During the football season, a Valdosta State helmet provides the player who wears it protection from assaults on the football field.

Presently, a VSU helmet is being carried across the deserts of Iraq to those who protect the United States from a much more lethal assault.

In the middle of October, VSU’s Director of Athletic Advancement, Whit Chappell, asked a friend of his to take a Blazers helmet with him on his overseas tour for a future fund-raiser.

Lt. Col. Ken Brenneman, director of U.S. Central Command’s Joint Search and Rescue, agreed, and on Nov. 13 boarded an airplane with the gray VSU helmet stowed away in his luggage.

“We talked about it,” Chappell said. “I got (VSU football coach) Chris (Hatcher) to give him a helmet before he left. I took him to the airport, and he had it packed in his baggage and away he went.”

Once in Iraq, Brenneman picked up his first signature on the helmet from Secretary of the Air Force Michael Wynn.

“He got the Secretary of the Air Force to sign it, and I thought that was impressive,” Chappell said. “But then he said I got something to top it.”

The signature that topped the Secretary of the Air Force was from a man who led the country from 1988-1992.

While visiting the armed forces in Iraq, former President George H.W. Bush met with Brenneman and his troops.

Brenneman approached the former president with the Valdosta State helmet, explaining that the Blazers’ cap would be used toward charity.

As Bush signed the helmet, Brenneman and Chappell’s hopes for gaining money for both VSU football and families of fallen soldiers increased.

“It has taken off,” Chappell said. “It started off as something small, now there’s no telling what we can do with this.”

When Wynn’s signature accompanied the signatures of Gen. John Abazaid, the commander of the U.S. Central Command, and Gen. Norton A. Schwarz, commander of U.S. Transportation Command, Chappell was going to use the small profits from an auction to go toward assisting soldiers’ families.

“Just before the holiday season, I called Whit and said I’d like to modify our agreement and use the helmet signings/autographs to help raise money for a good cause; therefore, asked him if he would have any problem with considering auctioning off the helmet during a fundraising event with the proceeds going to families of fallen soldiers,” Brenneman said. “He said yes, and we pressed on.”

With Bush’s signature, the profits from the helmet may be enough to split two ways when it returns to the states in either March or October after stops in Afghanistan and Africa.