Long Island

Investigations

Lt. Michael Murphy - Born to Serve

It takes more than 30 months of grinding toil to become a SEAL. By far, the most grueling time is spent during Hell Week, which takes place near the end of Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL training. 
1. INDOCTRINATION 
Five weeks of learning the expectations and ways of Navy SEALS and a time to prepare physically and mentally for what's ahead. 
2. BASIC CONDITIONING 
Eight weeks of running, swimming, calisthenics and small-boat operations. One- to two-mile ocean swims and obstacle course work are among the daily activities. A trainee's time must continuously improve. Trainees must pass drown-proofing - swimming with their hands and feet bound. To pass, they enter a nine-foot-deep pool and bob for five minutes; float for five minutes; swim 100 meters; bob for two minutes; do forward and backward flips; swim to the pool's bottom and retrieve an object with their teeth; return to the surface; bob five more times. Trainees must endure cold water conditioning, perform calisthenics or runs along the beach in wet clothes and boots. 
3. HELL WEEK 
Candidates must endure five days of training with a maximum total of four hours of sleep. During Hell Week, trainees get four meals a day for a psychological boost, but many are nearly sleeping while they eat. Trainees carry inflatable rubber Zodiac boats over their heads and endure a series of timed exercises, runs, mud-flat crawls and more. This extreme training is critical as SEALs on missions must operate efficiently, in sub-zero temperatures and without regard to their personal comfort. 
4. LAND WARFARE 
Candidates train for nine weeks in intelligence-gathering and penetration, reconnaissance, patrolling and close-quarters battle. SEALs must be able to drive any vehicle and be skilled in high-speed and evasive driving techniques. 
Hand-to-hand combat, infiltration, explosives work and prisoner handling is also taught. 
5. ADVANCED TRAINING 
After basic training those SEALS who remain move on to three weeks of basic parachute training at the Army Airborne School in Fort Benning, Ga. That is followed by SEAL Qualification Training - 15 more weeks to improve basic skills and to learn new techniques required for assignment to a platoon. After completion of SQT, trainees are given their Naval Enlisted Code and awarded the SEAL Trident.

News

BZDOLBOX06

What it takes to become a SEAL

In June 2005, Michael Murphy and his team of Navy SEALs were pinned down by <a href="/topics/Taliban">Taliban</a> forces in <a href="/topics/Afghanistan">Afghanistan</a>. During the fight, Murphy, who helped save a comrade's life, was killed along with 10 others. 
Murphy's journey from <a href="/topics/Patchogue">Patchogue</a> to an Afghan hillside begins on the next page. 
GETTING THE STORY 
This article is based on scores of interviews in the <a href="/topics/United_States">United States</a>, <a href="/topics/Afghanistan">Afghanistan</a> and <a href="/topics/Pakistan">Pakistan</a>, along with official records, military and media reports. 
To flesh out the story of the four U.S. Navy SEALs who were sent to <a href="/topics/Afghanistan">Afghanistan</a> to track a reputed terror leader, reporter Martin C. Evans spoke with U.S. Navy officials, family members and military colleagues of the four men. 
He also spoke with Navy officials about SEAL training, and with other military officials about conditions in eastern Afghanistan where the four SEALs were sent on their mission. 
In Afghanistan and <a href="/topics/Pakistan">Pakistan</a>, reporter James Rupert spoke with experts on the fighting in Afghanistan, U.S. military officials, and the shepherd who rescued the lone survivor of a gun battle that took the lives of three of the SEALs.

EVANS06

Michael Murphy - Born to Serve

When Afghan shepherd Muhammad Gulab left this mountain home one morning in June 2005 to check on a strange noise his family had heard in the woods, he found a frightened and wounded American soldier pointing his rifle at him. 
"His pants were torn almost off," his legs black with dirt, dried blood and bruises, Gulab recalled in an interview. "I saw from his eyes that he was almost collapsing. 
"I lifted my shirt to show him that I had no weapon," Gulab said through an interpreter, "and I beckoned for him to come to me." The American lowered his weapon and limped forward. Gulab knew that in rescuing the American, Petty Officer 1st Class Marcus Luttrell, he was risking his own life. The day before, he had heard the gunfire and shouting of pro-<a href="/topics/Taliban">Taliban</a> guerrillas who had battled a team of U.S. Navy SEAL commandos. Killed in that battle were three Navy SEALs - Matt Axelson, Danny Dietz and <a href="/topics/Michael_Murphy_%28politician%29">Michael Murphy</a>. Luttrell was the sole American survivor of the fight. 
On that day, Luttrell stepped forward to Gulab, put his arms around him and handed over his rifle, Gulab said. With that, Luttrell entrusted his life not only to the shepherd but also to the ancient and ironclad moral code of the Pashtun people. Their code of honor, called pashtunwali, is written in no constitution or legislation, but in the mountains and deserts of <a href="/topics/Pakistan">Pakistan</a> and <a href="/topics/Afghanistan">Afghanistan</a> that are the Pashtuns' homeland. It carries the force of law. 
&nbsp; 
 Unflinching honor 
Born out of centuries of Pashtun tribal wars and clan feuds, pashtunwali demands of a man both unflinching violence when his honor is thought to have been stained, and selfless humanitarianism when anyone - stranger or enemy - requests protection from a foe. 
"He came to me for help. If I did not help a guest, it would have been a great shame for me," Gulab said - a shame that might have led to his expulsion from his community. 
As Gulab walked the wounded Luttrell to his home, he was spotted by the guerrillas who had fought the SEALs. "They called to me to give him to them," Gulab said. "But they know that I belong to a powerful clan, and they didn't dare to attack." 
An attack on Gulab or the man he had taken under his care would have obligated Gulab's extended family - a powerful clan called the Masaud - to fight the guerrillas. 
At his house, Gulab tried to make Luttrell comfortable. "I gave him some of my clothes, but he was too tall for them . . . We laid him in a bed and my brother cleaned his wounds. We cooked some goat for him, but at first he wouldn't eat." 
As word spread that Gulab's family was now responsible for the safety of an American, "my brothers and nephews and cousins began arriving" with guns, Gulab said. 
Other armed men came, too - Shuraik valley residents with connections to the guerrillas, whose commander the SEALs had been tracking when they were ambushed. Over four days, the commander, Ahmed Shah, "sent a lot of intermediaries to tell me to hand over the soldier," Gulab said. "They said, 'We'll give you 5 million [Pakistani] rupees [about $80,000] and any house you want in <a href="/topics/Peshawar">Peshawar</a>,' " a city in neighboring <a href="/topics/Pakistan">Pakistan</a>. 
The promise of a home in Pakistan would have been the best attempt the guerrillas could make at getting Gulab to break his obligation, but it didn't work. Had he accepted the offer, Gulab might well have been expelled from the valley by the Masaud. 
&nbsp; 
 Protecting the SEAL 
When the intermediaries came to deliver the guerrillas' demands, Gulab invited them into his house's main room, but sat protectively between them and the bed where Luttrell lay. Seeing the armed men, the SEAL "asked me, 'Taliban?' " Gulab recalled. 
"I couldn't explain anything to him, so I just said, 'Yes, Taliban.' He was afraid." 
The Masaud clan met to decide their response. "We told them we would not hand him over while even one of us remained alive," Gulab said. 
The guerrillas' tone hardened. "They sent us a message saying, 'Prepare for war. We will attack your house tonight.' " 
The family moved Gulab's wife and children to his father-in-law's home nearby. Then Gulab and some relatives walked Luttrell to a hiding place in the woods while others prepared to fight off an attack that never came. 
That night, the American "was very afraid," Gulab said. "He thought maybe we were taking him up the mountain to kill him. I stayed with him that night, lying next to him. He patted my side." 
Meanwhile, Gulab's family sent word to U.S. forces based across an 8,500-foot mountain from the Shuraik Valley, at Asadabad. "We got some paper and I told the soldier to write a note," Gulab said. "We sewed it inside the hem of my brother-in-law's shirt. I sent him to the Americans to tell them that we had their soldier and the Taliban were going to attack us." 
Four days after Gulab found the American, U.S. troops arrived to rescue him. They loaded Luttrell and Gulab into a helicopter for a flight to an American base at Jalalabad. 
Later, as the SEAL was being readied for medical evacuation to the United States, he summoned Gulab and a translator. "He said he knew the Taliban would kill me if I returned home," Gulab said, and offered to pay him $200,000 to re-start his life. 
"I told him I didn't expect any money," Gulab said. 
Little help for his trouble 
Nearly two years later, Gulab's act of mercy has cost him the life he knew as a woodsman in his mountainside village of simple mud and timber homes. 
Gulab, 33, has fled his home in the village, Sabray, moving his wife and six children to the thin safety of the government-held town of Asadabad. Still, he says, the Islamic militant guerrillas pass on threats to kill him. 
Gulab and others in Afghanistan's Kunar province say neither Luttrell nor the U.S. military has done much to help him. That, they say, may discourage other Afghans from following his example in defending U.S. soldiers. 
Soon after the rescue of the SEAL, the U.S. military gave Gulab a construction laborer's job at its Asadabad base, paying him $280 a month. He moved his family to a rented house in the town. 
Then, last April, American soldiers at the base arrested him. "They put handcuffs on me and a sack and earmuffs on my head," Gulab said. For five days, "they accused me of meeting Taliban and people from Pakistan. I felt ashamed. I couldn't eat anything. I haven't told any of my own people [family] about this; it is a great shame to me." 
Gulab's arrest followed a <a href="/topics/Newsweek">Newsweek</a> story about his rescue of Luttrell and interrogators questioned him about his having met a Pakistan-based correspondent for the magazine, he said. U.S. forces released him without explanation, he said. 
The arrest was acknowledged by the top U.S. officer at Asadabad, Navy Cmdr. Ryan Scholl, in response to queries from Newsday. The U.S. Special Operations Command in the <a href="/topics/Middle_East">Middle East</a> said it was checking on the incident but had no immediate comment. 
Far from supporting the Taliban, Gulab said, he is still threatened by them. "People come down [from the Shuraik Valley] and tell me that the Taliban have warned them that I will be killed whenever they get the chance," he said. If he has kept his enemies, he feels he has lost his friends. "Before, I used to go to their [the Americans'] rooms freely and talk with them," Gulab said. But since the arrest, "they don't allow me on the base." 
Every two weeks, Gulab is permitted to go to the base's gate to collect his salary for a job from which he said he is now barred. "Nowadays, my situation is very fragile," he said. "My security from the Taliban is not good . . . They can easily reach to Asadabad and find me." 
If Gulab is mistrusted by the Americans, he is admired by many locals as a good Pashtun who did the right thing for his own honor, said Ruhollah Anwari, a prominent Afghan journalist in Asadabad. 
"I am not sorry that I helped him," Gulab said of Luttrell. While he said he did not save the American with the expectation of a reward, he said he hopes the U.S. will help him out of his predicament. "If they help me, they will get the reputation that they help their friends," he said. "In general, I am very sad," adding that he has had no contact with the SEAL he saved. "I think he has forgotten me."

