Tom Sileo

by Brothers Forever

  Toohey arrived in his room to find a muscular, brown-haired guy going through his clothes. At first he thought it was one of the upperclassmen doing an inspection, but this guy was wearing a plebe’s uniform. As Toohey was pondering the possibility that someone was going through his underwear, the young man quickly dispelled that fear by introducing himself.

  “Hey, I’m Brendan Looney, your new roommate,” he said. “We’ve got to get all your clothes folded before the inspectors get here.”

  Grabbing Toohey’s shirts and socks from his duffle bag, Brendan quickly folded them as he heard footsteps coming down the hall.

  “You’ve got to fold ’em like this,” Brendan said. “Make the socks smile.”

  “Oh . . . thanks, man,” Toohey said. “But just one thing. . . . You mixed up my shirts.”

  “Shit, that’s my bad,” Brendan said. “I’m colorblind.”

  After Toohey thanked him a second time, Brendan, an imposing figure even at age nineteen, responded with a nod and a grin. It was already clear to Toohey that his new roommate was looking out for him.

  “Man, I just have no idea what I’m doing around here,” Toohey complained.

  “Relax,” Brendan said. “You’re not supposed to. . . . It’s our first day.”

  Though Brendan was also a plebe, he was more prepared for I-Day than most others after spending ten months attending the Naval Academy Preparatory School in Newport, Rhode Island. With a grueling academic, physical, and military training regimen, NAPS had given Brendan the chance to play football against junior college and junior varsity opponents while preparing to join Navy’s Division I-A team.

  About 15 percent of the incoming class came from NAPS, and each of those 177 students, including Brendan, had a head start. As Brendan demonstrated by helping Toohey pass inspection, the “NAPSters” were seen as big brothers by many plebes, who felt clueless and frightened while getting hollered at for making the smallest of mistakes. Although Brendan still had a lot to learn himself, he knew not making his bed in thirty seconds or forgetting to shine his belt buckle wouldn’t get him kicked out of the academy. His sheer physical presence gave him the appearance of a natural leader, but it was the calming smirk he often gave the other plebes that really demonstrated that quality.

  Of the four plebes in Brendan’s room, three had gone to NAPS. After experiencing ten tough months together, the first signs of military-style brotherhood were evident in the NAPSters, who usually stuck together. Toohey gained inclusion by virtue of being their roommate.

  As the first-year midshipmen adjusted to the academy’s grueling routine in the fall and spring of 2000, Navy’s class of 2004 was beginning to take shape. Unbeknownst to Brendan and the other plebes, however, a key member of their social circle was not yet with them.

  When Travis told his father he wanted to reapply to the Naval Academy after one semester at Drexel, Tom, still unhappy over his son’s decision to drop out in the first place, was skeptical.

  “That’s your decision,” he said. “If you want to go back, you’re going to have to do it on your own.”

  “I will,” Travis said.

  A few days later, Lieutenant Colonel Gardner was sitting in his Annapolis office when a surprise visitor walked in.

  “Travis?” he said. “It’s good to see you again.”

  After asking how his good friends Tom and Janet were doing, Gardner welcomed the former midshipman into his office and asked him to have a seat. Travis explained that while he had given Drexel a try, it had only taken him a few months to realize that Gardner had been right. The Naval Academy was indeed where he belonged.

  Gardner was thrilled by Travis’s epiphany, but also cautious in his response. He agreed that Navy was the right place for Tom and Janet’s son, but he stressed that getting into the academy a second time was very rare. Gardner told Travis that while he would do everything possible to help, it would be a challenge to convince the Naval Academy that he deserved a second chance.

  Though he understood that the odds of getting back into Navy were probably against him, Travis was undeterred. For the next five months he worked exhaustively to win the hearts and minds of a skeptical Naval Academy admissions board.

