#198: One Last Trip To Vegas - Major Jeff Toczylowski's Letter To Family And Friends

Some people don’t just pass through your life. They leave a mark that stays with you long after they’re gone. Not because of what they did in a single moment, but because of how they lived every day, how they showed up for people, and how they made others feel.

From the 2nd Annual Stars and Stripes Classic, Fran Racioppi sat down with Pam Patton and Tom Schneider to honor the life of Major Jeff Toczylowski, a Green Beret whose impact on the people around him is still felt nearly two decades later. A letter Jeff left to his family and friends in the event of his death defines the character of a Green Beret; a warrior and a man who cared more about others than himself. Jeff’s last wish…take everyone to Vegas to celebrate his life.

Today, his legacy lives on through the annual memorial golf outing in his honor, now approaching its 20th year. What started as a way to cope with loss has become something much bigger. A reunion. A celebration. A community built around a single person who continues to be the common thread connecting hundreds of people who gather not to mourn, but to celebrate a life well lived.

Join the Green Beret Foundation and all of Toz’s family and friends this August 1st, at the Five Ponds Golf Course in Warminster, PA to celebrate his service and support all Green Berets past, present and future.

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#198: One Last Trip To Vegas – Major Jeff Toczylowski’s Letter To Family And Friends

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Pam, Tom, welcome to the Jedburgh Podcast.

Thanks for having us.

I appreciate you taking a few minutes to sit down with us. We’re at the second annual Stars and Stripes Classic. We’re going to pit our Green Berets against their Navy SEAL brothers, I do not know, rivals, whatever we want to call it. That game is about to kick off here in short order. We have been here for a few days. One of the events that is going to happen here before the game starts is that we’re going to honor your family. We’re going to honor your son. We’re going to honor your friend, Jeff, who served in the special forces regiment. Unfortunately, we lost him in 2005. I want to start by asking you who Jeff was.

Jeff Lived Every Day To The Fullest

Tom, you might want to take this question. This would be a great question. I can finish the ending of that question for us.

I would say the best way to describe Jeff is that he lived 30 years, and he literally lived every day, like it was his last. To the fullest. You look back, and you go, “It’s almost like he knew that life was going to be short for him.” If there was an opportunity for adventure, a party, to meet somebody, to travel somewhere, he did it. He has boundless energy. I could not keep up with him. Most people could not keep up with him.

Running with the bulls? How many people do we know who have done that in Spain?

Fishing in Costa Rica and catching very large things that you would normally never see out of the ocean.

He was just always looking for the next good time. He would ask me to do stuff, and I am like, “You want me to drive nine hours, party all night, and not know where we’re sleeping yet. Go again the next day.” Sometimes I would deal with it. Most of the time, I cannot hang like that. He was always looking for a good time. He met a lot of people in doing so. We were talking. He impacted a lot of people, and it’s amazing. We did not know how many you do not really know, but when he passed, you realized it with each event, the Vegas trip, the viewing, the funeral, and he just met so many people.

You and your mother have met a tremendous number of people whom Jeff had impacted in some way. For me, it’s a little world Jeff and I lived in, but when you look at what he did in the countries he went to and the people he met, it’s amazing. You keep meeting other people, like, “I met Jeff one time.” They remember like, this is a story, and it’s been twenty years, and maybe it’s been 30 years since the first time they met him.

What we were talking about on the way here was just that this impact, most of us, when you leave this earth, you want to know that you’ve made an impact in the surrounding of the people in your world. He did that 150%. We just did not know it until after the fact. We knew he was special, but again, he was my brother. He was my only sibling. He was three years younger. There was a period when he was very annoying to me. As we got older, we got very close. If he had a week off from being in the military and being in Germany, he came to spend it with me.

To give you an idea, he drove 22 hours straight. This is the part that he did. It was not that I was special. He did this for a lot of different people. He drove 22 hours straight for my birthday. That’s who he was. He just drove up. I did not know he was coming up. He just showed up. “Happy birthday.” That was it. That’s the type of stuff he would do. It’s pretty amazing. That’s just one story. If you talk to so many people, they’ll tell you different stories.

