Tom Sileo

by Brothers Forever

  Despite the difficult memories the Manions, determined not to let their grief spoil a special evening for the Looneys, couldn’t wait to chat with Brendan. Where was he taking Amy for their honeymoon? Did he have any news from his SEAL commanders on when he’d go to Iraq?

  The Manions didn’t know he was just hours away from deploying. Brendan was still waiting for the chance to tell them.

  Although Janet and Tom saw Travis everywhere, they still marveled at the reception’s ambience. Light from the setting sun glistened off the water and straight through the balcony doors, where it met the dance floor. Custom floral centerpieces, arranged by Amy’s mom, were on every table. Handsome military men were everywhere, many holding the hands of dazzling dates in gorgeous gowns. It was almost perfect.

  As is the case at many weddings, the bride and groom breathed a sigh of relief when the church ceremony was finally over and the time came to eat, drink, and be merry. Naval Academy guys who weren’t in Iraq, Afghanistan, or some faraway base already had drinks in hand and were ready to party.

  When it was time to snap a few pictures of Brendan and his side of the wedding party, the groom made a beeline toward Tom.

  “We’re taking some pictures outside and you’re going to take Travis’s place,” Brendan said.

  “No, that’s alright buddy, you don’t have to do that,” Tom said with a smile.

  “Respectfully, sir, you’re getting in these pictures,” Brendan said. Though not accustomed to receiving orders from officers junior to his rank, there was no way Tom was turning down the SEAL’s request.

  Amy was also determined to make this a fun night, and anyone who started asking Brendan about leaving for Iraq was politely asked to “check it at the door.” For one Saturday night there would be no war, except for two special, unexpected moments that the Manions would never forget.

  As Brendan and Amy made the rounds of their guests, Brendan excused himself to have a private talk with Tom and Janet that he had been rehearsing in his mind. He hadn’t had a long conversation with Travis’s parents since ten months earlier, when he gave that stirring speech honoring his roommate before the 2007 Marine Corps Marathon. Keeping his emotions in check, Brendan finally told the Manions where he was headed in forty-eight hours.

  “I’m leaving on Monday for Iraq,” he said, afraid to look into the eyes of his best friend’s grieving mother.

  “What?” Janet said. “You’re not going on a honeymoon?”

  “No ma’am, although we do hope to take one eventually,” Brendan answered.

  There was a brief moment of silence until Tom, sensing Brendan’s uneasiness, spoke up.

  “You stay safe over there, buddy,” said Tom, drink in one hand and patting Brendan on the back with the other.

  “And you stay in the back of the fight,” Janet said as her emotions swelled.

  “I think you know me better than that,” Brendan, forcing a smile, said candidly before hugging a tearful Janet and saying he’d be right back. It was time for his brothers to give their joint best man speech.

  Steve and Billy Looney had bonded even further with their brother as teammates on Navy’s men’s lacrosse team, which made the improbable run to the 2004 NCAA national championship game. They also grieved for Travis, but were determined to ensure that Brendan’s wedding night—the last time they would see him before he left for Iraq—was fun and memorable. So when it came time to team up for their mutual speech, the Looney brothers, both of whom bore a striking resemblance to Brendan, made light of their twenty-seven-year-old brother’s stoicism in a chandelier-lit ballroom.

  Steve and Billy kidded their brother for being “a man of few words.” After he met Amy, they explained, he wouldn’t stop talking about her. They told a story about the first time they heard Brendan tell Amy he loved her, which reinforced that their older brother and fellow midshipman was serious about the pretty Johns Hopkins student he had met in Baltimore.

  Their parents and three sisters, Bridget, Erin, and Kellie, smiled as Steve and Billy proposed a toast to their big brother and the new sister-in-law they were welcoming into the Looney family.

  “Stay happy, stay healthy, and stay safe,” the brothers said as applause and the clinking of spoons against glasses filled the room.

  After the audience-requested kiss and subsequent speech by the maid of honor, Amy and Brendan made more rounds to thank their guests for coming. Brendan approached the bar, where Travis normally would have been waiting to hand him a Guinness, to spend a few minutes with some friends. He declined to do a shot with his buddies, not wanting to risk getting drunk on his wedding night or spending Sunday hung over. For all he knew, it could be his last full day with the woman he had just married.

