincing his parents to allow him to enlist at the age of seventeen with the promise of graduating high school before reporting to boot camp.
Ryan served 3½ years on Active Duty with the 101st Airborne Division. In September of 2005, he deployed for a year with his division to Iraq. For the first three months, he helped with security for the trial of Saddam Hussein in Baghdad, before transitioning to Tikrit where daily and nightly combat missions throughout the city became normal. As a combat infantryman, Ryan was able to witness and live through everything that Iraq had to offer during his yearlong tour. Heat, boredom, countless roadside bombs, raids, exploding cars, large-scale military operations, the loss of a comrade and a Tikrit sniper.
Trained in a mindset to survive combat operations in Iraq, Ryan found that turning it off was a challenging transition back into civilian life as soon as he returned from his deployment. Separated from the Army, he drifted around his small town highly irritated and often intoxicated. He began attending college but felt disconnected from his classmates. After the suicide of a fellow soldier Ryan served with, he realized he needed to face what he tried to suppress. Ryan found an outlet with writing in extreme detail about his experiences in Iraq as his way of expression. “It was my way to get out what was bottled up inside my heart and mind and get it onto paper, making something tangible that I could push away.”
As random and often entertaining as the paths of life can be for Ryan, nothing could prepare him for when he was selected out of thousands of applicants to be a cast member on MTVs reality show, The Real World, with its twenty-first season set in Brooklyn. Ryan expressed himself to an audience of millions through his own music, humor and pranks. He broke the stereotype of returning veterans and helped put a face on our modern veteran. With cameras rolling, America watched as Ryan received news he never expected or wanted to hear. He was involuntarily recalled to the Army, to be sent back to Iraq.
Before his season finished airing on television, Ryan found himself back in uniform and on a plane to Iraq in early 2008. He was deployed in Baghdad and immediately found a different Iraq he left several years before. The difference in the Iraqi Army, daily operations and interaction with the locals all helped display a changed Iraq into a safer and stable country. Ryan found comfort in this and helped ease the bad taste in his mouth from the drudgery of his last deployment.
Simultaneous to returning to combat operations in Iraq, Ryan pushed his intimate writings of his first deployment, which would eventually turn into the publication of his memoir, An Angel from Hell. Also, Ryan starred, filmed, and co-produced the documentary Return to Duty which aired on MTV. After his appearances on television and his book release, Ryan has been featured in several blogs, television spots, magazines, and newspapers including; New York Times, Army Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times and New York Daily News.