ENHERD

A SEAL's life in a herder's hands

Lt. Michael Murphy, two fellow Navy SEALs and 16 servicemen died in the Hindu Kush mountains of <a href="/topics/Afghanistan">Afghanistan</a> on June 28, 2005, in the worst single day for U.S. forces in <a href="/topics/Afghanistan">Afghanistan</a> since the invasion in October 2001. 
Here is the story of that firefight as described by military and media reports and a local villager who witnessed the events. Locations are approximate. 
The objective and the battle Operation Red Wing, as it was called, was a clandestine mission in 10,000-foot peaks along Afghanistan's border with <a href="/topics/Pakistan">Pakistan</a>. 
On the ground 
DEPLOYMENT 
On June 27, 2005, a team of Navy SEALs, including Lt. Michael Murphy, is dropped by helicopter at night, residents say, somewhere on a ridge between the Korengal and Shuraik valleys. Their objective: Kill or capture a leading <a href="/topics/Taliban">Taliban</a> figure that some reports have named as militia leader Ahman Shah. 
MOVING NORTHEAST 
Murphy's team moves into the Shuraik, down a mostly forested slope, where it is recognized by local villagers sympathetic to the Taliban. One of the villagers wanders into the team's position and is captured. Faced with the option of killing or releasing the villager, who might compromise them, they opt to release him. 
PURSUED 
Qari Muhammad Ismail, a guerrilla commander with forces in and around the Korengal Valley, sends fighters to track the SEALs and places teams with rocketpropelled grenades on ridges above the Shuraik Valley to attack any aircraft that might come in support of the Navy team. 
Under attack 
TAKING FIRE 
Ismail's guerrillas attack the SEALs, probably on the western slope of the Shuraik Valley. The SEALs take rifle and RPG fire from three sides. Running down the mountain cliffs, Murphy notices that teammate Marcus Luttrell is pinned down. Murphy comes to his rescue and Luttrell eventually survives the battle. 
CALLING FOR HELP 
About 45 minutes into the exchange, Murphy climbs to higher ground and into an open area to signal for help from Bagram Air Base outside of <a href="/topics/Kabul">Kabul</a>. He is seriously wounded, but completes the call and continues fighting. 
RESCUE ATTEMPT 
&nbsp;A Predator drone and a Chinook helicopter with special forces troops aboard flies to the aid of the SEALs. As the helicopter reaches the ridge atop the valley, it is shot down, apparently by Ismail's fighters. It crashes southeast of the Sawtalo Sar peak, killing 16 servicemen. 
Fighting continues: Axelson and Dietz are wounded. Murphy, Axelson and Dietz defend their positions until they are mortally wounded. Their bodies are discovered days later. 
ESCAPE 
Meanwhile, Luttrell flees down the valley, toward the north. He is rescued by Muhammad Gulab, a shepherd and woodsman living in the village of Sabray. 
SANCTUARY 
Gulab's family protects Luttrell for about four days, while sending Gulab's brother to the U.S. base in Asadabad to seek help. After being alerted by Gulab's brother, U.S. troops rescue Luttrell in Sabray village, flying him and Muhammad Gulab to safety. 
BOMBING 
Operation continues days after the battle with a U.S. bombing of nearby Chichal. 
About Kunar Province 
Small, sparsely-populated province northeast of <a href="/topics/Kabul">Kabul</a>, near Pakistani border Embedded in the unforgivable terrain of the Hindu Kush mountains Dominated by Pashtun tribes, it is a hotbed of Islamic extremism. 
The rescue gone wrong 
Upon hearing Murphy's call for help, officials at Bagram Air Base responded first with an unmanned Predator drone, then a specially designed attack helicopter, the MH-47 Chinook. 
Murphy's team reportedly was located by the infrared camera system of the Predator. Headquarters could see the team was surrounded by Taliban, making immediate close air support impossible. 
The MH-47 sent in to rescue Murphy and his teammates was presumed to be shot down by a rocket-propelled grenade at low altitude, killing all 16 aboard. 
Fitted with special equipment and night vision devices, the MH-47 can operate in hostile environments over all types of terrain at low altitudes. 
CHITRAL DISTRICT 
Presumed location of <a href="/topics/Osama_bin_Laden">Osama bin Laden</a>, 2005 
SOURCES: NAVY SEALS; WASHINGTON POST; TIME MAGAZINE; GLOBAL SECURITY RESEARCHED 
 BY J. STEPHEN SMITH, JAMES RUPERT, ROD EYER

BZAHEAD

Timeline: Their tragic mission

GETTING THE STORY 
This article is based on scores of interviews in the <a href="/topics/United_States">United States</a>, <a href="/topics/Afghanistan">Afghanistan</a> and <a href="/topics/Pakistan">Pakistan</a>, along with official records, military and media reports. 
To flesh out the story of the four U.S. Navy SEALs who were sent to <a href="/topics/Afghanistan">Afghanistan</a> to track a reputed terror leader, reporter Martin C. Evans spoke with U.S. Navy officials, family members and military colleagues of the four men. 
He also spoke with Navy officials about SEAL training, and with other military officials about conditions in eastern Afghanistan where the four SEALs were sent on their mission. 
In Afghanistan and <a href="/topics/Pakistan">Pakistan</a>, reporter James Rupert spoke with experts on the fighting in Afghanistan, U.S. military officials, and the shepherd who rescued the lone survivor of a gun battle that took the lives of three of the SEALs. 
On a June afternoon in 2005, Navy Lt. Michael P. Murphy lay in hiding on the side of a ridge in the lawless eastern mountains of Afghanistan. 
He carried little with him in the thin alpine air near Pakistan's border. A rifle. Clips of ammunition. Sophisticated communications and surveillance equipment. Some high-energy food. And, sewn onto his uniform, a red shoulder patch honoring a <a href="/topics/New_York">New York</a> City firehouse in East Harlem. 
Three years, 9 months and 17 days had passed since Sept. 11, 2001. The region surrounding the mountain where Murphy and his men waited was the hiding place of those who masterminded the attacks. On this summer day, 29-year-old Murphy was far from the comfortable Patchogue home where he was raised to look out for others. 
There were three U.S. commandos hiding with him on that mountain, all, like him, members of one of the most elite and secretive units in the U.S. military, the Navy SEALs. A tall Texan who was a karate expert, and whose brother and father were SEALs. A scratch golfer from Northern <a href="/topics/California">California</a> known as "a perfect sniper." And a communications expert from <a href="/topics/Colorado">Colorado</a> who was so determined to be a SEAL he enlisted three weeks out of high school. 
They had only each other to rely on; help was miles away, if it could get there at all at elevations soaring to 10,000 feet. 
The mission Murphy and his men were assigned was a daunting one. A high-ranking jihadist leader, identified by the Naval Special Warfare Command as Ahmad Shah, was thought to be in the area, guarded by scores of heavily armed <a href="/topics/Taliban">Taliban</a> fighters. 
The mountain's deep, rocky ravines and steep, forested sides gave the terror leader perfect cover. Sending a noisy force of several hundred soldiers would be pointless. It would be too easy for the target to meld into the local population, or to disappear along any of dozens of unmapped trails that would take him back over the Pakistan border. 
So it was up to Murphy and the three other SEALS to secret themselves on the mountain, quietly identify their target, then capture or kill him. That was their mission. They counted on stealth and skill to protect them, knowing that numbers would not. 
In war, the most highly trained soldiers often find themselves in impossible situations. Murphy's predicament was not unlike the one his father had found himself in decades earlier, when, as a young soldier, he fought and was wounded on a mountaintop in <a href="/topics/Vietnam">Vietnam</a>. 
For Murphy, the actions he took on the mountain have placed him in consideration, posthumously, for the Medal of Honor - the United States' highest military award. 
As he and his men watched and waited on the mountain, an Afghan shepherd trailing a herd of goats chanced across their path. No words were spoken as they stared at one another. Their cover blown, Murphy faced the hardest decision of his life. 
What to do about the shepherd?

