Tom Sileo

by Brothers Forever

  Brown finished the story, beginning to smile.

  “He then looked the man in his eyes, and said with his 12-year-old voice: ‘What you’re doing here is wrong. He’s just the same as me.’”

  Brown ended his remarks by saying how much he missed and loved his friend. He received enthusiastic applause, then introduced one of Travis’s best high school buddies, Sean Kent. After making the audience laugh with several creative lines, including “you can’t send a boy to do a Manion’s job,” Kent introduced the next speaker.

  “At this time, I’m going to hand it over to Brendan Looney, who was Travis’s roommate at Navy,” he said.

  Brendan, who hadn’t been nervous before Hell Week or during a deployment to Iraq, had confessed to Amy that he was petrified about speaking that night. He was worried not about himself or his image, but about adequately honoring Travis in front of so many loved ones and friends.

  Amy had also been surprised when Brendan, who didn’t care about fashion and usually dressed in a relaxed style when he was out of uniform, had asked her to take him shopping earlier in the day. He had bought a new button-down, blue-striped dress shirt and a pair of brown khaki pants.

  “Amy, what if I break down up there?” Brendan had asked as they walked through the mall.

  “Then you cry, Brendan, and everyone will cry with you,” Amy had replied. “There’s nothing wrong with crying.”

  But the aspiring Navy SEAL never wanted to show weakness, especially while paying tribute to Travis, who in Brendan’s mind defined what it meant to be a warrior.

  Brendan looked solid, handsome, and lean as he settled into the podium, which had a gold poster on the front that read “GO TEAM TRAVIS.”

  Looking out over the hotel ballroom, Brendan suddenly felt pressure building in his throat after wishing everyone “good evening.” Despite spending the entire day figuring out how to avoid becoming emotional, seeing everyone sitting in front of him, especially Tom, Janet, Ryan, Dave, and Maggie, hit him harder than any explosion he had experienced during combat simulation exercises. Less than a year earlier, Travis and Brendan had still been hanging out, laughing, and going to Redskins-Eagles games. Now he was giving a speech after Travis’s death.

  As Brendan looked down and briefly covered his mouth, the only sound in the room was a barely audible whimper from little Maggie, who was up past her bedtime. Everyone else was quiet and motionless as the sorrow on Brendan’s face became more evident.

  Almost no one in the room knew this young man was about to become a Navy SEAL. They just knew he was a very close friend.

  After beginning by thanking the Manion family and again looking toward their table, Brendan stopped. To his astonishment, tears were starting to form. In that moment he realized, as he never had before, that Travis really wasn’t coming home from Iraq.

  After again covering his lower lip, gently shaking his head, and taking a breath so deep it was audible through the microphone, Brendan continued his speech.

  “I was lucky enough to room with Travis at the Naval Academy for two years,” he said, pausing and taking a deep breath. “Throughout our time, we became very close.”

  Brendan was now on the verge of tears, and many could hear it in his voice. Though Brendan believed he was showing weakness, those watching him marveled at his courage in stepping up to the microphone. Clearly this young man was in pain after losing someone so close.

  “I think it was mostly because we had very similar views on many things and enjoyed a lot of the same activities,” Brendan said. “In a very short time, he became another brother to me.”

  Still fighting tears, Brendan began to hit his stride, launching into a story about taking a trip to Texas with Travis for a wedding. Slowly but surely, he was overcoming his emotions, taking a few more deep breaths in between speaking.

  “It was on this trip that Travis solidified his position in my family . . . as an extended member of my family,” said Brendan, who added that his mom, sister, brother, and fiancée were all there.

  After sharing several humorous anecdotes involving his brother Billy and his unique rapport with Travis, Brendan had the tearful audience laughing. He showed them a funny picture of Billy and Travis from the trip, which helped everyone smile, including Brendan.

  “It reminds me of all the good times we had,” Brendan said of the picture. “I think it also shows how easygoing and likable a person Travis was.”

  As his voice began to crack, Brendan’s well-guarded emotional levee finally broke.

