Tom Sileo (24 page)

Travis's sister Ryan was just about to leave her prospective store when her cell phone rang. The caller ID said it was from her
parents' house, so it was probably just her mom asking when she would be over for dinner.

“Hello,” Ryan said in an upbeat, confident tone.

The inarticulate screaming of someone who sounded like her mother filled her left ear. Ryan, as anyone would, began to panic.

“Mom? MOM? What's wrong?” she said as her stomach shriveled into knots.

Ryan heard shrieks and sounds of people sobbing.

“Mom, you have to calm down and tell me what's wrong,” Ryan said. “Is it Maggie?”

All she heard was more screaming.

“Mom, did something happen to Maggie?” Ryan repeated.

Suddenly the line was quiet.

“You need to come home,” the voice said.

“Did you call an ambulance?” she said.

“Yes,” the voice said before Ryan could even finish her question.

In complete shock, Ryan hung up the phone and asked her friend to rush her over to her parents' house. The drive was the most tense, frenetic five minutes of the twenty-seven-year-old mother's life, as she asked herself what could have possibly happened to her baby daughter.

Did she fall? Did she stop breathing?
Did Dave, her husband, who was working about an hour away over in West Chester, Pennsylvania, already know?

As the car pulled up to the mailbox at the end of the long driveway, Tom and Gardner stood alone on the front lawn, with all the guests waiting inside near the broken front door. Ryan flung open the passenger's side door and started running toward her dad.

Where is Maggie? Where is the ambulance? What are Corky and Renee Gardner doing here?

As a totally confused, panicked young mother demanded to know what in God's name was going on, Tom met her near the end of the driveway and wrapped his arms around his little girl.

“Travis was killed,” her father said in a solemn monotone.

It was Aunt Annette, not Janet, who had made that frenzied phone call to Ryan. She could now hear Maggie crying inside and knew her baby was okay. But Travis was dead, and just like her mom a few minutes before, Ryan fell to the ground, picturing his face.

“It's not fair,” Ryan screamed in agony while lying in the driveway. “It's not fair!”

Ryan's husband, Dave, who nearly got in an accident after receiving the news while driving, had already made about half of the hour-long drive to Doylestown when he pulled over onto the shoulder of Interstate 276. He was sick to his stomach as he pictured Travis, his brother-in-law and very close friend, returning home from Iraq in a flag-draped casket. Dave had already lost a brother to bone cancer at a young age, and losing Travis felt like the same nightmare all over again.

As he wiped sweat from his forehead and got back onto the road, Dave thought about that night with Travis at the Eagles game in December, just before Travis left for his second deployment. When he had joked with Trav about coming up with a way to avoid another deployment to Iraq, his brother-in-law had suddenly grown serious and uttered those five words Dave had never forgotten: “If not me, then who. . . .”

Travis's death was a punishing, inconceivable blow, but Dave realized his brother-in-law had backed up his words.

As he pulled up to his in-laws' home, like his wife and her parents, Dave still had no idea what had happened in Iraq.

The front lawn was now empty, although several neighbors were still outside talking about the tragedy that had just struck their town. Because of a sniper in Fallujah, Iraq, the peace of Sunday in this quiet Pennsylvania community had been shattered.

When Dave hurried inside, he found his wife sitting on a living room chair, shaking, staring blankly in front of her. Janet was on the couch to Ryan's left, with loved ones on each side and her devastated mother also close by.

Travis's mom was sobbing as she held a glass of whiskey in her right hand. She hadn't taken a sip, as she knew she'd throw it up. Instead, with her eyes wide open, she prayed in silence.

God, please wrap your arms around my baby boy. Please don't let him suffer. Please welcome him into your arms
.

For a moment Janet was calm, until baby Travis's face once again flashed through her mind. Each time she saw that enduring image, the agonizing spasms of pain would resume.

After hugging his wife and telling his mother-in-law he was deeply sorry, Dave walked into the kitchen, where he saw through the window his father-in-law on the porch. The smoke from the burning chicken and hot dogs was starting to dissipate, and Tom was standing near the grill, blankly staring into the tall trees behind the house as Gardner tried to console him. Without saying a word, Dave, tears streaming down his face, walked up to Tom and gave him a big bear hug.

As word spread and the night drew in, the house quickly began to fill with relatives, neighbors, and friends, almost overwhelming the family as they wandered through the house in shock. When Dave went downstairs to feed his daughter a warm bottle and whisper soothing, reassuring words in her ear, Tom, suddenly in full military mode, summoned his wife and daughter to the master bedroom, which wasn't far from the living room on the middle level of the house.

“Look, I'm not sure how we're going to get through this nightmare, but the one thing I know is we need to stick together,” Tom said. “From this point forward, we need to be there for each other, no matter what.”

Janet and Ryan didn't say anything, but they didn't have to. America's newest Gold Star family, now three instead of four, embraced in a hug that each of them would always remember.

Across the country, in Coronado, California, Brendan Looney was moving into Building 602 of the BUD/S compound, where he would soon start initial courses that would eventually lead to the grueling first phase of training to become a Navy SEAL.

After mostly quiet deployments to Korea and Iraq, Brendan was determined to become a SEAL, despite facing the most physically demanding training known to man. Moving into the barracks was the first step in an odyssey that would last more than a year, starting with the upcoming twenty-four-week BUD/S training regimen and culminating with another seven-month SEAL Qualification Training (SQT) program.

