When he was close to death in late 2024, former Air Force Sergeant Terrance Lee Randolph had a last moment individually with his wife and five children at the Minneapolis Veterans Administration Medical Center.
“He had been silently preparing a statement for each of us as we thought he was just sleeping for hours,” his 38-year-old son, McKenzie “Mac” Randolph, told the Daily Beast. “We were able to have a miraculous one-on-one with him.”
Randolph and his father shared a passionate belief in principles of freedom and social justice that they viewed as “the right side of history.” Right in this sense being the opposite not of left, but of wrong.
“This was the baseline of his moral compass,” Randolph said.
The son added that his father “could not believe where this country was headed.”
“He strongly opposed and warned of the dangers of losing our democracy to the white Christian nationalist movement,” Randolph said.
The father had not seen combat when in the Air Force, but he showed a warrior’s courage to counter that threat and do his part for democracy during the November election. He ventured from the hospital in a wheelchair with an oxygen tank.
“His last heroic act was rallying back from full intubation and zero pulse following a major heart attack due to complications with his cancer treatment to vote in person,” Randolph recalled.
The outcome at the polls imparted added urgency to the father’s last words spoken directly to Randolph.
“Continue to fight the good fight.”
The father had decided there was no use continuing his losing struggle against terminal lung cancer and heart disease.
“It was my father’s wish to begin hospice care as opposed to treatments,” Randolph remembered. “He would only survive three days once we began comfort care as opposed to the uphill, painful battle of testing and treating an enigmatic final condition.”
Those final days were eased by a Veteran Affairs ICU nurse named Alex Pretti, who was skilled, calm, kind, and unfailingly attentive. Pretti worked 12 to 15 hours shifts, including overnights.
“Alex helped comfort my father about how would they avoid anxiety and discomfort as his oxygen levels depleted,” Randolph recalled. “He comforted my family by sitting aside with my brother Bret for over an hour, answering any all questions, medical and logistical.”
Randolph says his father established a strong connection with Pretti and others on the hospital staff.
“My father would ask the nurses how they were doing instead of telling them how he was doing,” Randolph remembered. “He would say, ‘Don’t worry about me, how are you doing, Alex?”
Thirty-five days after the election, Mac’s father died aged 77. A family member recorded a video of Pretti reading a final tribute over the father’s flag-covered body at the entrance to the Intensive Care Unit.
“Today we remember that freedom is not free, we have to work at it, nurture it, protect it, and even sacrifice for it,” Pretti read aloud. ”May we never forget and always remember our brothers and sisters who have served, so that we may enjoy the gift of freedom.”
He went on, “In this moment we remember and give thanks to the dedication and selfless service to our nation in the cause of our freedom.”
He concluded. “In this solemn hour, we render our honor and our gratitude.”
A celebration of life for Terrace Lee Randolph was held on January 24 of 2025.
Randolph could not have imagined back then that Pretti would be shot to death by federal agents in Minneapolis exactly a year to the day later.
But Randolph correctly predicted that the Trump administration would seek to smear Pretti, just as it did Renee Good after a federal agent shot her to death in the same city 17 days before.
In keeping with his father’s final wish for him to keep fighting the good fight, Randolph decided to post a video he had never intended to make public.
“Please share this so they can’t assassinate his character,” he wrote.
He later told the Daily Beast, “It was not easy to share as I knew some family would be upset, but once my mom approved, I knew I had to.”
He went on, “I live my life as a servant of the truth. I studied philosophy and know that truth is rarely timeless, but I know that this was a kind, gentle man who was a healer. And I already knew these damn liars would call him a terrorist.”
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and Border Patrol commander Gregory Bovino did indeed brand Pretti a “domestic terrorist.” They made much of the handgun he was licensed to carry. Never mind that the first bill Noem signed when she was governor of South Dakota affirmed the right to carry a concealed handgun just as Pretti did.
The Trump folks alleged that Pretti had “brandished” the weapon. White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller described Pretti as a “would be assassin” who “tried to murder law enforcement.”
Video from the scene shows that is false, but the truth on tape had not stopped the Trump people from continuing to lie in the Good case, and it likely would not have with Pretti.
The difference was the video Randolph posted as a servant of the truth. It showed Pretti on the job as an ICU nurse, a healer and actual patriot, saying much the same words a Trumpster might over a deceased veteran, only with absolutely no hypocrisy.
This 2024 hospital video made it all but impossible even for Trumpsters to keep lying about last week’s video from the scene. Trump, as always, went into blame mode. His erstwhile golden boy Bovino was demoted and kept off social media.
By posting the hospital video, Randolph did not just stay on the right side of history; he made it. History is what breaks through lies, and the clip of Pretti’s tribute to Randolph’s father shows that agents who were supposedly after “the worst of the worst” killed the very best of the best.
That truth also further dispelled the lies about Good. The names Alex Pretti and Renee Good now become part of history, along with James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner, the three civil rights workers slain by the Ku Klux Klan. Those three deaths in Mississippi helped propel the country toward advances in social justice that are now mocked as “woke” by those on the political right who are on the wrong side of history, who speak of the rule of law even as they enforce the law of the ruler in Minneapolis and elsewhere.
The killings of Pretti and Good have triggered a growing revulsion towards this trampling of principles that, in fact, make America great. Mississippi’s summer of freedom in 1964 may someday be joined in our nation’s chronicles by Minnesota’s winter of freedom in 2026.
Randolph and others continue to fight the good fight. He noted that his father, who served from 1965 and was stationed at Wheelus Air Base in Libya, had left the military in 1969 to become a public relations man, but put that to work in service of his country in 1981. He arranged to install a 300 square foot yellow ribbon around a 32-story office tower in Minneapolis to welcome the American hostages back from Iran.
He had done his most significant public relations work posthumously.
“His last PR client was Alex Pretti, and likely most important relationship,” Randolph told the Daily Beast.
The post Why I Honor My Hero Vet Dad With Truth About His Nurse Alex Pretti appeared first on The Daily Beast.
