At her funeral at First Baptist Church of Leander, Nick was a pallbearer and helped to carry her home. I will always be grateful to him for that. She was reunited in heaven with my late grandfather, to whom she had been married for forty-one years. I wanted that forever love for Nick and me, too.
In the airport, the television screens showed scenes of the war in Afghanistan, which had started a couple of weeks before. There was all this talk about anthrax attacks, airstrikes, and questions about when the U.S. would be deploying more troops. They said “troops,” but I knew they were real men and women, many of them probably scared.
I asked God to help me figure out a way to be of use. And then He showed me.
10
Flight Suits and Wedding Gowns
November 2001
My husband, Eric, has a joke he likes to say: “Ask Jessica to sing about Jesus or America, and she’ll be there. Super Bowl, backyard cookout, whatever you got, she’s coming to sing ‘God Bless America.’ ” And he’s right. Growing up in Texas, I sang that song over and over. From Memorial Day parades to Veteran’s Day pancake breakfasts—I was your girl. When I sang it at the East Room of the White House, I finally found out I had been flubbing the lyrics all those years. I was there to kick off the USO holiday tour for troops fighting in Afghanistan. It was the first time they let celebrities in after 9/11, because, well, they were busy. It was surreal to hear President Bush speak, thanking the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff for his service, the transportation secretary for keeping the airlines safe. And then he added, “I want to thank Rob Schneider and Jessica Simpson as well.”
They asked me to sing “God Bless America,” and I gave it my all. President Bush was in the front row, right next to Laura, and I watched him quietly sing along, his mouth moving along with mine. Something went wrong after we got to the mountains, though. I said, “to the rivers,” just like I always did, and, well, he knew it was “the prairies.” I was so embarrassed that I apologized to him and Mrs. Bush after.
“I swear all this time I thought it was rivers!” I said.
“That’s okay, Jessica,” he said. “God blessed the rivers, too.”
Two weeks later, my father and I got on a military cargo transport plane to start the USO tour with six Dallas Cowboy cheerleaders, Schneider, and a country singer named Neal McCoy. Every seat on the plane had a little card that read “C-17 Globemaster III: Airlifter of Choice,” which cracked me up. “We know you have a choice when you pick a military airlift,” I told my dad. “And we appreciate your business.” He was so excited to play war and reminded me again he had been too young to go to Vietnam. He had made all this possible, reaching out to the USO as soon as I expressed an interest in helping support service members in any way I could.
Soon we were at Camp Eagle, a U.S. military base near Tuzla in Bosnia. The Tuzla airstrip was in constant use, sending planes to bomb the Taliban. As I talked to the service members there, I learned that before Camp Eagle had mostly been a peacekeeping mission to keep the Bosnian War from being reignited. They talked about having to be careful of landmines left behind.
“I’m staying put with you guys then,” I said. I was mortified that before I came there, I had never even heard of Bosnia, and certainly didn’t know that American troops were there. When I’d reached out to the USO to volunteer to perform for service members, I’d had a vision of these sorts of big brothers and sisters in the military coming in to save the day. I was gonna put on this big show for them, high-octane with lots of red, white, and blue peekaboo clothes that I felt I had to wear for them. I even had a bikini top made from parachute material to go with army pants. But when I met actual service members, I wasn’t prepared for them to be so young. They were all my age or even younger.
I did “God Bless America” as my last song at each stop, a capella, and Bosnia is where things changed. It was right at that first “stand beside her and guide her.” These men and women started to sing along with me, and I noticed they were just bawling their eyes out, so of course I did, too, and I knew that this was more than a song. It was a prayer. They just wanted to be with the people they loved, in the prairies, the mountains, and, yes, the rivers. I was so privileged to share in that moment. I have done a lot of singing at bases and aircraft carriers since, and every time I do “God Bless America,” I ask everyone to sing along. “I don’t care if you think you can’t sing,” I say. “I want to hear you.”
After the Thanksgiving USO tour, I went to Afghanistan for a weeklong Christmas tour on the frontline. Between the two tours, I still had to do two radio-show concerts—the Jingle Jam in Kansas and the Jingle Ball in San Jose—and they felt surreal. The people attending those shows were the same age as the service members I’d entertained.
It might sound silly, but I was afraid I was going to die in Afghanistan, because the military made it clear to me that they could not guarantee my safety. I think I hugged Nick a thousand times before I left Andrews Air Force Base, and he kept telling me I was going to be perfectly fine because I was going to have the world’s strongest military to keep me safe. I told him the hiding spot where I had placed a pile of my journals in case something happens to me.
“Don’t read ’em unless I’m dead, okay?” I said.
He looked at me like I was crazy, but he hugged me harder.
On that tour, we had to land on the USS Theodore Roosevelt, a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier. Now, I am not one of those cool girls who goes on a roller coaster and throws up her hands. I scrunch my eyes tight, white-knuckling whatever—or whoever—I can hold on to. You think an aircraft carrier just parks, but they are always moving, so the pilot must land the plane on the deck just right and then has a matter of seconds to bring the plane to a stop. There are wires that catch you, and you feel like you’re going to get whiplash. But it’s worth the tough landing because aircraft carriers always have the best audiences. The Roosevelt had been deployed in the North Arabian Sea since early October and had a crew of about 5,500 people. It felt like every one of them was at the concert. By then I understood it wasn’t about a pretty girl in a bikini. I could just be me with them. Put on a Santa suit to get laughs and sang Christmas songs. I tried to meet as many troops as possible, and a lot of men and women would give me challenge coins or take patches off for me to keep. I still have them all.
When I got home, I could tell Nick was proud of me. “Promise you’ll do one with me, babe,” I said. He swore he would, and he kept his word.
AT THE START OF 2002, I KNEW NICK WAS GOING TO PROPOSE. SO DID MY dad. He talked to each of us separately, constantly urging us to wait. He was convinced that Nick didn’t understand commitment, which I didn’t think was fair. “Marriage is about hanging in there,” he said.
I know he accused Nick of making me dependent on him for everything, which is the pot calling up the kettle to have a long talk about being black. My mom loved Nick, but right or wrong, my parents had spent my life making me think that I couldn’t do anything without them. At twenty-one years old, I was still very much a child. I didn’t know how to write a check, but, somehow, I was paying for everything. I knew that I was making money, but I didn’t think of myself as the family breadwinner. I just thought my money was their money. Honestly, what I knew for sure was that it stopped my family from having as many fights, so I felt lucky that I could be the one to help keep the peace.