  “He was a great friend, and I’ll never forget him, and I miss him,” Brendan said.

  The ensuing ovation was universal, heartfelt, and lengthy. As Brendan stood there listening to the applause, he may have realized that his fiancée was right. If there was ever an appropriate time to reveal his emotions, this was it.

  “Your speech was beautiful, Brendan,” Janet said afterward as Tom nodded in agreement. “I know Travis was up there smiling.

  “We also brought two things that we thought you should have,” she continued. “We meant to give them to you that night at the house.”

  “This is Travis’s knife,” Tom said. “He got this when he first joined First Recon and took it with him both times to Iraq. . . . It was given back to us with his things. I couldn’t think of anyone who deserved this more than you.”

  Before Brendan could say “thank you,” Janet put her arm around him to give him the second memento.

  “And here’s a bracelet we had made to honor Travis,” she said. “It’s the same one that we all wear, and when things get tough or dangerous, I want you to make sure you’re wearing it.”

  The bracelet was black and engraved with three lines of silver lettering:

  1ST LT. TRAVIS MANION, USMC

  SPARTAN, HERO, LEADER

  KIA IRAQI FREEDOM, 29 APR. ’07

  “Always remember,” Janet said. “Someone is looking out for you.”

  Brendan hugged Janet, shook Tom’s hand, and thanked them both, then held up the bracelet and promised, “I’ll wear this every single day for the rest of my life.”

  Two days later, on the Monday morning after the Marine Corps Marathon, Tom, Janet, Ryan, and Dave stood in the Oval Office as President George W. Bush opened the door and walked straight toward Travis’s mom.

  He gave her a hug.

  “Janet, I am so sorry,” the president said. “Your loss is my loss.”

  “Thank you, Mr. President,” Janet replied.

  After hugging Ryan and shaking Tom’s and Dave’s hands, President Bush expressed his appreciation for the men and women who had served so bravely overseas, including Travis.

  “Today, I’m not the commander-in-chief,” the president said. “I’m the consoler-in-chief.”

  As the visit concluded, Ryan gave President Bush a T-shirt from Sunday’s Marine Corps Marathon.

  After thanking Ryan for the shirt, the president said he would make sure it was stored in a safe place. Ryan then shared a detail about the marathon.

  “Travis was going to run the marathon this year and actually signed up for it before he left,” she said. “So after he was killed, we all started training.”

  Ryan told the president that her dad wore both his and Travis’s numbers during the race. At the marathon, she explained, runners are given computer chips to put in their running shoes so they can accurately record race times.

  “My dad had both his and Travis’s chips, but before the race started, he forgot to note which chip was on which sneaker,” Ryan said. “He wanted Travis to finish first, but now we’re not sure how it turned out. . . . We’re going to check tonight.”

  The president, who was moved by the story and the Manion family’s courage, met with and wrote letters to thousands of military families during his eight years in office. With no end to the wars in Iraq or Afghanistan in sight, President Bush would soon pass the torch to his successor, who would be thrust into the dual wartime role of commander and consoler-in-
chief.

  After giving an emotional speech on Saturday night and running the full Marine Corps Marathon on Sunday in the nation’s capital, Brendan reported for duty first thing Monday morning on the Southern California island of Coronado. SQT was just a few months away, and in the meantime, he and Sarver would tackle JOTC and Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape (SERE) training. Though Brendan had cleared a major hurdle toward becoming a Navy SEAL, much hard work still lay ahead.

  As Monday began, few of those stationed at NAB Coronado knew that just twenty-four hours earlier, Brendan had been running 26.2 miles on the East Coast. While he drank a lot of coffee and took plenty of Advil that day, not once did Brendan complain about being weary, achy, or exhausted. No matter what it took, he was going to salute Travis by running the entire marathon.

  In the shadow of the Iwo Jima Memorial, Brendan could picture Travis running next to him as he summoned his last ounce of strength to cross the finish line. The marathon may have symbolized their last race, but no matter what was on the horizon, Brendan knew Travis would always push him forward.

