In whatever comes our way…
—Steppenwolf, “Born to Be Wild”
During my career I’ve been called Dr. Death, Don Maniac, Warrant Officer Manslaughter, and Sweet Satan. Over the past three decades I’ve served as a Navy SEAL lead petty officer, assault team member, boat-crew leader, department head, training officer, advanced-training officer, weapons of mass destruction (WMD) officer, and, more recently, program director preparing civilians for BUD/S (Basic Underwater Demolition/ SEAL) training. I was asked by the U.S. Navy in 1997 to assist with the Navy recruiting command and created the SEAL Adventure Challenge and the SEAL Training Academy, where we taught skydiving, combat scuba diving, small-unit tactics, marksmanship, and land navigation. Up until August of 1998, I was on active duty with SEAL Team Six.
Owing to my long years in service and my career in extreme adventure sports—which has included seventy-five thousand miles of running and three hundred thousand miles of biking—I’m also known on the teams as the high-mileage SEAL.
Over the years I developed a reputation for being one of the ST-6 commandos who liked to push the envelope. Rip it apart if I could.
Like the time I decided to beat the biannual SEAL physical-readiness test record in Panama on a black-flag day. Black flag means “dangerously high heat.” According to base policy, military and civilian personnel weren’t allowed to exercise or work outside on a black-flag day. I said, The hell with that, and set out to beat the course record.
In the hundred-degree, high-humidity heat, I performed 120 push-ups and 120 sit-ups, swam a half a mile, and followed that with a three-mile run. During the run, less than three hundred meters from the finish line, my vision started to blur to the point that I couldn’t tell the people from the trees. I kept pushing harder. Woke up on my back looking up at the timekeeper—a senior chief petty officer in a khaki uniform.
“Did I break seventeen thirty?” I asked him, referring to the course record of seventeen minutes and thirty seconds.
“Seventeen twenty-eight, you maniac,” he answered.
“Then I’m okay.”
Most people have no idea of what their full potential is. One of my mottos is Blood from Any Orifice. Because I figure that if you don’t push beyond what you think your limits are, you’ll never know your true abilities.
I’ve always tested limits. People who know me say that despite my intensity, I appear to be soft-spoken and relaxed. Truth is, over the years I’ve learned to manage the almost uncontrollable fire burning inside me.
But I put my parents through living hell growing up.
I was a bad kid, and I’m not proud of the fact that I was a lousy role model to my younger brother, sisters, and friends. My parents were good, kind, loving people who deserved better than what I gave them.
My dad loved his country so much that the day after the attack on Pearl Harbor he quit high school to join the Navy. He became a distinguished stunt pilot. On the last day of World War II, an officer ordered him and fifteen of his fellow sailors to stand on the platform of an aircraft carrier so that they could be ceremoniously lowered down to the dock.
But the platform mechanism broke and they fell sixty feet. My dad broke his back. One sailor died. Since then he had a soft spot for disabled vets—volunteering long hours at the local VFW (Veterans of Foreign Wars) and serving as the state commander of the VFW in South Carolina. He ended up working as an executive in large insurance companies, and he still liked nothing more than to make other people laugh and have a good time.
My mom was a Limestone, Maine, homecoming queen, the valedictorian of her class, and the salt of the earth—totally dedicated to her family in every way. She was born premature, weighing three pounds, in an early February blizzard. Her parents didn’t think she would survive, but they put her in the kitchen oven to keep her warm until the storm eased up enough for them to get her to a hospital.
She had a quick, sarcastic wit that made all of us laugh. She and my dad were like a comedy team at parties—the local Stiller and Meara.
And I was their first son—a bat-out-of-hell, shit-kicker motorcycle punk. I popped out of my mother’s womb with a wild, crazy energy that has never let up.
We lived in various spots throughout New England—Limestone, Maine; Orange, Connecticut; Nashua, New Hampshire—but I consider Methuen, Massachusetts, to be my childhood home (it’s also where my dad was born). It’s situated in the northeast part of the state, right across the border from Rockingham County, New Hampshire. Back in the 1970s, Methuen and nearby Orange were considered Mafia towns. Methuen was rough but bucolic, with ponds, streams, the Merrimack and Spicket Rivers, a bird sanctuary, and lots of forested land.