  Because Travis had immediately enrolled at Drexel and participated in a varsity sport during his lone semester on the Philadelphia campus, his readmission request was taken seriously. His academic record was strong, before and after leaving Navy. But what made his application stand out was a cover letter from Gardner, who wrote that he had “absolutely no doubt” that Travis would be a fine midshipman and even better military officer.

  For the class of 2004, 10,296 young men and women applied to the US Naval Academy, of which only 1,224 were admitted. Travis, a second semester addition, was one of them.

  Tom and Janet were watching an ABC News interview with Texas governor George W. Bush, the presumptive Republican nominee for president, when Travis walked into their Doylestown living room holding a large envelope from the Naval Academy.

  “I got back in,” Travis said.

  “I knew it!” Janet said before jumping up to hug her son. “I knew it.”

  Tom was surprised and pleased, as he fully appreciated the size of the mountain his son had just climbed. After a brief pause, he shook his son’s hand.

  “You have a second chance,” he said. “I’m proud of you, but don’t forget how fortunate you are to be getting this opportunity.”

  Travis, who returned to Navy in the spring of 2001 as a second semester plebe, barely knew anyone on his floor, including his three roommates, who had just been through their first semester. Though he was thrilled to be back at the academy, Travis felt like a ballplayer traded in the middle of the season. There was still a pitcher’s mound and ninety feet between each base, but he was surrounded by a different group of teammates, including upperclassmen who frequently reminded him how much they detested quitters. Travis was ready for the criticism, and for the most part, he took it in stride.

  The Naval Academy dorms looked more like classroom hallways than living quarters. The shiny floors, often cleaned by midshipmen who had done something to piss off a company officer or upperclassman, stretched the length of several football fields, with the open doors of aspiring sailors and Marines lining the hallways. No matter what they were doing, underclassmen always had to be ready for surprise inspections. Brendan and Travis, who carried the burden of being Division I athletes along with their academic and drilling responsibilities, rarely if ever complained.

  Just after the start of the fall 2001 semester, Travis and Brendan met up for an early morning run. The wrestler and football player both had practice later that afternoon, but as two varsity athletes who wanted to be the best, they were determined to work harder than everybody else.

  After talking about the start of the NFL season, their mid-jog conversation shifted to their backgrounds. They had a lot in common, including their love of sports and their country. Both midshipmen had been raised Catholic in tight-knit families, although Brendan’s was a little larger.

  “I have two brothers and three sisters,” Brendan said as they jogged past Navy-Marine Corps Memorial Stadium and into a nearby Annapolis neighborhood.

  The two younger Looney brothers, Steve and Billy, were still at DeMatha, the high school attended by Brendan and their father, Kevin. After graduation, Steve and Billy would join Brendan at the Naval Academy.

  Brendan’s sisters, Bridget, Erin, and Kellie, grew up wanting to hang out in “the cool room.” That was their nickname for Brendan’s room, where all of his younger siblings wanted to hang out. Like Steve and Billy, the Looney sisters looked up to Brendan and strove to emulate him. Not only did Brendan set an example as the ideal big brother; he was also a hardworking, stellar athlete, and all his talented younger siblings would eventually follow in his footsteps.

  “It’s just me and my sister, but it must be fun coming from a big family,” Travis said to Brendan.

  From the t
ime Travis and his sister, Ryan, were born only fifteen months apart at North Carolina’s Camp Lejeune, they were almost constantly exposed to the rigors of military life. With their father on active duty in the Marine Corps until 1988 before transitioning to the Reserves, their family always seemed to be moving around, making the bond between brother and sister even more important. Whereas making new friends at different elementary schools took time, Ryan and Travis could always depend on each other. Their mom, Janet, was the glue that kept the Manion family strong as it moved from base to base.

  “How long has your dad been in the Corps?” Brendan asked.

  “Twenty years,” Travis replied.

  For Brendan, Travis, and their fellow midshipmen, the morning of September 11, 2001, started just like any other. It was a nice, unseasonably warm day, without a single cloud littering the bright, early morning sky.