We’ll even talk about the ex-girlfriends who, most times, when you break up, and you move on with life, and you may run into each other. There have been several of them who have gone to Arlington with the new boyfriend, a potential spouse for approval. That is the impact. Who does that? Most do not.

I was with one of them this past weekend. She supports the foundation, donates every year, and it’s pretty amazing.

Tom, you grew up with Jeff.

I grew up with Jeff and Pam.

The Success And Longevity Of The Memorial Golf Outing

You said your son is actually named after him. One of the initiatives that you put together to honor him has been the Memorial Golf outing that you just had a couple of weeks ago. As you know, and as you mentioned a few minutes ago, these things are hard to maintain. They’re hard to sustain over time, and you’re going to hit nineteen years this year and twenty years going into next year. Why do you think that’s been so successful?

We always said when it’s not fun anymore, we’ll stop, but it keeps getting more entertaining. We just had Jeff’s boss, who was part of his early part of the military, military police. He has been overseas. He has never been able to attend. He showed up last year for the first time. He brought his son, who’s also in the military, and they said, “Pam, we’ll be back every time.” In fact, they set up a grant. They’re going to start doing something for the Green Beret Foundation every year. It’s amazing.

That have wanted to come. We talked years ago, and we said, “There are different outings.” There are big corporate events that we attend, and they’re really sponsored by big corporations, whereas we’re sponsored by local businesses and families. It really is like a reunion. People fly in from all over and drive from all over and plan around it. Everyone says, “I cannot wait until next year. I want to be there.” It’s part of what they do every year. We have ebbs and flows. One of the questions was, “How is it with attendance?” I said, “We ebb and flow every year, depending on the year. We’re having a heavy vacation right in August.” That impacts a lot. It’s amazing when the soldiers come in.

The celebration of life, though, is really why everybody comes back. This is not a day of mourning. It’s a day where we do a lot of toasting, which is what his last email had stated. We’re raising money for the Green Beret Foundation. The money’s going to a great cause. It’s just having all of those connections. A lot of the people in the room had never met until the golf outing. The common denominator is Jeff. We do a really great job of just having really cool prizes and spending time together. Back in the old days, when Tom and I were younger, you could do keg stands out on the course. We’re older, we get insurance now, those days are over, we do not do it anymore. The kegs on the cart with the beer girls, we’re good with that.

Things have changed.

Things have changed a little bit, but yeah.

If you think about it, twenty years ago, when this started, many of us did not have kids, and now our kids are playing in it. My son and three of my very good friends from high school, my buddies, and our kids play together. Third or fourth year playing, they actually won it last year. We are pretty good.

They have special shirts, so you know that it’s them.

It’s a big day for them. It’s personal. It really is. It’s been really personal for a lot of people, and the people who help us have a lot of volunteers who help us out. When they bring people, they always come and say, “We cannot wait to come next year with Aerie Downing.” I believe they’re sincere and say they just enjoy the company of everyone. It’s a laid-back atmosphere. It rolls along pretty good. You get to hear stories about Jeff, and every year you hear something that you did not know before, which is pretty amazing. It’s special for your mom because she gets to hear these stories, and you get to hear them. That’s great.

I read the email that he left, which I thought really spoke to what you talked about here, and the ability to live life to the fullest, and just knowing that he wanted to be remembered for his outgoing personality, for the ability to connect with others, and the fact that he left a trip to Vegas for everybody. I actually had to laugh at it.

The Genesis Of Jeff’s “Last Trip To Vegas” Final Wish

There’s a story behind all of it. Let us back up. Before he was killed, when he wrote the email, it was for a very specific reason. That June, he was running in Germany. One of his friends who was running with him that day fell over and had a massive heart attack, whatever happened. He was only 40 years old, but he had a family, and he had two small kids. There were no wishes. There was no eulogy. There was no “Where do I want to be buried?”