Brendan and his new roommate, fellow Naval Academy graduate Rob Sarver, whom he had known for nine years, were almost finished moving in their personal items when Rob's phone rang. On the other line was a good friend and fellow midshipman, Kacey Kemmerer.

“Rob, is Brendan with you?” Kemmerer said. “I just tried to call him.”

“Oh, sorry man, I think Brendan left his phone out in his car,” Rob said. “What's up?”

“Shit, man, I really don't know how to say this,” Kemmerer said. “It's Manion. . . .”

The reception was terrible in the barracks, and the phone cut out before Kemmerer could finish his sentence.

With a suddenly bleak look on his face, Sarver looked at Brendan, who instantly knew something was wrong.

“It's Trav,” Sarver said to Brendan, who immediately sat down on his bed. “Something happened.”

After Sarver helped Brendan stand up, nothing else was said as Brendan walked to the parking lot to call Kemmerer back and find out if his friend was alive. While heading outside to get his cell phone, Brendan's legs began to wobble, so much that the ocean breeze from the nearby beach, where SEAL candidates endure
BUD/S training, nearly knocked him over. Brendan then realized he probably wasn't going to make it to his car.

“You call him,” Brendan said so quietly that Sarver could barely hear him over the waves crashing outside the Coronado base's fortified perimeter.

With Brendan standing a few feet away, Sarver dialed Kemmerer's number to get the news.

“Hey,” he said. “What happened?”

“We're not sure on the details,” Kemmerer said. “But Travis was killed earlier today in Fallujah. Please tell Brendan I'm sorry.”

Brendan knew Travis was gone before Sarver hung up the phone. Tears welled up in the SEAL candidate's eyes as Sarver gently delivered the shocking news.

“Trav didn't make it,” he said. “He passed away.”

In nearly a decade of friendship, Sarver had never seen anywhere near this level of emotion from Brendan, who clasped his hands behind his neck and wandered dazedly into the parking lot. He was breathing so heavily that even as he got farther and farther away, Sarver could still hear him huffing and puffing over the usual coastal noise.

As Brendan walked back toward his friend, his eyes engulfed with tears, Sarver handed him his cell phone so he could call his two brothers, Steve and Billy, who also knew Travis well from their days at the Naval Academy. When they heard the stunning news they were devastated, as were their parents and sisters.

Next it was time to call Amy, who had spent countless days and nights hanging out with Travis during the Annapolis years. Amy, who was still living on the East Coast, wasn't just linked to Travis through Brendan. She was his friend as well.

While Brendan dialed Amy's number, great memories from Annapolis and other fun times he had had with Travis filled his mind. In the instant that Amy's phone rang, Brendan panicked.

After saying “hello” and quickly realizing it was Brendan calling, not Sarver, Amy began trying to coax an explanation out of
her boyfriend, who had become hysterical. Even after five years of dating, Amy was shocked to hear him crying.

“It's . . . Trav . . . ,” he gasped. “He's gone.”

“What?” asked Amy, confused and having trouble understanding Brendan's words. “What are you talking about?”

“He's gone,” Brendan repeated. “He's gone.”

“Who?” Amy said. “Brendan, you have to tell me what happened.”

After another deep breath and a long, painful pause, Brendan said it: “Travis is dead.”

As confusion turned to heartbreak, Amy listened helplessly to the man she loved crying uncontrollably three thousand miles away. She was crying, too, thinking about Travis and the agony the Manions must be experiencing.

The rest of the conversation didn't make much sense, but Amy longed to hold Brendan on the eve of his long journey to become a Navy SEAL.

“I love you,” she said as the painful call concluded.

“I love you, too,” Brendan said. “I'll see you later.”

“See you later,” Amy said.

After Sarver informed the BUD/S class leader that an Annapolis classmate and dear friend had been killed in Iraq, he and Brendan were excused for the next few days and permitted to leave the base. A few minutes later the aspiring SEAL retreated to the house they had been sharing on San Diego County's picturesque Imperial Beach.

Back in Doylestown, the number of people inside the Manion house had quadrupled since the Gardners and young Marine first arrived on their doorstep. As the sun set on the worst day of Tom, Janet, and Ryan's lives, neighbors were bringing over trays of food, while close friends and relatives were pouring in to offer condolences and hugs and to ask Tom and Janet if there was anything they could do.

As Travis's dad sat on the deck surrounded by concerned friends, Gardner stepped out the front door to dial Papak, who was
sitting with his wife in the Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport, where they were waiting to board their flight to Philadelphia. They had spoken briefly after the notification, but Gardner hadn't reached Papak to tell him how Tom and Janet were doing.

“Dave, things are still rough here,” Gardner said. “Tom, Janet, and Ryan are taking it very hard, but Renee and I are here, and we'll make sure to take good care of them.”

“Thanks, Corky,” Papak said. “Please just tell Tom we'll be there as soon as we can.”

Janet was still in the bedroom, lying motionless on her bed and crying into her pillow. She couldn't stop thinking about the first time she had held her little boy in the hospital at Camp Lejeune. Baby Travis was so sweet, innocent, and helpless, and all Janet wanted was the chance to hold him one more time.