American Hero Eric Alva: the HRC's new rock star...

When Eric Alva walked onto the stage Saturday night at the Human Rights Campaign gala in Century City, he got the longest, sustained ovation of the evening. That is until he finished his deeply personal, touching and at times very funny speech. The audience clapped even longer and louder as he left the stage.
"It's been a pretty emotional week for me," Eric told the crowd, referring to the fourth anniversary of the start of the Iraq war - the same week that he lost his right leg after stepping on a land mine. "It's almost surreal to go from being in the desert in the Middle East to this dinner in Los Angeles tonight."
His funniest moment during his speech was when Alva talked about all the media attention he received after being the first soldier injured then after coming out publicly last fall as a gay man and speaking out against the military's "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy.
"It's been sort of a whirlwind,' he said. "I've even done Anderson Cooper twice." The crowd roared then Alva added: "I meant INTERVIEWS! Is it hot in here?"
After the dinner, I told Eric that he was a rock star.
"You're the fifth person who has told me that," he told me, laughing.
I'm sure plenty more people would tell him the same thing as he made his way out of the ballroom.
It was interesting to watch Eric command a room the way he did. A little more than 24 hours earlier, we were sitting at The Abbey doing an interview and I just didn't think rock star. But he's a special man and has taken this opportunity to really make his voice heard.
"My thoughts on the war are the same as a lot of people in this country right now," he said as we sat in an outdoor booth at The Abbey in West Hollywood Friday afternoon. "A lot of people are saddened at how things turned out to be, especially since the one sole reason why we actually went to war didn't turn out to be true. I pray and hope every day that there is a positive outcome and quick resolution that could bring the troops home."
Alva's notoriety as the first to be injured resulted in his being awarded the Purple Heart and being visited in the hospital by President Bush, then-Secretary of State Donald Rumsfeld, Gov. Arnold Schwarzeneggar, Michael Jordan and even singer Sheryl Crowe who sang a song for Alva at the hospital. He was on the "Oprah Winfrey Show," featured in People magazine and, of course, there were those Anderson Cooper interviews.
But until last fall, he had not come out publicly as a gay man although he had confided in several fellow marines who were close friends while he was still in active duty.
"It was a big risk i was taking, it was like playing Russian Roulette. But we had become friends and I would go to dinner at their houses and their wives would say, 'Why aren't you with someone?' It was always the wives. They'd say, 'I have a friend who I work with, let me set you up. It got to a point where, inside for me, it was frustrating. So I would have to tell my best friends."
After he was medically discharged from the military in 2004, Alva met Darrell Parsons and he joked to the audience Saturday night that "I couldn't find a boyfriend with two legs. I lose a leg and I find the best boyfriend in the world - my true love."
It was Parsons who encouraged Alva to get involved with HRC. He would give him stickers to put on his car "and I'd say, "Oh no, no no. Leave me alone! But he'd leave the pamphlets lying around amd it did open my eyes and taught me a lot of things that I didn't already know and that I should have known."
Finally I joined HRC and surprised my partner. I said, "Look! Here's my sticker!"
Late summer in 2006, Parsons said to Alva: "You've always talked about doing something positive because people know you but you can't wait 10 years and have that moment pass you by." That night, past midnight, he said he got on the computer and sent an email to HRC. He wrote that he was injured in the war, had lost a leg, "and the reason I'm contacting you is because I'm a gay person and if there's ever anything I can do to help you, I'm willing to volunteer."

He has since become one of the most effective speakers in the battle against the military's anti-gay policy.
Says HRC President Joe Solmonese: "You can't meet Eric or hear his story and not feel like he hasn't sacrificed incredibly for his country and that he isn't somebody who shouldn't be able to serve his country. What he symolizes to America that is most important is that he's a courageous, outspoken marine who wants to move this country toward the direction of equality and wants to illustrate for the American people that all of us ought to have an opportunity to serve our country if that's what we choose to do."

TOMORROW: Part three of the Alva interview. Read what he has to say about the anti-gay comments of General Peter Pace and about what he plans to do with his future. (Sorry to drag it out one more day but trust me, it will be worth it.)