Team Infidel
Forum Spin Doctor
New York Daily News
February 2, 2007
Pg. 7
Family of fallen L.I. soldier up for top medal knew their boy would never leave his men to die
By John Lauinger, Daily News Writer
The father of a Navy SEAL being considered for the nation's highest award for valor said yesterday his son's selfless actions on an Afghan mountaintop didn't surprise him.
"He's our hero," Daniel Murphy, 60, said of his gritty warrior son, Lt. Michael Murphy, who died on a Hindu Kush mountain June 28, 2005, while trying to save three members of his elite commando unit.
"What we've learned with regard to what he did doesn't surprise us at all. That was pure Michael," said the father.
Rep. Tim Bishop (D-Southampton) said Murphy was up for the Medal of Honor, which has been awarded to only two soldiers since the war on terror began. Murphy, who was 29, was leading a four-man unit that was tracking a Taliban leader in the mountainous border region between Afghanistan and Pakistan when they were attacked by a much larger force.
Only one member of the unit made it off the mountaintop alive, and he told relatives that Murphy died saving his life.
Murphy's father, a retired Army officer who is disabled from wounds sustained in the Vietnam War, said the leadership his son showed that day shone through when he was a boy playing football and baseball at Patchogue-Medford High School on Long Island.
"He was a born leader," said the heartbroken father. He said that when the Navy informed his family that one SEAL had survived the ferocious firefight, he and his wife, Maureen, knew right away it wasn't their son.
"When we heard that there was a survivor, we just turned to look at each other and said, 'It couldn't be Michael. Michael would be the last to leave,' " he recalled.
"Maureen's concern wasn't that Michael wasn't good at getting out of a scrape on the battlefield," Daniel Murphy said, "but that he would put himself at risk and sacrifice his life to save those of his men - and that's exactly what happened here."
Murphy was engaged to his college sweetheart, Heather Duggan, when he was killed during his fourth deployment as a SEAL. The 1998 Penn State graduate had been accepted at several law schools, but he enlisted in the Navy because he had always wanted to be a SEAL, his father said.
--With James Gordon Meek
February 2, 2007
Pg. 7
Family of fallen L.I. soldier up for top medal knew their boy would never leave his men to die
By John Lauinger, Daily News Writer
The father of a Navy SEAL being considered for the nation's highest award for valor said yesterday his son's selfless actions on an Afghan mountaintop didn't surprise him.
"He's our hero," Daniel Murphy, 60, said of his gritty warrior son, Lt. Michael Murphy, who died on a Hindu Kush mountain June 28, 2005, while trying to save three members of his elite commando unit.
"What we've learned with regard to what he did doesn't surprise us at all. That was pure Michael," said the father.
Rep. Tim Bishop (D-Southampton) said Murphy was up for the Medal of Honor, which has been awarded to only two soldiers since the war on terror began. Murphy, who was 29, was leading a four-man unit that was tracking a Taliban leader in the mountainous border region between Afghanistan and Pakistan when they were attacked by a much larger force.
Only one member of the unit made it off the mountaintop alive, and he told relatives that Murphy died saving his life.
Murphy's father, a retired Army officer who is disabled from wounds sustained in the Vietnam War, said the leadership his son showed that day shone through when he was a boy playing football and baseball at Patchogue-Medford High School on Long Island.
"He was a born leader," said the heartbroken father. He said that when the Navy informed his family that one SEAL had survived the ferocious firefight, he and his wife, Maureen, knew right away it wasn't their son.
"When we heard that there was a survivor, we just turned to look at each other and said, 'It couldn't be Michael. Michael would be the last to leave,' " he recalled.
"Maureen's concern wasn't that Michael wasn't good at getting out of a scrape on the battlefield," Daniel Murphy said, "but that he would put himself at risk and sacrifice his life to save those of his men - and that's exactly what happened here."
Murphy was engaged to his college sweetheart, Heather Duggan, when he was killed during his fourth deployment as a SEAL. The 1998 Penn State graduate had been accepted at several law schools, but he enlisted in the Navy because he had always wanted to be a SEAL, his father said.
--With James Gordon Meek