ENSEAL1

Chapter 1: On the Mountain

The answer to that question might be found in Murphy's upbringing on <a href="/topics/Long_Island">Long Island</a>. 
A blue-eyed young man of Irish stock, Murphy's friends and relatives were public servants - cops and lifeguards, firemen, teachers and criminal court officials. His hometown of <a href="/topics/Patchogue">Patchogue</a> was a working- and middle-class community of third- and fourth-generation Irish, Italian and German immigrants. His father's father was as Irish as a man can be while still being an American - he was born aboard a ship from <a href="/topics/Ireland">Ireland</a> as it steamed into <a href="/topics/New_York">New York</a> harbor. 
While he grew up, Murphy watched as those closest to him tried to right the world. One night when Murphy's father, Daniel - then an assistant <a href="/topics/Suffolk">Suffolk</a> County district attorney - thought his 10-year-old son had gone off to bed, he began prepping for a murder case he was to prosecute the next morning. 
Two defendants were charged with killing a man and dumping his body into a cesspool behind a Patchogue auto parts store. The senior Murphy laid gruesome crime scene photographs across the kitchen table. 
Then Michael wandered in. 
"He asked me what were the pictures of?" <a href="/topics/Daniel_Murphy">Daniel Murphy</a> recalled. "And then he threw up." 
A few weeks after Michael graduated from Patchogue-Medford High School in 1994, a sniper firing from outside a Commack diner killed a 50-year-old lawyer as he sat with his wife waiting for their dinner. Three days later he shot at a gasoline station attendant. Three weeks later, the sniper shot a 43-year-old waitress on the night shift at a fast food restaurant, wounding her in the lung. 
With Long Island in a panic, police had nothing to go on but a few .35- caliber bullet fragments. One of Murphy's relatives, John J. McElhone, deputy chief of Suffolk's detective squad, ran the investigation. Four months and 1,600 interviews later, they caught and eventually convicted the sniper, who was sentenced to 15 years to life in prison. Michael watched the drama unfold. 
"Our whole family is police, firemen, lawyers, people helping other people," said Michael's mother, Maureen Murphy, a cousin of McElhone's. "He realized that's just the way you grow up." 
His father said even as a young child, Michael "never liked seeing people getting taken advantage of or getting picked on." 
While Michael was a pupil at Patchogue's Saxton Middle School, he jumped into a fight to help defend a classmate who had been cornered behind the building. After that incident, Michael couldn't shake the nickname: "the protector." 
"I think he liked the fact that there were people out there trying to protect other people and trying to solve the world's problems," <a href="/topics/Daniel_Murphy">Daniel Murphy</a> said. 
When he was in high school, Michael took a summer lifeguard job at the <a href="/topics/Brookhaven">Brookhaven</a> town beach in <a href="/topics/Lake_Ronkonkoma">Lake Ronkonkoma</a> - a job he returned to each summer through his college years. 
While there, Murphy began to demonstrate qualities that made people around him willing to follow his lead, say former lifeguards who worked with him. 
Friends from his high school and college years describe Murphy as someone who others naturally gravitated to - who exuded loyalty and instilled loyalty in those around him. 
When he was 16, his was the larger of the two bedrooms that he and his brother John occupied. But when an uncle fell on hard times and needed the Murphy family to help care for his three daughters, Murphy volunteered to take a smaller spare room, rather than ask his little brother to move. 
That day on the <a href="/topics/Afghanistan">Afghanistan</a> mountain, Murphy wore a large red sleeve emblem in honor of a former lifeguard he worked with - Owen O'Callaghan - who later became a fireman at Spanish Harlem's Engine 53 Ladder 43. 
O'Callaghan, now a Suffolk police officer, said when Murphy set his sights on joining the SEALs, he set up a chin-up bar at the beach, and prodded his fellow lifeguards to get stronger with him. 
"I'd be, like, 'I don't want to do any more,' and he'd say, 'You can do it'," said O'Callaghan, 28, who credits Murphy with preparing him to meet the physical requirements to become a fireman. 
"He wouldn't let you quit."

BZFINAN06F

Chapter 2: Growing up in Patchogue

Murphy met Heather Duggan through mutual friends in 1996, at a summer carnival on <a href="/topics/Long_Island">Long Island</a>. Duggan, who grew up in Mount Sinai, graduated from high school that year. She told Murphy, then a college sophomore, that she planned to attend Penn State in the fall. 
"I'm already at Penn State," said Murphy. 
For the next several hours, he challenged her to go on the carnival rides her girlfriends rejected as too scary. 
"To be honest, he rode my nerves the entire night," said Duggan "But he brought that competitive spirit out of me, so I was right there with him. I wouldn't back down." 
Soon, they were inseparable friends, but nothing romantic. He called her the first day she arrived on campus, finding her number before she even had a chance to give it to him. He attended her gymnastic meets. She took him dancing in the popular bars along College Avenue. She shared details of her spats with boyfriends, with Murphy often taking the side of her beaus. One night, with her on the back of his motorcycle, he zoomed along a <a href="/topics/Patchogue">Patchogue</a> main drag at more than 100 miles per hour. She never got on again. 
Duggan said that Murphy enjoyed teasing her. A favorite joke was to pull up in front of her house and offer her a ride in his car. When she reached for the door handle, Murphy pulled away, stopping a few feet down the street. 
"Sometimes this would go on for half a block," she said. "He loved pushing my buttons." 
But Murphy was also fiercely protective of her, more of a big brother than a potential suitor. Proof was the small scar near one eye from a time when they were dancing together at a Port <a href="/topics/Jefferson">Jefferson</a> bar during a holiday break from college. A man approached Duggan, dancing closely and suggestively. Murphy asked the man to stop and when he didn't, pushed him away. Duggan recalled that several of the man's friends jumped in and rained blows on Murphy, but never managed to knock him down. 
"My mom suggested while she was cleaning off the blood that he needed stitches," Duggan said. "He laughed and said he hadn't lost enough blood to need stitches." 
At home during college breaks, Murphy and his father continued their habit of hanging out together. Years earlier, the father had coached the son through youth soccer and pee-wee football. Young Michael would vault into his father's car to ride shotgun on trips to the supermarket or hardware store. 
As he grew up, Michael returned the affection. As a college student, he extended his weekend visits home as long as possible. It was 295 miles from the Murphy home in Patchogue to Penn State - a five-hour drive when father and son could talk to one another without interruption. 
Their habit was to climb into <a href="/topics/Daniel_Murphy">Daniel Murphy</a>'s green Buick an hour or two before midnight on a Sunday, point the car west toward Interstate 80 and drive to State College, Pa. After dropping off his son, <a href="/topics/Daniel_Murphy">Daniel Murphy</a> turned around and drove toward the rising sun, arriving back in time to be at work Monday morning. 
It was on one of those trips, in the darkness along the interstate, that Michael told his father he wanted to be a Navy SEAL. It wasn't something Daniel Murphy wanted to hear.

ENSEAL2

Chapter 3: Two relationships

Decades earlier, the father had also risked everything to serve his country and had come away with a permanent physical wound and a deep distaste for what soldiers are asked to do. But he let his son make his own decisions. 
<a href="/topics/Daniel_Murphy">Daniel Murphy</a> grew up in Elmont and enlisted in the Army in September 1968, while the U.S. was reeling from the Tet offensive throughout South <a href="/topics/Vietnam">Vietnam</a>. 
The attacks by the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong had deflated optimistic U.S. assessments of the war's progress and began to turn American public opinion against the war. 
<a href="/topics/Daniel_Murphy">Daniel Murphy</a>, who had just graduated from the University of <a href="/topics/Tennessee">Tennessee</a> and had law school in his sights, enlisted anyway, believing it was his patriotic duty to volunteer. 
By January 1970, Murphy was at war and on a mountaintop of his own, Nui Ba Den, a 3,235-foot dormant volcano that looms above a wide plane northwest of Saigon. 
Throughout years of intense fighting, American troops held just a few acres at the mountain's peak, with the Viet Cong owning the rest. The two forces fought regular battles to try to drive the other away. 
The mountain's caves were storehouses for insurgent supplies arriving from North <a href="/topics/Vietnam">Vietnam</a> via the <a href="/topics/Ho_Chi_Minh">Ho Chi Minh</a> Trail in <a href="/topics/Cambodia">Cambodia</a>, 18 miles away. From the mountain, the Viet Cong could spot approaching American troops before they arrived and direct shelling onto the camp where Murphy was stationed in the nearby provincial capital of Tay Ninh City. 
"They hit us so often we used to call it 'Rocket City,' " Murphy recalled. 
On Jan. 4, 1970, as they had every few months since 1965, U.S. forces again hurled themselves at the mountain, hoping finally to take it. Shortly after dawn three days later, Murphy - firing his rifle from behind a rock - was lifted high into the air when a grenade exploded. It fractured his ankle and pierced his legs with shrapnel from his hips to his feet. 
"I remember as clear as a bell floating down and saying, 'I'm dead. What are my parents going to think?' " recalled Murphy, who to this day is prevented by pain from carrying his briefcase in his left hand. 
A month after he was injured, Murphy's best Army buddy - a 20-year-old radio operator from <a href="/topics/Bay_Shore">Bay Shore</a> named Tommy Wynne - was killed in combat. Also killed was the medic who pulled Murphy to safety, whom everyone called "Gushy." 
U.S. forces never took the mountain, and, in 1973, ground forces abandoned the country altogether. It was in that place and time, that Daniel Murphy's view of the soldiers' life was formed. 
"It wasn't a matter of political belief, but Vietnam left a bad taste in my mouth that soldiers were used as cannon fodder," said Murphy, the National Judge Advocate for the Military Order of the Purple Heart, an advocacy group for wounded veterans. 
The father had rarely spoken of Vietnam while Michael was growing up, not wanting to share the horror - or plant a career idea - with a young, impressionable son. So that night in the car, Murphy offered some words of caution. 
"I said, 'Michael, you know my disenchantment with the military after being in Vietnam,' " Murphy recalled. " 'I thought you wanted to go to law school?' "