  “Seriously, bro,” said one of his Naval Academy friends, who had started drinking earlier in the day at Pusser’s, the downstairs bar. “Let’s have a drink for Travis.”

  Brendan nodded and took a few small sips of beer while talking about lacrosse and football with the guys. But in that moment, all he could think about was his earlier conversation with the Manions and the pain they were feeling.

  Suddenly Brendan realized that the Lonestar song “Amazed” was about to play, meaning it was time for his first wedding dance with Amy.

  Even though they wanted to see the dance, Tom and Janet—still rattled by learning that Brendan was leaving for Iraq—retreated to a balcony overlooking the harbor. They knew Travis’s friend would soon face considerable danger as a Navy SEAL.

  As the Manions stared into the water, Brendan stared into Amy’s eyes back on the dance floor. Fittingly, the song’s lyrics describe the emotions of two lovers looking squarely at each other.

  Amy rested her head on Brendan’s broad shoulders and squeezed him tightly as the song’s chorus—“baby I’m amazed by you”—soared through the crowded ballroom. She was so proud of her new husband, who had overcome an enormous obstacle—the death of a dear friend at the start of his BUD/S training—to become a Navy SEAL.

  Next came a moment Brendan would always treasure: a dance with his caring, compassionate mother. From always being there for Brendan while he grew up to flying across the country to cook his meals and do his laundry after he finished Hell Week at BUD/S, there was nothing Maureen wouldn’t do for her children. Brendan felt truly blessed to call her his mom.

  Janet, who was standing just a few feet off the dance floor, couldn’t help but think about all the special moments she would never get to enjoy with her own son. But she also was genuinely happy that Maureen got to see her son marry a wonderful woman and mature into such an honorable young man. No wonder Travis always thought the world of Brendan and his family.

  Tom, meanwhile, was still standing outside on the balcony. He was looking at the boats and reflecting on the sacrifice he knew Brendan was making by leaving so soon to go to war. After spending more than a quarter century in the Marines and watching his only son leave for Iraq twice, Tom understood what thousands of young men and women were giving up by volunteering to spend years of their lives in dangerous places. Tom knew how much Brendan wanted to be a Navy SEAL and marveled at how hard he had worked to become one. But still, he worried about his son’s good friend going into harm’s way.

  As the mother-son dance ended, the entire audience applauded when Brendan kissed Maureen’s cheek. They shared more hugs, laughs, and smiles before Brendan started walking back to Amy so the couple could resume greeting and thanking guests.

  That’s when Brendan saw Janet, who was about to go back out on the balcony to find her husband. Having just shared such a special dance with his own mother, he thought about the grief Travis’s mom was still experiencing. Almost instinctively, Brendan reached into the pocket of his mess dress uniform and then got Janet’s attention.

  “If you don’t mind, there’s something I want to give you,” he said.

  Inside Brendan’s pocket was the gold trident pin that every Navy SEAL makes almost impossible sacrifices, during many m
onths of training, including Hell Week, to earn. But to Brendan it also represented Travis. In front of more than 250 people, he took out the trident and gently placed it in Janet’s right hand.

  “This is the pin they gave me last month at graduation,” Brendan said. “I want you to have it.”

  “Oh, Brendan,” Janet said. She began crying, not for herself, but for the heartache this young man was experiencing on his wedding night.

  “Whenever things got rough, Travis was always there to keep me going,” Brendan said. “I never stopped thinking about him.”

  Also becoming emotional, he hugged his friend’s grieving mother.

  “No matter what, Travis will always be in my heart,” he said. “Amy and I would do anything for you.”

  Very few guests could hear what Brendan and Janet were saying, but several in the ballroom understood the significance of a moment usually seen only in movies. This was the real thing.

  After Brendan and Janet’s tearful embrace, it was time for the dancing to resume as Brendan and Amy’s families, as well as their guests, enjoyed one of the most jubilant wedding receptions anyone could remember. But after that night, the SEAL trident would be with Janet, just as the bracelet bearing Travis’s name would be on Brendan’s wrist.