  Later, when the Manions got the official results of the 2007 Marine Corps Marathon, they learned that Tom had finished in 7,567th place. Sure enough, Travis finished 7,566th, a split second before his dad.

  10

  MAGGIE’S PRAYER

  “God bless Uncle Travis,” a blonde-haired, two-year-old girl said in her soft, tender voice.

  A step down from her family’s kitchen, where little Maggie Rose Borek was saying her prayers at the dinner table, pictures of Travis hung on the living room wall. One photo showed the smiling Marine holding her when she was a baby.

  Old enough to comprehend that her uncle had gone to heaven, Maggie finished her nightly prayers on a muggy summer evening in Doylestown, Pennsylvania. Fourteen months earlier, flag-carrying mourners had solemnly filled Doylestown’s quaint streets to honor Travis after he was killed on April 29, 2007.

  As Maggie prayed for her fallen uncle on July 12, 2008, the city and surrounding Bucks County were bustling with life. Malls and movie theaters were packed; hoagie and ice cream shops had long lines; and most television screens portrayed the 2008 presidential campaign, along with Philadelphia Phillies games, instead of the daily struggles and accomplishments of US troops serving in Iraq and Afghanistan. After Travis died, things went back to normal for almost everyone except the Manions, whose lives had not been the same since two Marines arrived at their door on a horrible Sunday that Maggie was mercifully too young to remember.

  Maggie’s mom and Travis’s sister, Ryan, had been aware of the risks of her younger brother’s post-9/11 military service, but never really thought Maggie would grow up learning about her uncle through stories and pictures. Ryan had even dismissed Travis’s attempt to bring up the possibility of not coming home from Iraq, preferring to imagine a world in which tragedy couldn’t reach her family’s doorstep.

  Ryan and Travis’s parents, Tom and Janet, weren’t in Doylestown that night. They were in Annapolis, Maryland, for the wedding of Amy and Brendan, who were getting married not far from the dorm where Brendan and Travis had roomed together. Ryan had spoken to her mom earlier that day, who had said she was dreading her first overnight stay in Annapolis since Travis’s death. But seeing Brendan for the first time in almost a year would make the pain worthwhile.

  Ryan knew how close Travis had been to Brendan, his now twenty-seven-year-old, former US Naval Academy roommate. She also knew that Travis should have been one of Brendan’s groomsmen, which weighed heavily on her mind as the sun set during a mild Pennsylvania thunderstorm.

  After putting Maggie to bed Ryan, who was six months pregnant with her second child, watched the rain from the window of her darkened upstairs bedroom. The Marine’s pretty older sister, who always wore a bracelet bearing Travis’s name, pictured what should have been happening that night: her brother, her parents, and Brendan laughing up a storm and doing shots of Patrón, just like at their friend Ben Mathews’s wedding shortly before Travis was killed.

  Ryan still spoke about her little brother in the present tense and usually immersed herself in long hours at work to avoid thinking about losing him. But on this Saturday night, there was no escape.

  Sitting in a beautiful, bright Catholic church, Ryan and Travis’s parents were watching Brendan marry Amy Hastings. Now twenty-seven, Amy knew that being the wife of a Navy SEAL would require resilience, which was one of her defining characteristics. Amy had been working full time since she was fifteen years old. Since she had met Brendan during her college years, Amy had also weathered his deployments to Iraq and Korea. Without Amy’s emotional toughness, she and Brendan may have never reached the altar.

  While it was hot and humid in Brendan’s home state of Maryland, the night was foggy for the Manions, who were still in shock from losing their only son. As the wedding festivities kicked off, they felt as though they were looking into the church from the nightmare they had been living outside its walls.

  With the Manions and about 250 other guests watching, a nervous Navy SEAL waited at the altar. Beads of sweat formed on Brendan’s forehead as the tall, bulky, brown-haired groom stood in his black, gold-trimmed US Navy “mess dress” uniform. Awaiting Amy’s grand entrance in her gorgeous ivory gown was even more anxiety invoking than a lengthy room inspection at the Naval Academy or BUD/S training.