BZFINAN06E

Chapter 4: A Father's Experience

Michael was not to be dissuaded. In 1998, he graduated with a pair of bachelor's degrees from Penn State - in political science and psychology. And exactly as his father had done more than 30 years earlier, he put on hold his plans for law school. 
If there was any consolation to the senior Murphy, it was knowing that the odds against his son being accepted as a SEAL were enormous. Of the nearly 1.4 million people serving in the U.S. military, only 2,270 men are SEALs. The SEAL training program was so rigorous that more than three in four who won admission to BUDS - the Naval Special Warfare Command's Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL school - quit before they finished. 
But the long odds didn't deter Murphy. While still a Penn State student, Murphy, who was slightly built at 5-10, began attending SEAL mentoring sessions at the <a href="/topics/U_S_Merchant_Marine_Academy">U.S. Merchant Marine Academy</a> at Kings Point with the goal of getting himself ready for BUDS. Drew Bisset, a retired Navy captain and former SEAL, had designed the program after an admiral suggested lowering the strength requirements for SEAL candidates because so many were failing to make the grade. 
To earn his recommendation to the SEAL school in <a href="/topics/San_Diego">San Diego</a>, Bisset's charges had to far exceed the Navy's requirement to complete sets of at least 42 push-ups and 50 sit-ups - each in two minutes - plus six un-timed pull-ups. 
They also had to eclipse the Navy's requirement to swim a silent side stroke for 500 yards in under 12 minutes and 30 seconds, then run a mile and a half in just over 11 minutes - while wearing long pants and combat boots. 
Candidates in Bisset's program who failed in any one exercise had to wait a month before completing the entire regimen again. Bisset routinely fails applicants for splashing too loudly during the swim. 
Murphy began testing under Bisset on Jan. 16, 1999, completing the swim in 9 minutes, the run in 9 minutes, 22 seconds and executing 90 push-ups, 58 sit-ups and 18 pull-ups in the allotted time. 
"This is an intensely motivated individual who has the focus, determination and perseverance to carry him through the rigors of Basic Underwater Demolition SEAL (BUDS) training," Bisset wrote in his recommendation of Murphy. 
On a personal note, Bisset added, "I would be most eager to have this individual serve in my wardroom." 
Murphy continued to participate in the monthly strength-testing meetings even after winning Bisset's recommendation. He posted his last strength test on Sept. 11, 1999, gutting out 102 push-ups, 87 sit-ups and 22 pull-ups. He had cut his swim time by 13 percent, to 7:47. He ran a mile and a half in boots in 8:55. 
He was well above the Navy's minimum in all categories. But even with his improvement, he still fell short of Bisset's more rigorous prep regimen. 
"We want to see 100 sit-ups in two minutes," Bisset said. "But because he was strong across the board, we recommended him." 
With Bisset's recommendation virtually assuring him acceptance into SEAL training, Murphy enlisted in the Navy's Officer Candidate School at <a href="/topics/Pensacola">Pensacola</a>, 
Fla., in September, 1999. He was commissioned as an ensign that December. 
Now, only BUDS stood between Murphy and membership in the Navy's elite SEAL corps. 
Before he left for SEAL school in <a href="/topics/San_Diego">San Diego</a>, Murphy told Heather that he wanted her to move with him to <a href="/topics/California">California</a>. His emotions had changed and he knew he wanted her in his life. 
Her feelings had changed, too. At a party she organized to celebrate Murphy's acceptance into BUDS, she told him for the first time that she loved him. 
Still, she wasn't ready to follow him. She had been accepted in a graduate program for school counseling at <a href="/topics/Long_Island_University">Long Island University</a>. 
"This will sound horrible, but I didn't want a military life," Duggan recalled. "I wanted to get my master's degree and wasn't prepared to live the kind of life he was asking me to live." 
Murphy said goodbye to Duggan. In San Diego, Hell Week awaited him. 
MICHAEL P. MURPHY 
BORN: May 7, 1976 
HIGH SCHOOL: Graduated from Patchogue-<a href="/topics/Medford%2C_NY">Medford</a> High School in 1994 
COLLEGE: Graduated from Penn State University, 1998

BZFINAN06D

Chapter 5: Rigorous Training

Navy SEALs are involved in the most treacherous and secretive military operations. An assignment might require SEALs to surprise an enemy by swimming silently ashore from a submarine in darkness, or to rappel from a helicopter onto a mountain peak. 
The yearlong training program in <a href="/topics/Coronado">Coronado</a>, <a href="/topics/California">Calif</a>., outside <a href="/topics/San_Diego">San Diego</a> is most intense during Hell Week, a cold, wet, gritty stretch of almost constant exertion that is designed to make candidates quit. The men are on the run around the clock, getting less than five total hours of sleep over the course of five and a half days. 
The push-ups and sit-ups - sometimes 500 of each per day - are mere warm-up exercises. They swim and train for hours in bone-chilling surf, haul 300-pound logs and boats heavy with sand, and run obstacle courses under relentless prodding from drill instructors. The skin of their legs, feet, shoulders and groin is often worn raw from the constant motion and the chafing of military pants, boots or life jackets. 
To steel himself for what awaited him, Murphy called home with a request. 
He needed his father to send him a 1970 photograph that showed <a href="/topics/Daniel_Murphy">Daniel Murphy</a> recovering from his <a href="/topics/Vietnam">Vietnam</a> wounds. "If you could make it through what you went through, I can make it through Hell Week," Michael Murphy told his father. 
Midway through Hell Week, the highest-ranking trainee in Murphy's group, Lt. John Anthony Skop Jr., of Buffalo, died of a heart attack during a swimming pool training exercise. He was 29. Three years earlier, Navy airman Gordon Racine died during training in the same pool. 
"You have the feeling that it's never going to end," said Navy Lt. Jim Quattromani, 29, a SEAL stationed in <a href="/topics/San_Diego">San Diego</a> who went through Hell Week with Murphy. "I saw on numerous occasions him sort of pulling other guys along. 
"He really exuded a confidence and a maturity," added Quattromani. "He was slightly older than some of the other guys because he had been out of school for a while. And physically, he was such a good athlete that it seemed to come easier for him. 
"To me, of all the guys in the class, he was among the top few who it was obvious they were going to get through it," he said. 
Becoming a SEAL isn't all brawn and endurance. SEAL candidates must score well on the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery, a series of tests similar to the SATs, which gauge mathematical reasoning and verbal skills. 
SEALs must score as well as the Navy's nuclear propulsion candidates, who serve aboard submarines, a SEAL official explained. 
Murphy successfully completed his SEAL training, which included a month of jumps at the army's parachute school at Ft. Benning, Ga. In July 2002, it was official. He was awarded the trident symbol of the Navy SEALs. 
As Murphy emerged from SEAL training, war was under way in <a href="/topics/Afghanistan">Afghanistan</a>. 
U.S. bombers had struck <a href="/topics/Taliban">Taliban</a> and <a href="/topics/Al-Qaeda">al-Qaida</a> terrorist training camps near <a href="/topics/Kabul">Kabul</a>, Kandahar and Jalalabad beginning in the fall of 2001. 
Knowing full well he would play a role somewhere, Murphy was assigned to SEAL Delivery Team One, based at <a href="/topics/Pearl_Harbor">Pearl Harbor</a>.

ENSEAL3

Chapter 6: Earning the Trident

For Murphy and Duggan, parting had been hard. Each of them had thrown themselves into careers they had worked hard to achieve. They paid an emotional price. They stopped corresponding. 
"We both had a lot of growing up to do and there was a lot for each of us to experience," Duggan said. "We were young when we drifted apart. I was 22, he was 24." 
But on <a href="/topics/Long_Island">Long Island</a>, Duggan's mother learned from the Murphys that Michael had begun taking on missions overseas. He would eventually be deployed in <a href="/topics/Jordan">Jordan</a> and <a href="/topics/Qatar">Qatar</a>, but his parents didn't know about it. 
Once, when he called from the country of <a href="/topics/Djibouti">Djibouti</a>, his mother figured out he must have been in <a href="/topics/Africa">Africa</a> when he let slip that he had been chased by a pack of hyenas. Otherwise, his comings and goings were a mystery to the people he loved. 
Duggan worried. She began writing him again. 
"I was afraid that something would happen to him and I would never be able to tell him how I really felt about him," Duggan said. "I truly think Mike and I both knew we were a couple as soon as the first e-mail correspondence began." 
In April 2003, Murphy flew Duggan to <a href="/topics/Hawaii">Hawaii</a> and greeted her at the airport. 
"It was a different hug, different from the hugs we gave each other as friends," she recalled. 
"As soon as I walked toward him at the airport, I knew that I was going to have a hard time leaving. So I called my mom a few days later and said I was moving to <a href="/topics/Hawaii">Hawaii</a>." 
Murphy owned a house near <a href="/topics/Pearl_Harbor">Pearl Harbor</a>. The couple talked of starting a family. 
Heather dreamed of two children; Murphy, who organized street hockey games for youngsters in the neighborhood - much like his father had coached his teams - needled her about four or five. 
On the day after <a href="/topics/Christmas">Christmas</a>, 2003, during a trip home to Long Island, Murphy walked Duggan through the holiday crowds to see the tree at <a href="/topics/Rockefeller_Center%2C_NY">Rockefeller Center</a> in <a href="/topics/New_York">New York</a> City. 
Though temperatures were in the 30s, Murphy's hands were sweating. For the first time since she had known him, this confident man was anything but. 
Surrounded by tourists, Murphy dropped to a knee, dug a ring from his pocket and asked Duggan for her hand in marriage. She made him ask twice to tease him a little longer before saying yes. 
Planning a wedding would be difficult while Murphy was on active duty as a SEAL. They picked a date anyway - Nov. 19, 2005. 
They planned to move back East when his Navy hitch ended. Thinking ahead, on a visit home in March of that year, Murphy visited an <a href="/topics/Federal_Bureau_of_Investigation">FBI</a> office in <a href="/topics/New_York%2C_NY">New York</a> to inquire about a career in counter terrorism. 
But another mission shelved talk of settling down and having babies. 
In April 2005, Murphy kissed Duggan goodbye. Nothing of his next destination was known to his family. 
With war raging in <a href="/topics/Iraq">Iraq</a> - 52 American soldiers were killed there that month - his parents assumed that was where he would go. 
Half of his Hawaii-based platoon was sent to western <a href="/topics/Iraq">Iraq</a>. But at the last minute, Murphy and the other half found themselves headed for the very region where <a href="/topics/Osama_bin_Laden">Osama bin Laden</a> was believed to be hiding.

