Tom Sileo (7 page)

Although she enjoyed Travis's company, Amy wasn't expecting to see him one late April Friday night in 2004, which was supposed to be a dinner and movie date with Brendan, whom she was meeting at the Arundel Mills Mall in Hanover, Maryland.

Inside Arundel Mills, Amy walked around a crowded bar and restaurant, weaving through the crowd while seeking Brendan. After looking around for about ninety seconds, she saw Travis sitting in the rear section of the bar area, almost exactly where Brendan had said to meet him.

Brendan's roommate's gaze was transfixed on CNN, which was showing searing images from the Battle of Fallujah. One of the Iraq war's most intense, violent clashes erupted after terrorists murdered four American contractors, mutilated their corpses, and hung their bodies from a bridge. Thousands of Americans, including US Marine Captain Doug Zembiec, the former Navy wrestler whom Travis looked up to, were going street by street, battling insurgents inside the decimated western Iraqi city.

Travis was so focused on the television that he almost didn't hear Amy speak.

“Hey, Travis,” Amy said, looking surprised. “What are you doing here?”

“Oh, hey, Amy,” Travis said. “Yeah, I'm actually meeting you and Brendan.”

“Oh really?” Amy asked. “Are you going to the movies with us, too?”

“Yeah, didn't Brendan tell you?” Travis asked with a grin.

As Amy and Travis shared a laugh, Brendan showed up a few minutes late after an extra long workout.

“So, Brendan, did you plan on telling me Travis was coming along tonight?” Amy asked with a smile. “I thought this was supposed to be a date.”

“It is,” Brendan replied. “But this loser Eagles fan is going to be our honorary chaperone.”

Brendan, Amy, and Travis ate dinner and then went to the movie theater to see
Mean Girls
, starring Lindsay Lohan and Rachel McAdams.

Inside the theater, Amy enjoyed Travis and Brendan's reactions even more than the movie itself. They were laughing so loudly that Amy couldn't help but join in. Though she may have preferred to be on a romantic date with Brendan, it was impossible not to have a good time when Travis was around.

Later that night Travis, Brendan, and Amy stopped at a bar for a quick beer.

“Brendan, I'm not sure if you saw some of the shit that went down in Fallujah today,” Travis said.

“I was watching one of the news channels at the gym earlier,” Brendan replied. “Brutal stuff, man.”

“It's terrible,” Amy said.

“Well, you know what?” Travis said. “I want to propose a toast to our men and women fighting over there. . . . Only God knows what they're going through right now.”

“I'll drink to that,” Brendan said.

“So will I,” Amy said as their three glasses clinked.

The Iraq war and upcoming presidential election were dividing the country in the spring of 2004. The conflict had dragged on longer than many Americans had expected after US troops routed Baghdad and watched as Iraqis tore down statues of Saddam Hussein just weeks after the initial invasion.

In Iraq in 2003,
486 US service members died; 849 American families lost loved ones in Iraq in 2004. Senator John Kerry, the Democratic presidential nominee, was running on a platform opposing America's involvement in the Iraq war. President Bush, who had lost much of the record-high popularity he enjoyed after 9/11, insisted his strategy was working and that America would ultimately prevail in Iraq.

Unlike the general public, of which only a fraction of 1 percent had fought overseas since 9/11, the sacrifices being made by brave US troops and their families were touching Annapolis on an almost daily basis. Naval Academy graduates like Captain Zembiec and Second Lieutenant J. P. Blecksmith, a teammate of Brendan's in the 2001 Army-Navy football game, were fighting on Iraq's war-torn streets at that very moment. Places like Fallujah and Ramadi were under siege by al Qaeda terrorists and Iraqi insurgents bent on destroying the country rather than letting it be reshaped. Every single day, American blood was being spilled.

In May 2004, Brendan and Travis graduated with their Naval Academy classmates and were commissioned as US military
officers. Brendan would go on to serve in the Naval intelligence community, while Travis would head to The Basic School for Marine Corps officers in Quantico, Virginia.