No plans. Jeff ended up becoming the surrogate husband and father, and did the eulogy. It was a really tough time for him. I remember him thinking, “I am never going to put this through my family with us not knowing what to do.” It changed him forever. He had the details. I want a bottle of Captain Morgan in my coffin. We have all the details. We had everything laid out because he was very specific that way. This email really was derived from what happened in June, many months prior.

The email was left with a Special Forces tenth Group soldier, who, Jeff said, “If I do not make it back from this trip, I am always supposed to be in Iraq for 30 days. I need this email to go out to this 300-person list of people with emails.” That is what happened. I got the call from that soldier, and he read that email to me over the phone, and he said, “Can we send this out?” I said, “After I read it to my parents, you can send it out.” That’s how a lot of people found out from the email. Because Jeff was always such a big jokester, that’s why, in the beginning, it’s, “This is an attached joke.” It’s because most people would think he’s joking around like he always was.

Literally, they would think he was joking because he joked. That’s all he did.

Everything was always in good humor. Anyhow, so that’s what happened. Of course, as the week of funerals and everything is happening, everyone’s asking me, “Are you going to really have this party?” “No, we’re not having a party. Absolutely not. Why would we have a party? This is my only sibling. It’s the last thing on my mind.” In the midst, we started talking about it, my mother and I, and we’re like, “We really should honor him and do this. This is what he wanted.”

It took us a whole year to plan. What’s funny is that looking back, I can say he knew it was going to take a whole year for us to have the details down to every little nook and cranny that we wanted for this celebration. The fact that we did not have time for grieving because we were too busy planning, it actually helped. I can now, all these years later, and I just was in Vegas this week for work, and I went back to the Palms just for some memories because it was time. Good stuff.

I’ve never looked at it, but that was probably the kickoff for why that, when you asked, “Why do you think it’s lasted this long?” I think that party was when you think about it, like it brought all these people who did not know each other. You spend three days with people having a good time. You get to know everybody. It becomes like family. It’s pretty, man, when you look back at all the people that were there that you’re still in touch with all the time. That brought a lot of people. The viewing brought a lot of people together.

What was crazy is it’s 2:00 in the morning at the party, and I met this reporter. Now we had security at the front of the suite. These were the celebrity suites that used to be on the E channel. In fact, Paris Hilton was trying to get the suite over the weekend. They asked if we could move our party. Absolutely not. We’re not moving it. Reality was at 2:00 AM. I get this reporter who hits us up. Here, he worked for the LA Times. That’s how that article made it into most of the metropolitan cities a week later. Otherwise, it would have been a party, and it would have just gone away. It would have been more.

That definitely made a big impact out there that you look back on and you go, “Huh.” I guess it’s like this, it just keeps snowballing down with more and more.

Nobody is going to go to Vegas ever again and say they’ve had the best trip ever because that was a great trip. We’ve had a couple of people ask if we’re going to do something like an anniversary trip. Some people have asked, “Did you really spend $100,000?” Close, not the whole amount, but pretty close to it. We have to figure that out if we want to go back and do a suite again.

What does it mean to honor Jeff’s legacy?

I only had one child when my brother was alive. My two children know of him. They never met him, but we talk about him so regularly, it’s like he’s still around. For me, it’s about the legacy of what my children will be. They’re never going to be cousins. Our closest cousins are going to be Tom’s family because they do not have that on either side of the family, actually. For me, it’s just about keeping the memory alive.

For those of us who are living, no matter what’s going on in life, be good to the people around you and live each day to the fullest, because today could be it. If you did not take that opportunity, then you missed out. I’m reminded of that pretty often, just to not, I was in Vegas all week. I was not coming here on this trip because of the amount of time. I thought, “Pam, you’ve got to go.” It’s being reminded of what he stood for. Making sure that we, as the family, carry that out.