BZFINAN06

Chapter 7: Getting Serious

As a lieutenant who came through Officer's Training School, Murphy was the second-ranking member of his platoon, a unit of up to 44 men. 
But you'd never know it from the way he dealt with fellow SEALs. 
He shared his home with several SEAL roommates in <a href="/topics/Hawaii">Hawaii</a>, including one who recalled that Murphy would spend his free time alternating between pulling practical jokes on them and indulging reading tastes that ranged from the Greek historian Herodotus to Tolstoy's "War and Peace" and the political writings of <a href="/topics/Michael_Moore">Michael Moore</a>. 
His home was where others would drop by after work on Friday nights, before carpooling for beers and laughs at Duke's Waikiki, a popular bar. 
Some of them were the same guys who were with Murphy now in the desolation of <a href="/topics/Afghanistan">Afghanistan</a>. 
One was Petty Officer 1st Class Marcus Luttrell, 29, a karate expert from <a href="/topics/Texas">Texas</a>, whose back is tattooed with the image of half a Navy SEAL trident. His twin, also a Navy SEAL, wears the other half. 
Another was Petty Officer 2nd Class Danny P. Dietz, 25, a communications specialist. He had been married almost two years to a sailor stationed with him in <a href="/topics/Norfolk">Norfolk</a>, Va. But conflicting deployments had kept him from her for most of that time. 
The fourth man on the mountain, Petty Officer Matt Axelson, 29, a sniper from <a href="/topics/Cupertino">Cupertino</a>, <a href="/topics/California">Calif</a>., was known as quiet and cerebral. He once inscribed a photograph given to another SEAL with the words: "But within the willingness to die for family and home, something inside us longs for someone to die beside, someone to lock step with, another man with a heart like our own." 
The four men were secreted on the side of Sawtalo Sar, a steep mountain that cradles the Shuraik Valley in <a href="/topics/Afghanistan">Afghanistan</a>'s Kunar Province. The valley is home to Pashtun goat herders and woodcutters, who coax wheat from the rocky soil and who sometimes take money from warlords to shoot at and disclose the whereabouts of U.S. troops. 
Axelson had trained as a sniper. Dietz was good with communications equipment. Luttrell was a fourth-degree black belt in karate. 
Because of his rank, but also his warm personality, Murphy was the glue of the group. Other SEALs said his understated and unassuming nature made him accessible, but that when faced with a decision, he took in suggestions, then made it. 
The valley floor stretches south from the Pech River and is 5,000 feet above sea level. The mountain above climbs almost a mile higher. At the place where Murphy and his men waited, the slopes are steeper than a stairwell and heavily forested. 
The four men had been dropped in darkness the previous night by a helicopter from the Army's 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment. Overhead surveillance detected that a large group of heavily armed guerrilla fighters had slipped into Afghanistan from <a href="/topics/Pakistan">Pakistan</a> through a pass in the Hindu Kush mountains. The numbers indicated to the U.S. military that someone important was being protected. 
Ethnic Pashtun tribes are Sunni Muslims who control both sides of the Afghanistan-<a href="/topics/Pakistan">Pakistan</a> border. Fierce fighters who have stubbornly resisted outside domination for more than two millennia, they wore down and then ousted the Soviet Army in 1989. Out of their numbers came the <a href="/topics/Taliban">Taliban</a>, anti-modern, conservative interpreters of Islam, whose reign of terror turned Afghanistan into both a fundamentalist stronghold and a haven for <a href="/topics/Al-Qaeda">al-Qaida</a>. The <a href="/topics/Taliban">Taliban</a> remains so strong that local barbers balk at cutting mens' beards, afraid of being marked for death for offending the Muslim conservatives. 
This region of Afghanistan lies close to the heart of the Islamic extremism that on Sept. 11, 2001 killed 2,997 people in <a href="/topics/Pennsylvania">Pennsylvania</a>, <a href="/topics/New_York">New York</a> City and Washington. Since the 1980s, Kunar's mountains have been a stronghold for Arab militants who, under <a href="/topics/Osama_bin_Laden">Osama bin Laden</a>, formed al-Qaida. Many analysts who monitor bin Laden say Kunar and its adjacent Afghan and Pakistani regions are likely hiding places for him even now. 
The four SEALs were scouting Ahmad Shah - a man in his mid-30s who grew up in adjacent mountains just to the south. Under the assumed name Muhammad Ismail, Shah leads a guerrilla group known to locals as the "Mountain Tigers" that in recent years he has aligned by turns with the Taliban, Arabs and other militant groups that welcome having a secure toehold in mountains so strategically close to the Pakistani border. 
Last September, Pakistan President <a href="/topics/Pervez_Musharraf">Pervez Musharraf</a> told the Times of <a href="/topics/London">London</a> that he believed bin Laden was hiding in Afghanistan's Kunar Province, near where the four Americans were dropped. 
That June day, as the four men waited, they were spotted by a goat herder working his flock through the valley. 
&nbsp; 
&nbsp; 
THE TEAM 
 LT. MICHAEL MURPHY 
Age 29; leader of the `counter-terrorism' operation. 
PETTY OFFICER 2ND CLASS MATTHEW AXELSON 
Age 29, from <a href="/topics/Cupertino">Cupertino</a>, <a href="/topics/California">Calif</a>., he reportedly laid down covering fire so a teammate could escape alive. Friends called him "Cool Hand Luke." He was posthumously awarded the Navy Cross, the service's second-highest medal. 
PETTY OFFICER 2ND CLASS DANNY DIETZ 
Age 25, from Littleton, Colo., Dietz was mortally wounded but stood his ground against 30 to 40 Taliban militia. He also was posthumously awarded the Navy Cross. 
PETTY OFFICER 1ST CLASS MARCUS LUTTRELL 
Age 31, from Willis, <a href="/topics/Texas">Texas</a>, the sole survivor of the operation. Believed to be the "spotter" on the team, he was protected by a Pashtun shepherd, who would not turn him over to angry Taliban fighters.

