Before the injury, Lorna Illerbrunn said her husband would have simply wanted a retirement at a hangar, surrounded by Army helicopters, good friends, sandwiches from Jimmy John’s, and cold Miller Lite.

Lorna Illerbrunn made sure all that was there for Garrett Illerbrunn’s retirement party, but what she really wanted was to make sure he had one last time in the cockpit of a helicopter.

“It took a lot of resources, time, energy, money, but I feel like it’s something that Garrett really could see how he was being honored,” Lorna told Task & Purpose this week. “We don’t know what the future holds, and I just really wanted to make it very special for him.”

Garrett suffered a penetrating traumatic brain injury in a 2023 drone attack at Erbil Air Base, Iraq, where he was deployed as an AH-64 h

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