  At the end of their respective classes, Travis and Brendan began hearing rumors about an awful tragedy in New York City. An airplane had crashed into one of the Twin Towers, sending smoke billowing into the skies above Manhattan.

  As Brendan and Travis headed back to their rooms for a break between classes, CNN was reporting a “World Trade Center disaster,” which appeared to be an accident, although nobody knew for sure. Given the bombing of the Twin Towers eight years earlier, it was clearly a terrorist target, but the 1993 attack had mostly faded from the national psyche.

  When Travis, Brendan, and dozens of other midshipmen arrived back at their dorm, they found plebes who didn’t have early morning Tuesday classes gathered around the lounge television, which was showing images of a gaping hole in the World Trade Center’s north tower. It was 9:00 a.m., and most of the country was just realizing that something terrible was going on in New York, where a confusing, chaotic scene was quickly unfolding.

  Three minutes later, a moment that would be forever etched in the memories of Brendan, Travis, and millions of Americans silenced the lounge. A second plane crashed into the World Trade Center, sending a massive fireball shooting out of the middle of the south tower.

  “Oh, there’s another one, another plane just hit!” Theresa Renaud, a witness speaking live to CBS News anchor Bryant Gumbel, exclaimed. “Oh my gosh, another plane has just hit. . . . It hit the other building.”

  “Shit!” one midshipman in the lounge said.

  For the next few seconds there was silence. America was under attack.

  None of the students knew what to do other than stay together, watch the news coverage, and call their families. For the next forty-five minutes, frantic students, like the rest of America, watched the surreal, horrific images of desperate victims jumping from the burning towers. At around 9:45, evacuations were ordered at the White House and Capitol after reports of an explosion at the Pentagon.

  With all airspace above the United States closed, military leaders, who were scrambling fighter jets, were reportedly concerned about the nation’s military academies being a potential terrorist target. “The Yard,” as the Navy campus is called by midshipmen, had to be cleared as quickly as possible, with no large gatherings of students to serve as potential targets. Midshipmen still wandering around campus were told to return to their living quarters.

  As a Navy battle cruiser headed toward the harbor, heavily armed Marines surrounded the academy gates. Travis and Brendan quickly went back to their respective rooms to contact their families.

  Travis picked up the phone and dialed his dad.

  “Tom Manion,” his father answered.

  “Dad, it’s Trav,” he said. “Are you okay?”

  “Yeah, I’m fine,” Tom said. “I’m up in Jersey, about an hour from New York. Are you alright? What’s going on down there?”

  “It’s pretty crazy,” Travis said. “They’re locking us down inside our quarters. . . . Something happened at the Pentagon, and they think we could be a target.”

  “I just heard about the Pentagon,” Tom replied. “Listen, buddy . . . you stay safe, and I’ll let mom know you’re okay.”

  “Talk to you later, Dad,” Travis said.

  He walked back to the lounge, where Brendan and several others were standing in front of the television. The south tower of the World Trade Center was collapsing. The north tower crumbled almost thirty minutes after its twin.

  A few hours later, President Bush, who was crisscrossing the country in Air Force One while the Secret Service determined whether it was safe enough for the commander-in-chief to return to Washington, officially placed the US military on high alert.

  “Freedom itself was attacked this morning by a faceless coward,” the president said from Louisiana’s Barksdale Air Force Base. “And freedom will be defended.”

  During the nine days after the Twin Towers collapsed, the Pentagon burned, smoke rose from a silent Pennsylvania field, and the entire Naval Academy student body realized that after graduation they would become part of a fighting force that was now at war. Exactly where American troops would be deployed was still unknown, although it was becoming increasingly clear that the most immediate security threat, Osama bin Laden’s al Qaeda terrorist organization, was being harbored by the Taliban regime in Afghanistan.

  Like most Americans in the aftermath of 9/11, for the students sorrow was mixed with anger, uncertainty, and fervent patriotism. But at the Naval Academy, these emotions were mixed with the burgeoning realization that this generation of midshipmen would be called upon to confront the evil that had reached America’s shores.

