Sara Jernigan-Shariak had been the glue that held the family together. Whether it was Kansas, Texas, or the military base in Turkey, the moment Adam’s mother unpacked the apartment or duplex or hotel room, it not only functioned as a family unit, but as the boy’s home-school and his personal training center.
If Colonel Shariak had to rise at 4:30 a.m., then so did his family. After feeding her “men” breakfast, Sara would pack a lunch and she and Adam would hike to a park. Thirty minutes of calisthenics would get the blood circulating to the brain for history, science, and math. Lunch was followed by an hour of reading, the rest of the afternoon reserved for team sports. Basketball was the easiest for Adam to practice by himself — the outdoor courts were usually empty until the local schools let out — but Sara soon realized that her young protégé preferred football. There were organized leagues to join during the fall and spring and drills that Sara incorporated into their off season routine to further her son’s skills as a running back — his favorite position.
When he was thirteen, Adam attended class at the local middle school. If the coach was lucky, they’d have the gifted athlete for an uninterrupted season of football and track. Unfortunately, Colonel Shariak was kept on the move as the United States Armed Forces prepared for the first Iraq war, and his son’s social and athletic life suffered as a result.
Things changed when Adam turned fifteen and made the Ayer Shirley Regional High School varsity football team as a sophomore. When his father was ordered to report to Frankfurt, Germany a month into the season, the starting fullback made it clear to his parents that he was not leaving Fort Evens. And so the Shariaks split up — the colonel and his wife heading overseas; Adam moving in with Head Coach Adrian Reeves and his family.
It was in Germany that Sara noticed a small lump in her left breast. A biopsy revealed the tumor; blood tests that it was malignant. Surgery was performed, the colonel and his wife deciding not to tell their son about it. Weeks of chemo followed. Unfortunately, the cancer had metastasized to Sara’s lymph nodes.
Sara’s physician informed the colonel that it was just matter of time. Complicating matters was that his wife was too weak to handle the trip back to the states to see Adam, whose high school football team was competing for a division playoff spot.
And so Adam never knew that his mother was sick until after she passed away.
Adam was devastated. His mother had been his most trusted friend; now the colonel had not only kept the teen from her when she was sick, he had also robbed him of his only chance to say good-bye.
The anger the sixteen-year-old directed toward his father only escalated when the colonel returned to Massachusetts the following October with his new bride.
Marilyn Hall worked as a nurse at the base hospital in Frankfurt. Sara had been her patient; upon her death she had become the stabilizing force in Bill Shariak’s life. A widow herself, Marilyn also had a son, Randy, who was in his first year at Harvard Law School.
Adam was furious; his mother’s body was still warm in the grave, and now his father had married her nurse? The teen refused to talk to the couple, let alone move in with them. As far as he was concerned, Coach Reeves was his father now.
That became a problem when his surrogate parent accepted the offensive coordinator position at Indiana University in February of Adam’s junior year. If the teen had any hope of earning a football scholarship, he had to compete his next two seasons at Ayer Shirley Regional High School — and that meant moving in with the colonel and his new wife.
The situation quickly became toxic.
Twice-a-week mandatory counseling sessions gradually eased Adam’s anger toward his stepmother, but the wall he had erected between himself and the colonel would not come down. Despite focusing his rage on the football field, the season was a disappointment as the new head coach ran an offense without a fullback, forcing Adam to learn a new position — tight end.
Relegated to the bench, Adam lost his motivation. His grades suffered and he contemplated dropping out of school, his only enjoyment coming from playing video games.
When Marilyn noticed these games were military-oriented contests featuring combat helicopters, she convinced William to teach his son to fly.
A flight aboard one of the base’s Sikorsky helicopters led to private lessons with the colonel and hundreds of hours of practice on a flight simulator, which quickly replaced the teen’s video games as his favorite activity. Adam worked hard to impress his father, and it wasn’t long before the colonel allowed his son to take the co-pilot’s controls while in the air.
A relationship slowly matriculated, aided by Marilyn, whose loving personality was similar to that of Adam’s mother. Stepbrother Randy drove in for Adam’s football games his senior year, solidifying the family unit. By the time he graduated high school, Adam Shariak could pilot a chopper better than most adults could drive a car.
The teen received one offer to play Division-I football, and that was from his old high school coach who was now installed as the offensive coordinator at Indiana University. Adam rarely played, and when he did, his role was relegated to blocking. And then, on a nationally televised game on Thanksgiving weekend against perennial powerhouse Ohio State, Indiana’s starting tailback suffered a concussion and Coach Reeves decided to give his adopted son a shot.
Adam started the second half as the team’s halfback. He ran for 126 yards and scored two touchdowns before tearing the ACL in his left knee. The injury officially ended his playing career. It was a bittersweet tale — a taste of success… only to be yanked away, and the pattern would repeat itself throughout his adult life.
Adam spent the rest of his senior year rehabbing his knee. Upon graduating Indiana with a degree in engineering, he promptly enlisted. Upon completing officer’s training, “Captain” Shariak was assigned to the Army’s 1st Battalion, 4th Aviation Regiment where he would spend the next two years training to pilot the AH-64D Apache Longbow helicopter.
It took incredible dexterity and coordination to fly the warship. It wasn’t enough that his four limbs were responsible for four completely different tasks, his eyes also had to function independently as well. A monocle positioned over his right iris immersed him in a virtual world of fluctuating instrument readings while the eyepiece covering his left eye maintained a real world view.
For most of the first year he suffered terrible headaches as his two eyes competed for dominance.
It took Adam six months just to learn how to fly the air machine, six more to master its weapons system, and another half a year to put everything together until he finally felt combat-ready.
Two months later, his battalion deployed to the Middle East to join Operation Iraqi Freedom.
The city of Karbala had initially been bypassed by American forces in favor of a direct advance on Baghdad. Adam’s team arrived in time to provide air cover for the U.S. 3rd Infantry Division which had engaged Saddam’s Republican Guard just southeast of the city.