Tom Sileo Read Free Page B

Travis with almost no strength to attempt an escape. In a sport built on hand-to-hand combat, one hand is almost always no match for two.
    â€œThey should stop this,” Janet said to Tom, who was silent as he watched his son being thoroughly dominated.
    The match ended in an 11–0 shutout. It was by far the worst defeat of Travis’s illustrious high school and college wrestling career and left the varsity athlete despondent as he watched the rest of the meet from the bench, clutching his injured shoulder.
    Back at the Arlington Hilton after the worst meet of his life, Travis, a brawny, good-looking twenty-three-year-old with a buzz cut, sat outside the hotel talking to Navy assistant wrestling coach Joel Sharratt. Although the senior athlete and his mentor were close, this was the first time Sharratt had ever seen Travis, who insisted that he had “let everyone down,” overcome by emotion. Travis knew his wrestling career was over and worried aloud that he had disappointed his parents.
    â€œThat’s bullshit,” Sharratt said. “Your parents support you 100 percent.”
    After a brief moment of silence, the assistant coach gave Travis a reason to perk up, telling the future military officer that though his senior wrestling season was over, it was now time for him to devote all his energy to becoming a Marine.
    Travis understood what his coach was saying, but giving up wrestling was almost inconceivable. He loved the sport and wanted desperately to be the best at it.
    He was still standing outside with Coach Sharratt when his parents got back from the match. After the coach had greeted Tom and Janet and excused himself to head upstairs, Travis hugged his mother.
    â€œI’m sorry you guys had to come all the way down here to see that,” he said.
    â€œTravis, you tried your best,” Janet replied.
    Putting his hand on Travis’s healthy left shoulder, Tom, the Marine Corps colonel, gave his only son some encouragement, telling him that many great things were still ahead. Regardless of how many wrestling matches Travis won, what truly mattered was that he would soon graduate from Navy and become a leader of Marines.
    The fourth day of 2004 may have felt like his lowest point at the academy, but the senior midshipman had barely made it that far to begin with. Just over four years earlier, as a first-semester plebe, Travis had done something he’d never done before in his life: quit.

    Just before Thanksgiving 1999, Travis was clearly agitated as he sat across from his Naval Academy battalion commander, Lieutenant Colonel Corky Gardner, a career Marine with many years of leadership experience. The young midshipman was fed up with the early morning classes, drills, and strict rules about always stayingon campus. He had only given it four months, but to a stubborn eighteen-year-old, plebe year felt like an eternity.
    If Travis had been with his sister Ryan at their dad’s alma mater, Widener University, or almost any other institution of higher learning, he could have simply filled out a withdrawal form. But at the Naval Academy, where dozens of midshipmen succumb every semester to a rigorous mix of academics and military training, Travis had to complete a packet full of intentionally difficult, tedious paperwork explaining why he planned to leave Annapolis. Then he had to separately inform his squad leader, company commander, and company officer of his intention to resign, before he could even get inside the battalion commander’s office.
    For Travis, the final meeting presented a dual challenge. Lieutenant Colonel Gardner wasn’t just his battalion commander; he was a close friend of Travis’s father and had begun serving with Tom almost a decade earlier. When Travis showed up for “plebe summer,” a grueling training session that results in many dropping out before the academic year even starts, Gardner was there to cut off Travis’s first lock of