SEAL of Honor (8 page)

After the flag was folded, Master Chief Petty Officer Gary Lee delivered three shell casings from the twenty-one-gun salute to the officer in charge, who placed them inside the flag and tucked the end inside the fold. The folded flag looked like a cocked hat, which reminds us of those who served under General George Washington, and under Captain John Paul Jones.

After the folding of the flag, the clouds parted and a bright ray of sunshine reflected off Michael’s casket. Dan and Maureen looked at each other and managed a smile through their tears.

The honor guard team leader delivered the folded flag to Lee. He then turned and approached Captain Bisset, who stood with Father Coyle and Rear Admiral Maguire. Lee cradled the flag with left hand over right and with the stripes facing toward the sky. He then sharply flipped the flag, right hand over left, with the blue field facing toward the sky and remained motionless. Bisset stepped forward, slowly saluted, and accepted the flag, right hand over left. Lee stepped back, saluted, turned, and resumed his position. Bisset slowly walked over to the Murphy family.

Maureen stood with John to her left and Dan stood to her right under the large green canopy. Captain Bisset who shared an emotional closeness with the Murphy family, was relieved to see that Maureen wore dark glasses that eliminated direct eye contact.

“Maureen, on behalf of the president of the United States and the secretary of the navy, please accept this flag as a symbol of your son Michael’s outstanding and faithful service to his country and the United States Navy.” With a whisper-quiet response of “Thank you,” she accepted the flag and clutched it to her breast, as a mother would hold her infant. Bisset saluted, turned sharply, and returned to his position.

Next, SEALs Jim Quattromani, Jerry Caldwell, and James Westin of SDVT-1 approached Heather, who was dressed in black, ashen-faced, and physically supported by her mother, Lynda, and her sister Brianne. With all three at full attention, Quattromani, who was in the center, held the flag and dropped to his right knee and looked into Heather’s tear-filled eyes. “Heather, on behalf of the president of the United States and the secretary of the navy, please accept this flag as a symbol of your fiancé Michael’s outstanding and faithful service to his country and the United States Navy.”

Accepting the folded flag, Heather exploded in an agonizing cry that released a flood of tears from many of the mourners. As her tears flowed, they rolled down her face and onto the flag she clutched to her abdomen.

The SEALs then formed a line on each side of the casket and removed their Tridents, the golden insignia of a Navy SEAL. Then, one at a time, each man approached the casket, saluted, and laid his Trident on the top of the casket, again saluted, then stepped back into formation. As Lieutenant Haffele placed his Trident on Michael’s casket, Dan remembered the words in Haffele’s letter. This solemn ceremony proceeded for nearly twenty minutes. In all, thirty golden SEAL Tridents rested atop Michael’s casket. Father Coyle then resumed his position at the head of the casket and delivered the Committal. and concluded the public service with the Benediction.

At the conclusion of the public ceremony and after the crowd had dispersed, Michael’s personal friends Jimmie and Owen O’Callaghan, James Emmerich, and Jay Keenan, along with Lieutenant Commander Muse and Lieutenant Widenhofer, returned Michael’s casket to the waiting hearse for the short ride to his final resting place for an intimate graveside ceremony to celebrate an earthly life that had been all too short, but very well lived.

As the hearse disappeared behind the cover of a small grove of trees, Eddie McElhone asked the driver to stop. While the driver watched, Eddie unlocked and opened the casket and placed the SEAL tridents around Michael’s torso before proceeding to the gravesite.

After the brief graveside ceremony, family, friends, and a “widowed” fiancée slowly walked away with heads bowed as tears flowed down their faces. Several turned back to look at Michael’s casket several times before they reached their cars; each time the sun’s bright light reflected off the casket.

In a memorable moment, as Widenhofer and his wife, Jennifer, walked back toward the car, both looked back at the gravesite and watched as Jim Quattromani, up until that moment a pillar of strength and courage for the Murphy and Duggan
families, approached Michael’s casket. Although not close enough to see his face, they saw Jim gently place both his hands on Michael’s casket, then lower his head as his body trembled uncontrollably for several minutes. They both watched in silence at the depth of the unbreakable bond of the warrior culture.