  Brendan was the first of the Looney kids to get married, and that night he laughed and sang with his brothers and sisters just like on those memorable summer days growing up in suburban Maryland and hanging out in the “cool room.” They knew how hard it was for Brendan to leave his new wife and deploy overseas and were determined to make him happy by welcoming Amy into the cool room, too.

  After dinner was over, Janet went back out to the balcony to call her daughter.

  “Hi, Ryan,” Janet said. “Did you put Maggie to bed?”

  “Hey mom, yes, she said her prayers and went to sleep,” Ryan said in her strong, distinctive voice. “How’s the wedding? Are you and dad holding up okay?”

  Janet’s voice, normally strong like her daughter’s, began to crack.

  “It’s been hard, honey,” her mom said. “Brendan told us he’s going to Iraq on Monday.”

  “Mom, Brendan’s going to be okay,” Ryan said. “Trav won’t let anything happen to him.”

  “He gave me his trident pin,” she said. “He said Travis will always be in his heart.”

  After they said their good-byes, Ryan sent a text message to her dad. The father and daughter had grown even closer after Travis was killed, and the three surviving Manions had all sworn to stay strong together as one tight-knit family unit.

  “Is mom okay?” she wrote.

  “Tough night,” Tom wrote back a few minutes later.

  Tom and Janet, worn down emotionally, went downstairs to Pusser’s, the large waterfront bar and restaurant below the ballroom, to bid farewell to Brendan and Amy as the new couple joined the after-party. The Manions navigated through the loud, crowded bar, where a large wedding group was laughing, drinking, and telling funny stories.

  They discovered Brendan, Steve, and Billy’s Navy lacrosse coach, Richie Meade, buying drinks for the entire wedding party. He gave Brendan and Amy a bottle of champagne, which neither intended to drink that night but wound up sipping from anyway. But when they saw Tom and Janet Manion walk in, almost everyone in the loud bar area, especially those who knew Travis, rushed to offer them a drink.

  When the shots of Patrón were brought, Brendan proposed a toast.

  “Let’s have a drink for Travis,” he said.

  “Naah, let’s have one for you and Amy,” Tom said to Brendan. “Travis would have wanted this night to be all about you.”

  Janet, reaching deep down for one last bit of strength after an exhausting day, somehow came up with the perfect toast.

  “Brendan and Amy, we know Travis is here celebrating with you tonight,” she said. “He loves you, we love you, and we wish you all the best.”

  “Hear, hear!” Brendan, Amy, and the wedding party said in unison.

  After the toast, Janet couldn’t help but peek over at the table where Travis, Brendan, and their friends had drunk and sung until 2:00 a.m. after the Mathews’s wedding in December. He was just here.

  This time, the Manions retired for the night long before 2:00 a.m., when Brendan and Amy finally left Pusser’s. Had it been a normal wedding night, the new couple probably would have headed upstairs earlier, but with Brendan on his way to Iraq, they wanted to have as much fun as possible with friends and family. Later, when her husband embarked on his SEAL missions, Amy would return to San Diego to become one of the thousands of young military spouses with a loved one deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan.

  Waking up late on Sunday morning, Brendan and Amy lay in bed watching a movie, refusing to answer their phones or look at the clock. A wedding brunch with relatives downstairs at Pusser’s was scheduled, and the newlyweds knew they would spend most of the day going through gifts to make sure Amy knew who to send thank-you cards to while Brendan was away, but these couple of hours would be for them and them only.

  As they watched TV, the new bride began to sense that something was bothering Brendan, who was much quieter than usual. When she asked him what was wrong, Brendan described his emotional conversation with the Manions at the wedding. After comforting her husband, Amy told Brendan that she was proud of him.

  Despite their best efforts to stop the clock, Monday arrived, and it was time for the Navy SEAL and his new bride to separate their aching hearts by thousands of miles. As Amy prepared to leave first for a work-related conference, she tried to keep her composure because Brendan and several of his family members were to accompany her to the airport. Still, these were the last few minutes the bride and groom could spend alone, and Amy couldn’t help but shed some tears.

