Dan Liljenquist rising from ashes of plane crash

His family remains his focal point (Dan and Brooke had five young children at the time of the crash, and 8-month-old Eden makes it six kids for the Liljenquist clan). Writing in his journal — something he did every day during 2010 — is a pursuit now as before. While he still rabidly cheers for BYU's football team, he simply lost interest in most of the other sports entities he previously followed and out of the blue became a diehard fan of soccer and the English Premier League.

Any discussion of Dan Liljenquist's interests wouldn't be complete without examining how he views the role of politics in his life. Although he personally considers his political career to be something akin to a calling, he speaks openly about having witnessed elected office "pickling the brains" of well-intentioned politicians who lost their bearings and fell from grace. In fact, Liljenquist candidly wonders whether politics could someday be his road to perdition as well.

"I (fear) that the next time I die I'm not ready to go," he explains. "The great tragedy of my life, if this was a Greek tragedy, would be to have not died if I was ready to die and later I ruined myself. I worry about that. My wife worries about that. We worry about that. Because that would be a great tragedy, no matter what accomplishment you make in the world, if you lose sight and lose your way — and I see so many people in politics do that."

Undergirding every move Liljenquist makes in the political arena is the new companion he cannot shake — urgency.

"I wasn't elected to get reelected," he said. "I was elected to actually do stuff. … I have always known conceptually that I was going to die, but it became a reality to me. And because of that I feel like I've got nothing to lose.

"What I feel like I've got to lose is time — that's why I'm not interested in waiting around. So I try and take on the toughest things, and if you fail (then) you fail trying to do the important things, trying to do the great things, the things that if you succeed will change things forever."

e-mail: jaskar@desnews.com