After everyone had left the area, Eddie approached the casket. Having worked tirelessly over the past several days and unable to properly grieve for a family hero—a national hero—he now took his own personal moment.

As Dan, Maureen, Karen, and Kristen walked back to their car, Maureen heard her cell phone ring. Her first instinct was to ignore it until later, but something prompted her to take it from her purse. Her cell phone signaled she had received a text message. She pushed the button to retrieve the message, and the words “Momma, home safe and sound. Mike” appeared on the screen. In shock, she dropped the phone, gasped, and covered her mouth. Maureen then picked up the phone and just stared at the message screen for several seconds before handing the phone to Dan. They looked at each other and managed a smile through their tears.

It had become Michael’s practice to call or text message his parents whenever he left New York to let them know that he had arrived safely at his destination. Both Dan and Maureen remembered that they had not received a message after Michael’s arrival back in Hawaii the previous March for what had turned out to be his last deployment. Now, apparently, Maureen had received that message. These devout Catholic parents, who believe that everything happens for a reason, felt sure that this was Michael’s way of telling them that he had arrived at his eternal home, safe and sound.

As Eddie concluded his prayers, he checked the casket for the final time and watched as he lowered it into the concrete vault below. United States Navy SEAL Lieutenant Michael P. Murphy was now at his earthly rest. A rest well earned and deserved, but as a Navy SEAL, he remains on permanent station “On point” in Section 67, Site 3710 in Calverton National Cemetery, along with 187,000 more of this nation’s military heroes.

CHAPTER FOUR

—GEORGE SANTAYANA, quoted at QuotationsBook,
www.quotationsbook.com/quote/10038
(accessed July 14, 2008)

 

 

 

D
aniel James Murphy, a successful young Suffolk County prosecuting attorney and decorated Vietnam War combat veteran, and Maureen Theresa Jones were married on April 12, 1975, in the Saint Francis DeSales Catholic Church in Patchogue. Located fifty-five miles east of Manhattan, on the South Shore of Long Island, New York, Patchogue is a predominately white, Catholic, blue-collar, working-class village of 12,000 descendants of primarily Italian, German, and—like Dan’s and Maureen’s parents—Irish immigrants.

Dan and Maureen’s first child, described by the doctor as a “beautiful bald baby boy,” was born on May 7, 1976, and named Michael Patrick, after the archangel Michael, one of the principal fifty angels and viewed as the field commander of the Army of God. Michael appears in the book of Daniel as one who comes to Gabriel’s aid as the advocate of Israel and a “great prince who stands up for the children. ...”

Dan and Maureen took Michael home to their two-bedroom, second-story apartment in Holtsville, New York, on Long Island, where Charlie, their very protective black, flat-coat retriever, awaited their arrival. Charlie became Michael’s constant companion over the next several years and kept a watchful and protective eye on him.

It became very clear when he was a toddler that Michael loved the water. At a backyard cookout at Dan’s parents’ home, Maureen saw Michael, not even two years old, climbing the stairs of the four-foot-high swimming pool. She took off to grab him, but just as she reached the ladder, he jumped into the water. Frantic, Maureen climbed to the top and saw Michael underwater with a big smile on his face. She reached down and pulled him out. Trying not to scare him, she told him that he was not permitted in the water without his inflatable life jacket. As Maureen
turned to retrieve the jacket, Michael jumped back into the pool, surfaced, and sloshed his way to the side with a big grin on his face.

In December 1978, two-year-old Michael and his family moved into their newly built house on Old Medford Avenue. On their first day in their new house, Maureen took Michael upstairs and showed him his room. That evening, when Maureen was putting Michael to bed, he pointed to his diapers and said, “Not these, Mommy, not these. I’m a big boy.” Michael never wore diapers after that—and never had an “accident.”

The following summer in June, while at the home of their next-door neighbors, Ralph and Kathie Belmonte, Michael bolted for the large in-ground swimming pool and jumped in before Dan could get to him. By the time Dan jumped in, Michael had surfaced and got to the other side of the pool using a rudimentary swimming motion. When Dan lifted him out of the pool, Michael turned around, raised his arms into the air, and flashed a large grin.