  Gathering at the same television set where they had watched the attacks unfold in real time, one group of future military leaders, including Brendan and Travis, watched President Bush address a joint session of Congress on the evening of September 20, 2001.

  “Tonight, we are a country awakened to danger and called to defend freedom. Our grief has turned to anger and anger to resolution,” Bush announced. “Whether we bring our enemies to justice or bring justice to our enemies, justice will be done.”

  “Hell yeah,” one midshipman agreed.

  Travis and Brendan were silent.

  “And tonight, a few miles from the damaged Pentagon, I have a message for our military,” the commander-in-chief said. “Be ready.

  “I have called the armed forces to alert, and there is a reason,” the president continued. “The hour is coming when America will act, and you will make us proud.”

  The “hell yeahs” around the room stopped for a moment when President Bush pulled a shiny silver badge out of his pocket and said:

  And I will carry this. It is the police shield of a man named George Howard who died at the World Trade Center trying to save others.

  It was given to me by his mom, Arlene, as a proud memorial to her son. It is my reminder of lives that ended and a task that does not end.

  I will not forget this wound to our country or those who inflicted it. I will not yield; I will not rest; I will not relent in waging this struggle for freedom and security for the American people.

  The course of this conflict is not known, yet its outcome is certain. Freedom and fear, justice and cruelty, have always been at war, and we know that God is not neutral between them.

  After the murders of thousands of good Americans like George Howard, the responsibility of preventing another terrorist attack would soon fall on young military leaders like Brendan Looney and Travis Manion.

  As the stirring speech concluded, many of the Naval Academy midshipmen were applauding along with the politicians on the screen. Brendan and Travis sat quietly next to each other, reflecting on the enormous challenge that they and their peers now faced.

  Thirty miles from the US Capitol, where the commander-in-chief spoke into the shadows of a devastated city and country, a young generation heard its call to arms.

  2

  EARN IT

  In October 2001, with the US military preparing to invade Afghanistan and the stakes for Travis and Brendan suddenly much higher, their frequent runs became even more intense.
On their seemingly endless routes, one would always challenge the other to go further.

  As they ran through the academy’s heavily guarded campus, Travis asked Brendan which branch he hoped to serve in.

  “I’ll probably go Navy,” Brendan responded. “What about you?”

  “Marine Corps. . . . I hope to go that route,” Travis said, knowing that becoming a Marine Corps officer like his dad was far from guaranteed.

  “I hear ya,” Brendan said. “With the way things are going, I can’t even imagine what will be going on when we graduate.”

  “Who the hell knows,” Travis said.

  Letters laced with anthrax had just been discovered in post offices in Florida, New York, and Washington, DC. One chilling message was sent to Tom Brokaw, the eminent NBC News anchor:

  09–11–01

  This is next

  Take Penacilin Now

  Death to America

  Death to Israel

  Like the rest of America, which worried about everything from more hijackings and anthrax to a nuclear suitcase bomb being detonated in a major city, Annapolis was gripped by fear. Because the Navy campus was full of future military leaders, authorities believed the academy could be a prime target for terrorists planning to make another grand statement while also achieving an important wartime objective.

  Travis and Brendan’s class of 2004 still had time to prepare, but the graduating class of 2002 was only months away from going to war, which had changed the entire campus mind-set.

  On the first Saturday of December 2001, with American bombs pummeling the mountainous region of Tora Bora near Afghanistan’s border with Pakistan, where Osama bin Laden was believed to be hiding, President Bush entered the Navy football locker room at Veterans Stadium in Philadelphia. In just a few minutes, the Midshipmen would square off against their West Point counterparts. Even though Navy was winless and Army had prevailed in just two contests going into the season’s final game, the 2001 matchup, held as Ground Zero still smoldered less than three months after 9/11, was one of the most significant Army-Navy games ever played.