ENSEAL4

Chapter 8: Military life

Since a SEAL's strength is his ability to get in and out unseen, their cover was effectively blown and a decision had to be made. 
What should they do about the goat herder? As the team leader, Murphy was forced to make a fateful decision. 
If he were allowed to leave, the herder might tell insurgents in the area of their presence, putting their lives in jeopardy. Taking him prisoner would slow their movements and could bring others out to look for him. Aborting their mission would risk the lives of those who would have to come to extract them and possibly allow an important insurgent leader to go free. 
Murphy made clear to the others that killing the shepherd, a noncombatant, to ensure his silence was not an option. 
"You know what, we are not murderers," he told the three others SEALs. "We're not just going to kill someone." 
They would spare the herder and take their chances. 
While much of what transpired after the goat herder was allowed to go his way is not known, at about 2 p.m. the four SEALs found themselves all but surrounded by several dozen heavily armed <a href="/topics/Taliban">Taliban</a> fighters, whose familiarity with the rugged terrain allowed them to slip in unseen. 
The Taliban knew the escape routes, and the paths the SEALs could use to flee the area. All they had to do was choke them off and pin the GIs down. The four Americans were trapped. 
Trying to reach safety, the four men began fleeing down the mountain's steep sides, making leaps of 20 to 30 feet. Realizing they were trapped, Dietz, the communications guy, sought open air to place a distress call back to the base. But before he could, he was shot in the hand, the blast shattering his thumb. 
Murphy, now desperate to make radio contact for help, then climbed out into the open, exposing himself to enemy gunfire. While making the call, he was hit, though not fatally, by at least one shot. But his words got through to Bagram Air Base. 
"Hornets nest," Murphy yelled into the satellite phone. 
Then he ran back down to help his three men. 
An account written by a U.S. Marine captain and published by the on-line magazine DefenseWatch, said U.S. forces who received the distress call sent a Predator drone mounted with an infrared camera to locate the SEAL team. Images beamed back from the battlefield told commanders that the SEALs were now surrounded. Within minutes, an Army MH-47 helicopter carrying eight SEALs and eight Army commandos was aloft, flying toward the battle scene at 50 feet off the ground and upward of 150 miles per hour. 
It was flanked by two attack helicopters, whose job it was to protect the chopper from ground fire. But the attack helicopters, burdened with the weight of armor and ammunition, and laboring in the thin air of the mountain altitudes, fell behind the troop carrier, making it vulnerable to enemy fire. 
As the troop carrier approached where the SEALs were trapped, a rocket-propelled explosive fired from the ground slammed into the MH-47's side. 
It is not known how many of the SEALs saw their rescuers' chopper explode and crash, killing all 16 aboard - including James Suh, 28, a SEAL from <a href="/topics/Florida">Florida</a> who was Murphy's closest friend. 
At some point, Luttrell found himself trapped, only to be saved when Murphy came to his rescue. 
Luttrell has told the families of the other SEALs that an explosion blew him farther down the mountain and away from the fighting. 
It was the last time he saw the others alive. 
In the fighting, an official investigation found, Axelson, Dietz and Murphy suffered multiple gunshot wounds, plus blunt-force injuries incurred as they jumped and tumbled down the ravine. Dietz was hit 16 times, including gunshot wounds to both thighs and both shoulders, his chest, jaw and head. Axelson had been hit with gunfire at least 22 times, including one shot that struck the back of his head. Murphy was hit at least seven times: bullets pierced his arm, leg, abdomen, back and his face below his left eye. 
As darkness fell, Luttrell, bleeding from several wounds and apparently unable to communicate with his command, hid from his pursuers. When the sun came up days later, an Afghan shepherd walked out of his mountain home after hearing a strange noise in the woods. He found Luttrell, wounded and scared, and after persuading him that he meant no harm, took him to his home to protect him from his pursuers. 
Luttrell had now been saved twice. And, if it was the first herder who betrayed them, it was now a second herder who saved the sole survivor. 
Armed gunmen, who videotaped themselves looting watches, weapons, boots and electronic equipment that they say were from the bodies of Axelson, Dietz and Murphy in a scene that was posted on <a href="/topics/YouTube">YouTube</a> - came to the village to demand custody of Luttrell. But following their own local code of ethics and tradition, which require villagers to offer sanctuary to anyone who is in danger, whether friend or enemy or stranger, the villagers told the gunmen they'd have to kill all the men in the village before they'd turn the American over. 
They later smuggled a note written by Luttrell to U.S. troops stationed at Asadabad across the mountain range. 
The tall Texan was now safe. 
Within a few days, a Navy chaplain phoned Maureen Murphy in Patchogue to say her son was missing in <a href="/topics/Afghanistan">Afghanistan</a>. The next day, a SEAL who had once been Michael Murphy's commanding officer flew from <a href="/topics/San_Diego">San Diego</a> to Long Island to wait with the family. He moved into a nearby motel. 
Every day he would spend from morning to midnight at the Patchogue house, calling back to San Diego each night to see if there was word. On July 4th, at about 11 p.m., the officer went outside to make his nightly call. This one was different - it lasted much longer than his earlier calls. Inside, <a href="/topics/Daniel_Murphy">Daniel Murphy</a> sensed something was very wrong. 
"I saw him coming toward me and I said, 'Is everything okay?' " the father recalled. "He said, 'Mr. Murphy, I'm sorry.' "

BZRIGHT

Chapter 9: The Tragic End

Murphy's mission, known as Operation Red Wing, resulted in the worst loss of life for the SEALs since the program's inception in 1962. In all, 11 Navy SEALs - 8 in the helicopter, plus Axelson Deitz and Murphy - were killed. 
The area where Murphy and the others perished remains one of the most lawless in the world, even though 200 troops from the 10th Mountain Division have since been stationed nearby. "We still take fire from the enemy," said Army Capt. Jim McKnight, who said in a phone interview from his outpost in <a href="/topics/Afghanistan">Afghanistan</a> that they had been attacked by small-arms fire earlier that day. 
The lone surviving SEAL, Luttrell, returned to active duty. By mid-May, he was no longer operational. In the SEAL community, he is now referred to as "The One." He declined comment for this story, but a book about his experiences, "Lone Survivor: The Eyewitness Account of Operation Redwing and the Lost Heroes of SEAL Team 10," which he wrote with military author Patrick Robinson, is due to be published in June by Little, Brown and Co. 
Luttrell's family and Robinson also declined comment. He received the Navy Cross - the Navy's highest honor - at a private Washington ceremony. 
Dietz and Axelson also received the Navy Cross, posthumously, at the ceremony. 
Standing in for their son, Dan and Maureen Murphy attended. But Michael Murphy did not receive the Navy Cross. The military only awards individuals one honor per war episode. Murphy's actions that day have put him in consideration for the nation's most prestigious combat award - the Medal of Honor. The medal is often bestowed on the two-year anniversary of an incident. For Lt. Michael Murphy of <a href="/topics/Patchogue%2C_NY">Patchogue</a>, that day is June 28, 2007. 
Two independent witness accounts of a deed are required before a candidate is considered for the Medal of Honor. Luttrell is a living witness. The radio contact Murphy made to call for help may well count as a second witness to his bravery. Consideration and deliberations are never discussed publicly by <a href="/topics/The_Pentagon">Pentagon</a> officials who decide. 
Dan and Maureen Murphy, who were divorced in 1999, remain such close friends that when Dan remarried last year, Maureen took care of his new bride's two children while they honeymooned in <a href="/topics/Hawaii">Hawaii</a>. Their other son, John, 20, is attending the <a href="/topics/New_York">New York</a> Institute of Technology, with hopes of pursuing a career in criminal justice. 
"He's going to be the lawyer," <a href="/topics/Dan_Murphy">Dan Murphy</a> said. 
Maureen Murphy visits Michael's grave site at <a href="/topics/Calverton%2C_NY">Calverton</a> Cemetery nearly every day, where she talks to him. Before her son was buried, she tucked into his casket a key to the front door of the family's <a href="/topics/Patchogue%2C_NY">Patchogue</a> home where she still lives with John. 
Heather Duggan lives near <a href="/topics/Wall_Street">Wall Street</a> in Lower <a href="/topics/Manhattan">Manhattan</a> and counsels middle school students at IS-220 in Borough Park, <a href="/topics/Brooklyn">Brooklyn</a>. These days, she says she laughs more than she cries when she remembers Michael. 
"He'll always be a part of me, but what I truly, truly miss the most - and this might shock some people - is definitely his friendship," Duggan said. "I think about him hanging out with me back in 1997-1998, with a backwards baseball hat on, out on the beach, cracking jokes and messing around. He was just such a great friend." 
Several times a week, <a href="/topics/Dan_Murphy">Dan Murphy</a> drives to <a href="/topics/Lake_Ronkonkoma">Lake Ronkonkoma</a> where his son served as a lifeguard and where he practiced chin-ups to prepare for SEAL training. The memory that his son stood on this beach on hot summer days, looking out for swimmers in trouble, is reassuring to a father who desperately misses him. 
He said, "It gives me a sense of peace walking on the same ground he walked."

ENSEAL5

Epilogue: Moving On

A breeze stirred, sending a halyard against a flag pole
 with a muffled clanging. The Stars and Stripes furled and unfurled halfway up.
 At Calverton National Cemetery, in the leaden summer air, it was the only 
sound. The mourners stood in silence, waiting as the coffin bearing the body of
 Navy Lt. Michael P. Murphy was eased from a hearse.
 Yesterday, a crowd - friends and family, fellow soldiers, long-time 
neighbors and well wishers - paused to say goodbye to Murphy, 29, a Patchogue 
native killed after his unit was involved in a June 28 firefight in Afghanistan.
 At his funeral more than 900 people crammed into Patchogue's Our Lady of 
<a href="/topics/Mount_Carmel">Mount Carmel</a> <a href="/topics/Roman_Catholic_Church">Roman Catholic Church</a>. He was described as an amiable 
perfectionist, so driven that he would do chin-ups while wearing heavy body 
armor. He was also remembered as so dedicated to his fiancee, Heather Duggan, 
that he reserved an hour each day to telephone her.
 "That is what drove him," said Tony Viggiano, a family friend, pointing to 
his heart. "There isn't anything he set out to do since I knew him that he 
didn't accomplish."
 Murphy had been a member of the elite Navy commando unit known as the 
SEALs. He was a member of a four-man patrol that had been injected into a 
remote area of Afghanistan's eastern mountains to secretly monitor insurgent 
movements there. On June 28, insurgents discovered the patrol, killing three. A
 fourth SEAL, though wounded, escaped into the darkness of a steady rain and 
was rescued by an Afghan villager.
 Several of Murphy's fellow Navy SEALs attended the funeral, wearing the 
distinctive Navy SEAL insignia, which includes an eagle whose head is bowed in 
respect for the unit's dead. Later, they would remove the insignia and place 
them on Murphy's coffin.
 In the church, Murphy's father, Daniel, spoke of Murphy as an extraordinary
 son, brother and friend. He said he and his wife, Maureen, were proud to have 
had him as a son for the short years they had together.
 <a href="/topics/Daniel_Murphy">Daniel Murphy</a>, a <a href="/topics/Vietnam">Vietnam</a> veteran, said he planned to bury his son with the 
Purple Heart medal he had earned for a leg wound that hospitalized him during 
the Vietnam War. His son was also awarded a Purple Heart, in addition to the 
prestigious Silver Star.
 He said because the exact date of his son's death remains undetermined, his
 son's tombstone will list it as the Fourth of July. That was the day his son's
 body was found.
 "It was always his favorite holiday," Daniel Murphy told a reporter last 
week. "When he was little, he would ask me, 'Daddy, take me to see boom boom in
 the sky.'"
 At a brief military ceremony at the cemetery in Calverton following the 
funeral, Daniel and Maureen Murphy stood among the mourners.
 A squad of marksmen shattered the silence, firing three volleys into the 
sky.
 Then, three of the spent shell casings were gathered up, tucked into a 
folded flag, and handed to his mother.
 She clutched it tightly to her breast.

