Perspective: Patient’s love of jets bolsters young vet

SIOUX FALLS, S.D. -- At 23, Jay Engebretson thought he had seen and lived through just about everything a young man his age could.

He had loaded weapons onto multimillion dollar F-16 fighter jets. He had worked among the sick and the wounded in an Iraqi emergency room.

Engebretson had seen the face of war. But it was the face of a young man dying of leukemia back in Sioux Falls that ultimately convinced him he was mistaken.

For what he saw in 24-year-old Derrick Roy of Boyd, Minn., is that “I haven’t been through anything,” Engebretson says. “I saw that what he’s done is remarkable.”

Theirs is a powerful, poignant tale of friendship and lessons learned that began on a cancer unit at Avera McKennan Hospital and culminated with a dream coming true at the South Dakota Air National Guard base in March.

Engebretson, a senior airman in the Guard, had just returned from a seven-month stint in the Middle East and was starting a new job as a patient care technician at Avera McKennan when the two first met.

As part of his work, Engebretson stops by patients’ rooms, says “hello” and sees whether they need anything — even if it’s just a little company. One of the first rooms he walked into was Roy’s.

“He was watching a show on TV about fighter jets,” Engebretson recalls. “I sat there a while and told him how I work on jets. He seemed to know more about it than I did. He just had a passion for it.”

Their connection was instantaneous. In time, Engebretson came to know more about his new friend than just his interest in military planes.

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