“I can say with certainty that you will have a role in fighting this war on terrorism,” Air Force General Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told Travis, Brendan, and 988
fellow Naval Academy graduates on May 28, 2004. “You will face many enormous challenges. You will go into harm's way. The sacrifice that you have learned by now is part of the job description.”

Three days after graduation, Navy was seeking its first men's lacrosse national championship in thirty-five years. Though the Midshipmen were underdogs against Syracuse, one of the most storied programs in the sport's history, the ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan made Navy the overwhelming sentimental favorite. That the 2004 NCAA men's lacrosse national championship game was played on Memorial Day only added to its significance.

Names of other Navy lacrosse players, including Brendan's brothers Steve and Billy, may have shown up more often in the box score, but Brendan, who wore number 40, was the team's heart and soul. It didn't matter that he had only been playing lacrosse for less than three years, whereas everyone else on the team had been playing for at least a decade. His athletic prowess and work ethic were so fierce that the oldest Looney brother immediately became a force as a defenseman.

In practice, Brendan had performed almost exactly as he had in football, with raw determination and zero tolerance for anyone giving less than 100 percent. He had eventually earned significant playing time on the lacrosse team, which often forced opponents to alter their strategies.

Earlier that season, in a game against Georgetown, the Hoyas' best player—one of the nation's top midfielders—had run over to the referee in the middle of a game and pleaded for him to blow the whistle. He wanted protection from Brendan, who was playing
such tenacious defense that the player could barely breathe, let alone think about scoring. Navy's starting goalie, Matt Russell, a sophomore who lived on the same floor as Brendan and Travis, referred to his teammate as the most “violent” lacrosse player he had ever seen. In a sport built around a combination of skill and toughness, being an aggressive player was a good thing.

Yet as soon as the final whistle blew, Brendan was a gentleman. When the teams shook hands after the games, Brendan was one of the first in line.

Navy men's lacrosse captain Thomas “Bucky” Morris had met Brendan while they were preparing for academy life at NAPS, but got to know him better after Brendan went out for lacrosse. Though Brendan initially made the lacrosse team as a “rider,” with the specific role of recovering loose balls, his rapid improvement led Navy coach Richie Meade to give him a central role as a defensive midfielder. Playing the position for the first time in his young lacrosse career, Brendan worked closely with Morris, one of the nation's top defensemen.

Morris was impressed with Brendan's intensity and wanted to help him learn the sport even more quickly. He knew Brendan had played football and was obviously well versed in team sports, but what inspired him most was the way Brendan watched over and protected his younger brothers, who were both rising stars on the Navy squad.

In the middle of a game that ended in a Navy blowout victory against Holy Cross in 2004, Billy had made a freshman mistake, getting burned on a face-off, which allowed an opposing player to score; he celebrated wildly with his teammates. Shortly after watching his brother get chewed out by Navy coaches on the sidelines, Brendan, a senior, took the field with his sights set squarely on the Holy Cross player who had embarrassed Billy. As the player fought for a grounder, Brendan hammered him with a pulverizing, yet clean, hit.

“Oh my God, Brendan just crushed that kid,” a Navy player on the sidelines said to his teammates.

The Holy Cross player was fine, but everyone on the Navy team, including Morris, had seen how closely the Looney brothers stuck together. When Steve or Billy made a rookie mistake, Brendan was the first person in their faces. But if someone else dared to show them up, Brendan would roll through that opponent like a freight train.

Early afternoon rain fell in Baltimore on Memorial Day 2004, yet 43,898 fans still showed up at M & T Bank Stadium, home of the NFL's Baltimore Ravens. At the time, it was the largest crowd to attend a nonbasketball
championship game in NCAA history.

In the parking lot was Second Lieutenant Travis Manion, a newly commissioned US Marine officer who had just graduated in front of his proud mom, dad, sister, and someone who had been instrumental in making his second chance at the Naval Academy possible: Lieutenant Colonel Corky Gardner. Travis was standing on top of a car leading a “Let's go Navy” chant by hundreds of frenzied fans. After his shoulder injury had caused him to miss the entire second half of his senior wrestling season, this was a championship game for Travis, too.