LISEAL14

Farewell to a patriot

He was Everyman and Superman rolled into one. 
A kid from the suburbs with a dream of public service. The son of a wounded <a href="/topics/Vietnam">Vietnam</a> vet, surprising his dad one day with talk of joining up. A college student, a lifeguard, a Navy SEAL unhesitantly showing the world what bravery and honor mean. 
And now, too late for him to enjoy it, Lt. <a href="/topics/Michael_Murphy_%28politician%29">Michael Murphy</a> of <a href="/topics/Patchogue">Patchogue</a> is getting the recognition he so obviously deserves. 
Whatever you think of the wars America's been fighting, you can't say the warriors lack heart. 
"Michael believed in what he was doing over there," his father, <a href="/topics/Dan_Murphy">Dan Murphy</a>, was telling me yesterday after the news came from Washington about the medal. 
"It wasn't political at all. It was personal to him. He was there fighting the people who'd attacked the city he loved." 
Let others debate the wars in <a href="/topics/Iraq">Iraq</a> and <a href="/topics/Afghanistan">Afghanistan</a>. Let the polls assess the strategy and the results. Let the politicians explain if and when our troops are coming home. 
"Michael and his team were where they wanted to be," his father said. "He felt what he was doing was important." 
And yes, the policy questions keep coming. <a href="/topics/Dan_Murphy">Dan Murphy</a> heard them yesterday. 
Important questions. Larger questions. Questions that people in Washington will have to answer soon. 
What kind of progress are we making in <a href="/topics/Afghanistan">Afghanistan</a>? How long will American troops have to stay in <a href="/topics/Iraq">Iraq</a>? Is a war with <a href="/topics/Iran">Iran</a> coming next? How much further can we keep stretching a military that has already been stretched so far? How many more dead soldiers and sailors and airmen and Marines? 
And now comes word that the U.S. Marines want to leave Iraq. 
But these Navy SEALs who took the oath and went to war and did the fighting and the dying, too - all they did was give their all and then some. 
"You can't explain to someone what it's like to lose a child," Dan Murphy said. "But we are happy Michael's incredible bravery is being recognized. It brings to the forefront what Michael and his team did that day." 
It's a story sure to be told around the world now. They'd better make room in the history books. 
How on June 28, 2005, near Afghanistan's treacherous border with <a href="/topics/Pakistan">Pakistan</a>, four Navy SEALs were on a scouting mission, looking for the fierce <a href="/topics/Taliban">Taliban</a> fighter Ahmad Shah. The air was cold and thin at 10,000 feet. The sympathies of the locals were anybody's guess. 
Their cover was blown after a local goat herder wandered by. Soon enough, they were surrounded by 50 guerrilla fighters. Drastically outnumbered, fighting on impossible terrain, the four SEALs desperately tried to fend off a three-direction attack. 
Lt. Murphy was the one who, already wounded and facing heavy fire, rushed into the open in a final attempt to summon help for his men. 
And none of it was clouded by politics. 
"Like the insignia Michael wore," a proud father said on a very special day. "He carried it on his uniform, the emblem of the <a href="/topics/New_York">New York</a> City Fire Department. Engine 53, Ladder Company 43. El Barrio's Bravest. The firefighters have their own memorial to him. You can look it up on their Web site. There is a huge plaque of Michael in uniform in the firehouse. The SEALs presented it to them. The firefighters touch it every day for good luck before they go out on a call. 
"It's all very personal."

NYHEN12

Ellis Henican: Brave heart beneath his medals

By the time he had reached his mid-20s, Lt. Michael P. 
Murphy, who grew up in Patchogue, had become a member of one of the most elite 
fighting forces in the U.S. military.
 On July Fourth, Murphy's body was recovered from a ravine in the mountains
 along Afghanistan's border with Pakistan.
 Murphy and three others had been doing reconnaissance as part of Operation 
Red Wing, in search of al-Qaida and Taliban insurgents. Murphy and a second 
SEAL were killed, one was rescued and one remains missing, a Navy spokesman 
said.
 Murphy's parents, Daniel and Maureen, of Patchogue, who were informed of 
their son's death yesterday morning, left for the military morgue at Dover, 
Del., to await the arrival of his body.
 "We were just honored to have him as a son for 29 years," <a href="/topics/Daniel_Murphy">Daniel Murphy</a> 
told a <a href="/topics/Newsday">Newsday</a> reporter. The senior Murphy is an attorney and the law secretary
 for State Supreme Court Justice Peter Fox Cohalan.
 "We wanted to be here when he arrived on U.S. soil," he said.
 Murphy and three other Navy SEAL commandos had been the target of an 
intense search-and-rescue effort that resulted in a June 28 helicopter crash 
that killed 16 Americans.
 Murphy became the fifth current or former <a href="/topics/Long_Island">Long Island</a> resident to have been
 killed in the fighting in Afghanistan. Ten have been killed in <a href="/topics/Iraq">Iraq</a>.
 Word that one of its own had fallen in Afghanistan stunned Patchogue, a 
working-class community on the Great South Bay.
 Neighbors two doors from the Murphy house said the death was very hard to 
accept.
 "You know it might happen, but you never expect it to happen to someone you
 know," said the neighbor, Richard Bishop.
 Bishop's wife, Babette Bishop, said she remembered Murphy as a child. She 
was surprised to learn he had become a member of one of the world's elite 
fighting forces.
 "When he was growing up, he was such a little kid," she said. "I was kind 
of surprised."
 Murphy, 29, was a member of the Class of 1994 at Patchogue-Medford High 
School, where he played varsity football. He graduated from <a href="/topics/Pennsylvania">Pennsylvania</a> State 
University in 1998. He toyed briefly with going to law school but instead 
joined the SEALs on Dec. 13, 2000. He was promoted to lieutenant on Jan. 1, 
2005. He served with SEAL Delivery Vehicle Team One, based at <a href="/topics/Pearl_Harbor">Pearl Harbor</a>, in 
Hawaii.
 SEAL, which stands for sea, air, land, refers to the group's strategy of 
using small, stealthy commando units to engage targets that larger forces could
 not approach undetected.
 "As to the fourth individual, we're conducting a very aggressive, 24-hours 
round-the-clock search for this individual," a U.S. military spokesman, Col. 
James Yonts, told reporters in Afghanistan. "We are very hopeful that we will 
recover this individual back into our care very soon."
 The other dead man was identified as Petty Officer 2nd Class Danny P. 
Dietz, 25, of Littleton, Co.
 The incident that led to their deaths began shortly after the four-man 
commando team was dropped off in a forested area of Afghanistan's eastern 
mountain range. Almost immediately, the group came under withering gunfire.
 A call for help brought a pair of U.S. helicopters, which arrived at the 
high-altitude battleground as night was falling. One of the helicopters 
apparently was hit in the tail section by an explosive device. All aboard were 
killed. Their bodies were recovered last Thursday and flown to Dover.
 On Sunday, U.S. troops spotted the bodies of Murphy and Dietz at the bottom
 of a deep ravine in rugged country. It took them 24 hours to reach their 
fallen comrades.
The toll in Afghanistan
U.S. military fatalities since...
Jan. 1, 2005
56
Oct. 7, 2001*
210
Jan. 1, 2004
108
*Represents start of military operations.

LISEAL07

Amid grief, pride

A U.S. Navy destroyer will be named after Lt. Michael P. 
Murphy, the Patchogue native who was killed in <a href="/topics/Afghanistan">Afghanistan</a> in 2005 while 
seeking help for his platoon members who had come under intense fire from the 
Taliban, officials said yesterday.
 At a ceremony on the eastern shore of <a href="/topics/Lake_Ronkonkoma">Lake Ronkonkoma</a> - on a beach 
previously named after Murphy, who was awarded the Medal of Honor last 
September - Navy Secretary Donald Winter said the keel of the destroyer would 
be laid in June 2009 at a shipyard in <a href="/topics/Maine">Maine</a> and the ship commissioned in 2011.
 Winter said while Navy warships are traditionally named after major 
historical figures, the naming of the destroyer after Murphy was "an 
opportunity to recognize this new generation of heroes." The announcement 
pleased Murphy's family. "I am at a loss; what do you say?" said Murphy's 
father, <a href="/topics/Daniel_Murphy">Daniel Murphy</a>, of <a href="/topics/Wading_River">Wading River</a>. "'Thank you' seems so trivial in light 
of such an honor to our son."
 Murphy and a four-man Navy SEAL team were on a mountainside in eastern 
Afghanistan trailing a Taliban leader when they were surrounded by dozens of 
fighters. In receiving the Medal of Honor, Murphy was cited for exposing 
himself to enemy fire while trying to radio for help. Murphy and two others 
were killed; a fourth SEAL was saved when an Afghan herder came upon him and 
took him to his village for safekeeping.
 Rear Admiral Joseph Kernan, commander of the Naval Special Warfare Command 
under which Murphy served, said the ship's naming represents the pinnacle of 
naval honors.
ABOUT THE SHIP
The U.S. Navy ship to be named after Lt. Michael P. Murphy is an Arleigh Burke 
class destroyer equipped with the Aegis combat system. Destroyers of this 
class weigh 9,200 tons, are 509 feet long, and can reach speeds of up to 30 
knots.