  There was no clock in the church, but Brendan may have still been able to hear one ticking. In forty-eight hours the Navy SEAL would deploy to Iraq, where Travis had been killed just fourteen months before.

  If he looked to his left, Brendan would think of his dear friend, who would certainly have stood up in the wedding if he had made it back from Iraq alive. Brendan had already told Amy that he couldn’t handle seeing an empty spot for his departed groomsman next to the altar and his two younger brothers, “best men” Steve and Billy. He also didn’t want to risk upsetting Amy, who was also mourning Travis.

  To the Manions and virtually everyone else, Amy appeared calm and composed as she glided toward the altar and the man she was so excited to be marrying. As Father Damian started the Mass, Amy whispered her love in Brendan’s ear.

  As they held hands, Amy saw the bracelet bearing Travis’s name, which Brendan hadn’t taken off since it was given to him by Travis’s mom in October 2007.

  There were some lighthearted moments as the priest told stories of Brendan harmlessly misbehaving in high school. While pointing out the beauty of the bride, he also recounted a conversation he’d had with Brendan after being introduced to Amy.

  “It was a pleasure meeting your fiancée,” had said Father Damian, who once taught Brendan, his brothers, their father, and several uncles and cousins at DeMatha Catholic High School. “But I’m wondering how a guy like you got so lucky?”

  Everyone laughed, including the Manions, who had barely managed a chuckle in fourteen months.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you Mr. and Mrs. Brendan Looney,” the priest said.

  Brendan looked into Amy’s big brown eyes, which he had admired since the day they met, and kissed his bride as applause echoed through the church.

  While clapping, Janet’s tear-filled eyes met her much taller husband’s. The Manions would never be able to see their only son get married, but they were thrilled to witness Travis’s close friend experiencing such a special moment.

  After pictures had been snapped and hugs exchanged with Brendan’s parents, Kevin and Maureen, the Manions weren’t sure what to do next. They had managed to avoid stopping at their second home just outside the Naval Academy gates before the wedding. The house had so many memories, and they weren’t sure if they wanted to go inside to spend the couple of hours before the reception started at a nearby hotel. Travis, along with Brendan and many other buddies, had spent countless weekends at the house. Janet hadn’t been inside since her son was killed.

  Tom, who had been back a few times, thought visiting the house would be a big step
and gently encouraged his wife to take it. Still, Janet was trembling as they sat in their parked car in front of the bed and breakfast next door. Through the sunlight she could still see Travis sitting on the back porch with his group of friends, which often included Brendan. He was just here.

  Janet stayed in the car, nervously straightening her short, dark hair, while Tom opened the front gate and then the wooden, creaking “front” door, which was on the right side of the house. As Tom gently waved her inside, his wife took a deep breath and said the same quick prayer she had recited after Travis died: “Lord, help me to remember that nothing is going to happen today that you and I together can’t handle.”

  Even though Travis had been killed thousands of miles away, going inside the house felt like returning to the scene of a horrible accident. Janet struggled to breathe at first, but was determined to get through it as Tom put his arm around her. She looked right toward the kitchen, where Travis used to sit and play cards. She looked left toward the living room, where he had watched football games with his dad.

  Travis’s mother then walked upstairs, where she saw a small pile of clothes.

  She collapsed.

  A few of Travis’s T-shirts, including a Navy wrestling shirt he had worn in school, were lying on the floor. Cries of sorrow could be heard that summer evening near downtown Annapolis as an anguished mother longed to hug her son. He was just here.

  Arriving at the Marriott hotel on the waterfront for Brendan and Amy’s wedding reception was another challenge. In December 2006, just before their son had left for his second deployment to Iraq, they had been with Travis at the same Annapolis wedding that Ryan was thinking of earlier in the evening. On that occasion Travis, looking lean, muscular, and strikingly handsome in his full Marine Corps dress uniform, had caused a stir by carrying two bridesmaids into his buddy Ben Mathews’s reception. As Janet and Tom stepped inside the ballroom, they could still hear the laughs and applause of friends, including Brendan, when Travis had made his memorable entrance. He was just here.