In the stadium, Travis sat with the midshipmen, while Tom and Janet Manion joined Brendan's parents, Kevin and Maureen Looney. Exactly one year earlier, Brendan had met Amy just a few blocks from the stadium where he was about to play the biggest game of his life. Now Amy was stuck at work and couldn't attend the game, but she was planning to meet the Looney brothers and Travis almost immediately afterward.

As newly commissioned US Navy Ensign Brendan Looney sat in the Ravens locker room, he was reminded of the 2001 Army-Navy football game, especially when his coach pointed out that Naval Academy graduates were currently fighting overseas. Ever since Navy had started its NCAA tournament run, and especially
since the Midshipmen had beaten Princeton in Saturday's national semifinal, messages of support had poured in from military bases all over the world, including Iraq and Afghanistan.

Syracuse head coach
John Desko admitted that some of his own players were struggling with the idea of seemingly playing against their country. “One of our guys just read an article in the Baltimore paper about Navy and Memorial Day and wartime and said, ‘I almost want Navy to win,'” Desko said. “They'll have a lot of people rooting for them.”

Indeed, there was no such thing as a “neutral” fan at the 2004 NCAA Men's Lacrosse National Championship Game. You were a Syracuse student, parent, or graduate, or you were a Navy fan. Some Syracuse alumni even bought Navy hats to wear with their Orange T-shirts and ponchos. They wanted to show that despite rooting for Syracuse, they appreciated the sacrifices being made by the Navy athletes and their classmates.

The final seconds before the Navy players ran out on the field felt like the countdown to a Super Bowl or a Rolling Stones concert. The atmosphere, created in part by rowdy midshipmen like Travis, who was chanting “U-S-A!” and crowd surfing, made the Syracuse players and coaches feel like they were playing a road game instead of a neutral-site contest.

Each Navy sports team had a Marine as its official liaison, and Gunnery Sergeant John Kob, who had spent time with Travis and the wrestling team, took his duty with the men's lacrosse team very seriously. Kob had joined the Army in 1983 and served seven years as a soldier before joining the Marine Corps. The hard-nosed warrior had already deployed to Somalia before being assigned to the Naval Academy in 2001 and was now just months away from deploying to Iraq's Babil province with 1st Battalion, 1st Marine Division, based out of California's Camp Pendleton.

Before each game Kob would lead the Midshipmen out onto the field carrying a massive American flag, which always excited
the supportive home lacrosse crowds in Annapolis. But this day's opening ceremony was even more special.

As Brendan, his brothers, and their teammates stood in the tunnel leading out to the M & T Bank Stadium field listening to the thunderous applause above them, Kob, a bald, imposing figure whose face could easily appear in the dictionary next to the definition of “Marine,” dashed out onto the field with the gigantic American flag, waving it so vigorously that the pole nearly broke. From the lower bowl to the upper deck, a crescendo of patriotism swept the stadium, with Travis cheering as his roommate tore onto the field with his hands raised proudly toward the cloud-filled sky.

Rain pelted down on the grassy turf as the game went back and forth. Brendan and other Navy defensemen were focused on Syracuse's Michael Powell, one of the greatest attack men in NCAA lacrosse history and the only player to ever win the Tewaaraton Trophy—similar to college football's Heisman Trophy—twice. For Navy to have any chance of defeating the Orange, its defensemen, including Morris, Brendan, and other midshipmen, would have to contain Powell.

The crowd was in a frenzy as a goal by Navy's Ben Bailey gave the Midshipmen the early lead, with more “U-S-A” refrains replacing the stadium's usual chant of “Let's Go Ravens.” Travis, who had played lacrosse in high school and later at Drexel, had closely followed his roommate's team all season.

Brendan was playing his heart out, as always, but there was a reason Syracuse had won two out of the past four national championships. After tying the score with five minutes to play, the Orange took the lead ninety seconds later, resulting in a nervous hush throughout most of the stadium. It didn't help that Russell, Navy's starting goalie, was forced to leave the game because of a collarbone injury.