Fox WXXV-25 interview with Chris Stricklin
Stricklin says if that day in 2003 taught him anything, “You don’t have to survive an unsurvivable ejection or be diagnosed with unsurvivable cancer. We’ve all experienced trauma in our life, and how we deal with it, who we deal with it with—our spouses, our children, our community—is what makes us who we are. And we need to open up and talk about it because ultimately we are all survivors.”
Hillary Simon interviews Chris Stricklin on CBS42:
“We think our situations can help others grow in their own trauma. Because it’s not about ejecting from an aircraft or having unsurvivable cancer, it’s about dealing with your own trauma that you’re going through every day. And that’s how we challenge people to live every day to its fullest. We call it living intentionally.”—coauthor Chris Stricklin
PRNewswire Book Announcement
Through their near-death experiences, the coauthors reveal how these fellow fighter pilots with aviator call signs “Elroy” (Chris R Stricklin) and “Thor” (Joel Neeb) helped each other heal with a new outlook on life. Their book encourages readers “to be more, do more, and live more” with a “challenge to live every day intentionally to the fullest.”
JetLinx feature: Today is the Tomorrow I Almost Lost
To explore such a traumatic event, to analyze it and write about it, takes courage and patience. “The book is not about why I crashed. It’s about why I survived and how that has impacted my life. I have constantly asked not how I survived, but why,” Stricklin noted. Within the book there is an entire chapter dedicated to asking why. … “We both had the same question: ‘why did we get a tomorrow when nobody else did’? We talked about it for a year and decided to coauthor a book about it.”
Survivor’s Obligation was born from the conviction that instead of feeling remorse for living through their traumatic experiences, Stricklin and Neeb both feel obligated to make their survival meaningful to others, and the book contains the lessons that each learned through their experiences.