  Amy knew Brendan was intelligent and extremely well trained. Like Travis, her husband was a compassionate warrior who deeply respected the Iraqi people. But Amy also knew Brendan’s deployment to Iraq would be dangerous, and she felt that she had to say something before he left.

  “Don’t try to be a hero over there,” Amy said. “Just be my husband.”

  Brendan embraced his new bride and promised to be careful.

  “I don’t want to leave, even though it has to be done,” he said. “But I wouldn’t want to come home to anyone but you.”

  After telling each other “I love you” and sharing one last hug and kiss, it was time to go to Baltimore-Washington International Airport. When they arrived Amy, with tears filling the eyes Brendan would dream about in the months ahead, spoke three words before heading inside. “See you later,” she said.

  “See you later,” the unusually emotional Navy SEAL responded.

  Back in Doylestown it was once again dinnertime, which meant little Maggie was about to say her prayers. Right after she asked the Lord to bless her Uncle Travis, Ryan asked her to add another prayer for Brendan.

  Maggie nodded her head and smiled at her mom.

  “God bless Uncle Travis,” she said. “And God bless Brendan too.”

  A few hours later Brendan sat on a plane, unable to communicate with Amy. Surrounded by married couples on the commercial flight, Brendan was filled with the same empty feeling that often consumed him whenever he and Amy were apart.

  This would be the toughest challenge yet. Forty-eight hours after marrying the woman he had met and quickly fallen in love with five years earlier, Brendan was on his way to Iraq. Though leaving his bride was difficult, Brendan was thankful he had been able to marry the girl of his dreams. Travis, who had often spoken of someday meeting the right woman and starting a family, never had that opportunity.

  With the plane ascending, Brendan looked down at his shiny new wedding ring, which signified the love he shared with Amy. Then he looked at the black-and-silver bracelet on his right wrist, which signified the memory of a close friend he would never forget.

  11

  MOVING FORWARD

  “As a warrior, he strode like a giant acros
s the battlefield of the eastern portion of Al Anbar Province.”

  In 2008, then US Marine Lieutenant General John Allen visited Doylestown to present the Silver Star and Bronze Star with Valor to First Lieutenant Travis Manion’s family.

  “When his unit was ambushed on that fateful day in April in Fallujah, when the Doc and his fellow Marine were shot down, Travis went forward,” General Allen said. “Under fire, Travis, absolutely fearless in his resolve to save his fellow warriors, left the safety of a covered position to suppress the enemy and extricate his wounded, and when he was hit, Travis was moving forward, selflessly exposing himself to enemy fire.”

  Brendan never had the chance to say good-bye to Travis in person. General Allen, who had been leading US Marines in Fallujah on April 29, 2007, did. As Commandant of the US Naval Academy from 2001 to 2003, Allen knew Travis and shared another connection to the Manion family through Tom’s good friend General Dave Papak.

  “I was unprepared for seeing Travis that day,” Allen later wrote to Papak, who had helped with the notification process and Travis’s homecoming. “Not unprepared for the circumstances or the human pieces of this, but seeing one of these young mids lying there. For me, the circle is now complete.”

  In 2007, Travis left an indelible mark on a general who would later assume command of all US forces in Afghanistan.

  “2007 was a remarkable year in Al Anbar. . . . It was the year that began the turning of that province, and in many ways the remainder of the war in Iraq followed what began in Al Anbar,” General Allen now said. “Travis was a part of that . . . a big part of what became known, and what historians are now calling ‘The Turning.’”

  In 2008, Brendan picked up where his Naval Academy roommate had left off.

  Lieutenant Brendan Looney, Honor Man of US Navy SEAL BUD/S Class 265 and a recent graduate of SQT Class 266, was tracing the footsteps of Travis, who the general said “strode like a giant across the eastern portion of Al Anbar province.” Newly married and in peak physical condition after earning his gold trident, Brendan eagerly joined SEAL Team Three in the middle of the elite special operations group’s Iraq deployment.