Maureen frequently took him to the nearby Holtsville public pool and allowed him to frolic around in the baby pool. Although initially satisfied, he soon turned his attention to the larger pool. With his life jacket in place, Maureen took Michael into the pool with her, much to his delight.

One day in the summer of 1979, Maureen and Michael were enjoying a walk in the park in Holtsville when they came upon the town’s diving pool. Michael bolted and began climbing the twelve-foot ladder. The lifeguard on duty frantically blew his whistle and began yelling at Michael to get down.

Hurriedly, Maureen climbed the ladder and talked calmly to Michael, hoping to catch up to him before he fell. But Michael, who was very quick, reached the top of the ladder and, without the slightest evidence of fear, ran out onto the board before she could reach him. Ignoring his mother’s warnings, Michael jumped off the diving board, which immediately sent the lifeguard into the water. As Michael surfaced he again began his own particular swimming motion to the side of the pool. Unassisted, he reached the side, where the lifeguard lifted him out of the water. Michael stood proudly with a big smile on his face. Frightened by the experience, Maureen took Michael home, telling him, “We won’t be doing that anymore.”

Michael was reared in a loving home by parents with a strong moral clarity and a directed sense of purpose. With a father who served as a local prosecuting attorney and extended family members who served as police officers, firefighters, and other public servants, Michael learned early the virtue of sacrifice and selfless service to others.

As a toddler, Michael’s favorite book was Watty Piper’s
The Little Engine That Could
, a children’s story used to teach the value of optimism and hard work. Michael knew the story by heart, and would slowly stride from room to room acting like a train engine, saying, “I think I can, I think I can, I think I can.” After making the
rounds through every room, he began running as fast as he could, saying, “I thought I could, I thought I could, I thought I could.” The lessons learned from this story carried Michael through some of the most challenging times in his life.

Despite their best efforts, the young parents were frequent visitors to their doctor’s office and the local emergency room to have their active and fearless child treated for cuts and other accidental injuries. After several visits for stitches, Maureen asked, “Why is it always my kid?” Dan later related, “Thank God I was a prosecutor, because I am sure otherwise they would have thought this kid was being abused.”

When Michael was age three, Dan’s youngest brother Brian was in the backyard chopping wood. Brian was the “black sheep” of Dan’s family. He was gregarious, but lacked considered judgment when it came to mature decision making regarding employment, his wife, and his two children. Maureen asked Michael to go to the edge of the patio and tell his uncle that lunch was ready. Instead of stopping at the edge of the patio, Michael went up to Brian, who didn’t notice him and accidently hit him with the butt of the ax and knocked him down, leaving a large, heavily bleeding gash above his right eye. Brian carried him into the house.

When Maureen saw the gaping wound, she panicked, and excused herself to regain her composure as her sister tended to Michael. Maureen said, “I never panicked when it is someone else’s kid, but when it is mine, I just went to pieces.” Michael saw his mother crying and began wiping the blood from his face, saying, “It’s OK, Mommy, it’s OK, it doesn’t hurt. See, Mommy, it doesn’t hurt.” She was overcome with emotion at Michael’s sensitivity. Because the large, gaping wound obviously needing sutures, they made yet another trip to the hospital in nearby Smithtown.

During the summer of 1982, Michael would sneak out of the house early on Sunday mornings while his parents slept. He and Charlie would walk next door to visit the Belmontes, who always had their Sunday breakfast on the back patio. As Michael approached the Belmontes, he would say, “My mommy and daddy won’t feed me breakfast. Can I have one of your bagels?” As they laughed, they pulled out a chair for him and served him a toasted bagel with lots of butter and a glass of milk, Michael’s favorite. This soon became a ritual for young Michael throughout the summer, and one that the Belmontes soon joyfully came to expect. After a couple of weeks, the Belmontes told Dan and Maureen of Michael’s Sunday morning ritual. Although embarrassed, his parents got a big laugh at the tale.