(Mark Wilson/ GETTY IMAGES ) - An American flag flies at half-staff in front of a Realtors office in honor of the fallen Navy SEALs based at nearby Naval Amphibious Base Little Creek in Virginia Beach, Va.
VIRGINIA BEACH — They lived in tranquil suburban neighborhoods like so many other Americans, in homes with vinyl siding and close-cropped yards, their streets and cul de sacs shaded by thin, newly planted trees.
Across the military region of Hampton Roads, neighbors often suspected that the confident, supremely fit young neighbor who mowed the lawn one day and disappeared the next for weeks at a time might be a Navy SEAL, or a member of some other elite commando team.
Family members of Navy SEALs who died in Saturday's helicopter crash in Afghanistan are mourning their loss. Thirty American died in the crash, including 22 members of SEAL Team Six, an elite special forces unit.
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But few knew for certain until Saturday, when the terrible news arrived that 30 Americans — including 22 Navy SEALs — had died in Afghanistan after Taliban forces shot down their helicopter. Some were members of SEAL Team Six based here at Little Creek Naval Amphibious Base.
Now members of the community are grappling with how to mourn and honor the sacrifice of those whose lives have been shielded in the strictest secrecy, and how to serve the families they left behind.
“Many times, you’re stationed somewhere where you have no family, so we become each other’s family,” said Angela Boothe, who lives across the cul de sac from the light gray house with blue shutters where Stephen Matthew Mills, 35, lived with his wife, Keri, and their toddler son, Cash. (Mills, 35, who grew up in Texas, also has two children from a previous marriage.)
Two weeks before Mills’s last deployment, Boothe, whose husband is in the Navy, said she and her 18-year-old son, Christopher, met at Mills’s garage sale. Her son told Mills of his interest in attending the U.S. Naval Academy or becoming a SEAL. Mills never let on that he was a SEAL, but he offered to help the young man prepare himself.
“He said, ‘I’ve trained with them. I know their workout,’ ” Boothe said. “They hit it off.”
On Saturday, Boothe said she returned to pay her respects to Mills’s widow. Boothe said the Millses’ house was full of food, relatives and Navy comrades who tried to keep the mood uplifting, to ride out the recurring waves of grief.
“Everyone was talking to her and reminding her of the good times she had with him. Every time she broke down, saying ‘Who’s going to take care of Cash? Who’s going to teach him to play ball?’ they’d say, ‘We will.’ ” Boothe recalled Monday, as she prepared to make a pan of lasagna for the Millses. “From what I saw, they were great people.”
A fleet of SUVs and pickups with out-of-state plates still filled the driveway, and a delivery notice from a florist hung on the door. A young man with a tribal tattoo who said he was Mills’s best friend and colleague turned away a reporter from the door.
The mood seemed especially dark in contrast to the pride and jubilation that swept over Hampton Roads a few months ago when people celebrated the Navy SEALs as hometown heroes — perhaps too publicly, some say — for killing Osama Bin Laden. Saturday’s crash, the worst single loss of American life since the conflict in Afghanistan began nearly 10 years ago, has also forced even the most gung-ho and patriotic to reassess the wisdom of the U.S. commitment to Afghanistan.
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