LIMURP08

Ship to be named for Medal winner

Two years after his death in <a href="/topics/Afghanistan">Afghanistan</a>, Lt. Michael P. Murphy, who grew up in Patchogue and joined the elite Navy SEALs after college, has been awarded the nation's highest battlefield award, the Medal of Honor, for a valiant attempt to save the lives of comrades that cost him his own. 
"This tells the country what we already know about Michael -- that he was a hero," his father, <a href="/topics/Daniel_Murphy">Daniel Murphy</a>, said after receiving the news Thursday that the <a href="/topics/White_House">White House</a> had made the announcement of the award shortly after noon Thursday. 
The president will present the medal -- a star-shaped bronze emblem suspended from a sky-blue ribbon -- to Murphy's family on Oct. 22 at a ceremony in the White House's historic Blue Room. 
Murphy, 29 at the time of his death, becomes the first Medal of Honor winner for combat service in Afghanistan, and the first sailor recipient since the <a href="/topics/Vietnam">Vietnam</a> War. He is the 18th <a href="/topics/Long_Island">Long Island</a>er to win the award. Four U.S. Army soldiers from Long Island won the honor for service in Vietnam, where Daniel Murphy served and was awarded the Purple Heart for battlefield wounds. 
Daniel Murphy, a law clerk in State Supreme Court in Riverhead, said he learned of the president's decision on Aug. 27, but had agreed to keep silent until an announcement was officially made. 
"The family is absolutely thrilled by the president's announcement," Murphy said. "I think it is a public recognition of what we knew about Michael, of his intensity, his focus, his devout loyalty to home and family, his country and especially to his SEAL teammates and the SEAL community." 
Murphy is credited with putting his life in danger in an effort to save the lives of three of his subordinates during a fierce firefight in eastern Afghanistan near the <a href="/topics/Pakistan">Pakistan</a> border in June 2005. 
That month, Murphy and three other SEALs -- Petty Officer Matt Axelson, 29, and Petty Officer 2nd Class Danny Dietz, 25 -- were inserted by helicopter onto a remote mountaintop near the border. They were four men on a secret mission to track a high-ranking Taliban warlord, <a href="/topics/Newsday">Newsday</a> reported last May. But they were discovered first by an Afghan goat herder who stumbled upon their hiding place in a mountainside forest. Not long after, the four SEALs were surrounded by dozens of armed insurgents, and a fierce battle ensued. 
The lone survivor of the incident, Petty Officer 1st Class Marcus Luttrell, 29, of <a href="/topics/Texas">Texas</a>, has called Murphy, the team's leader, "an iron-souled warrior of colossal, almost unbelievable courage." According to Luttrell's account, as told to Navy superiors and in a recently published book, Murphy displayed "an extreme act of valor" when he ran into the open -- and suffered a bullet wound when he did -- in a last-ditch attempt to call for help and save his fellow SEALs. 
That call brought tragedy instead, when a rescue helicopter sent to save them was shot down, killing all 16 U.S. troops aboard, including eight Navy SEALs. 
Murphy, Axelson and Dietz were killed as they fled down the mountainside in an effort to elude their pursuers. 
"Lt. <a href="/topics/Mike_Murphy">Mike Murphy</a> was a valued teammate, professional warrior, and fearless leader," said Rear Adm. Joe Kernan, chief of the Naval Special Warfare Command, in a prepared statement. "We are humbled by his courageous and selfless actions and this award is a testament to the man he was." 
As one of fewer than 2,400 men serving in the closely-knit SEAL community, Murphy was a member of the most elite group in the military. To join the secretive, highly trained unit -- whose commandos are trained to arrive at targets by submarine, over land or via aircraft -- men must submit themselves to months of grueling training designed to weed out all but the most determined fighters. 
The Medal of Honor is bestowed by the president upon military personnel who have distinguished themselves "conspicuously by gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his or her life above and beyond the call of duty while engaged in action against an enemy of the <a href="/topics/United_States">United States</a>." 
The act "must have been one of personal bravery or self-sacrifice so conspicuous as to clearly distinguish the individual above his or her comrades." 
To date, 3,462 soldiers, sailors, Marines or airmen have received the Medal of Honor since it was initiated by <a href="/topics/U.S._Congress">Congress</a> in 1863. 
Interviewed at an afternoon news conference yesterday in <a href="/topics/Manhattan">Manhattan</a>, Murphy's parents described their feelings as "bittersweet." 
Murphy's mother, Maureen, said she is consoled by the fact that her son will be remembered by how he lived his final hours. 
"It's almost like it's a snapshot of how he lived his life," said Maureen Murphy, of Patchogue. "We know how he lived his life, but now the nation knows." 
Daniel Murphy, who said in the Newsday story last May that he did not want his son to follow his footsteps and enlist in the military, said he was proud of what his son had accomplished. 
"I have no regrets," Daniel Murphy said, "except that we lost him."

ny-murphy-medal

Slain Patchogue SEAL receives highest honor

In the <a href="/topics/South_Shore">South Shore</a> community of <a href="/topics/Patchogue%2C_NY">Patchogue</a>, where American flags often fly from front-porch rails, an effort to rename a high school after a 1994 graduate who was granted the nation's highest military honor after dying in a firefight in <a href="/topics/Afghanistan">Afghanistan</a> has drawn vocal support. 
But there is quiet grumbling that the community is being made into a living memorial to one individual. 
Already, the Patchogue post office is named after Navy Seal Lt. Michael P. Murphy, as is the <a href="/topics/Brookhaven%2C_NY">Brookhaven</a> Town beach at <a href="/topics/Lake_Ronkonkoma">Lake Ronkonkoma</a>, where Murphy was a lifeguard. The Patchogue-<a href="/topics/Medford%2C_NY">Medford</a> High School lobby holds a prominent display honoring Murphy, who was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor last October. 
He was killed in June 2005. 
"The question is, how many heroes do we have, and how many school buildings are there?" said one public employee. 
A school board meeting this week drew about 400 people after a veterans group urged supporters of the name change to attend. 
"There are 217,000 people buried at <a href="/topics/Calverton">Calverton</a>, and only one of them has the Medal of Honor," said Bryan Davis, referring to the national cemetery. Davis taught Murphy at Saxton Middle School. 
Patchogue-Medford school district superintendent Michael Mostow said a committee will meet with Murphy's family and recommend a course of action within 60 days. 
"If I were a gambling person, I'd say the school will be renamed," Mostow said. 
He said several considerations would complicate a name change. For one, he said, the high school's current name is carved into a 60-foot marble frieze in the entry. 
"It's not a small decision to change a school's name," Mostow said. "The district has never done that before." 
Murphy's father, Daniel J. Murphy, said he would be willing to have a building other than the high school - perhaps Saxton - named in his son's memory. 
But Murphy said if that were the decision, the school board would first have to agree that the high school would never be renamed in someone else's honor. 
"The question comes if they decide to name the high school after a former superintendent, does he sit on the same plateau or a plane equal to Michael?" 
Murphy said. "I told the board that except for naming the high school after a president, it would do a disservice to Michael's memory."

LIMEDA18

Debate over naming school for war hero

At a ceremony to dedicate Brookhaven Town Beach in the 
name of Lt. Michael P. Murphy, Navy Rear Adm. Joe Maguire gave the most 
detailed public accounting of the death of the former town lifeguard, who lived
 as a Navy SEAL and died a hero's death last year on a mountainside in 
<a href="/topics/Afghanistan">Afghanistan</a>.
 Murphy, who would have turned 30 yesterday, was killed in June when he and 
three other SEAL commandos were on a mission in a remote mountainous area near 
the <a href="/topics/Pakistan">Pakistan</a> border.
 Maguire addressed about 500 people yesterday - including more than a dozen 
of Murphy's SEAL comrades, who flew in from as far away as <a href="/topics/Hawaii">Hawaii</a> - who 
attended the sunset ceremony that was capped by a booming fireworks display.
 Maguire said the commando unit Murphy led had been injected into the area 
to conduct surveillance on a Taliban force that had crossed into Afghanistan 
from Pakistan through the Hindu Kush mountains.
 But the four commandos were discovered within two days of their deployment,
 and found themselves in a fierce firefight with 75 to 80 combatants.
 Murphy, who was wounded about a half-hour into the 45-minute firefight, 
climbed atop a high rock so that he could establish contact with an orbiting 
communications satellite.
 His call was credited with setting off a search that allowed a comrade to 
be saved.
 But the climb left him exposed, and he was hit again by gunfire. 
 In all, three SEALs were killed. A wounded fourth was hidden by villagers, 
and eventually turned over to U.S. forces.
 The tragedy was compounded when eight SEAL and eight Army commandos 
responding to Murphy's call were shot down. All aboard the Chinook helicopter 
were killed, in what was the biggest loss of life for U.S. forces in 
Afghanistan since fighting began there in 2001.
 Murphy, a member of the Class of 1994 at Patchogue-Medford High School, 
began working as a park attendant that year.
 "This park is a fitting memorial to Michael," Maguire said. "This is where 
Michael thrived."
 Murphy's father, <a href="/topics/Daniel_Murphy">Daniel Murphy</a>, also addressed the gathering. "Michael was 
an incredible person, and the world is a lesser place without him in it," he 
said.
 Daniel Murphy then looked on as a red granite monument in his son's name 
was unveiled. It features a rendition of the Purple Heart medal, and looks out 
over the waters of <a href="/topics/Lake_Ronkonkoma">Lake Ronkonkoma</a>.

LISEAL08

Park named for hero Navy SEAL, lifeguard

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