Love for the baby SEALs

If the holiday spirit has you looking to do something for others and also support a great cause, look here. A camp for the children of Navy SEALs does both.

The summer camp is a program for kids with a parent in the extraordinary commando unit and other parts of the Special Warfare operation. Sponsored by the Navy SEAL Foundation, the camp is part fun and games and part education about military life, and also provides counseling. It is a new service that aims to make the dangerous deployments easier for the children of these incredible warriors.

One SEAL team, of course, swooped into Pakistan to get Osama bin Laden. Apart from the singular nature of the target, the raid is typical of the clandestine assignments given to the Sea, Air and Land forces whose training is legendary for its grueling difficulty.

Some assignments end in tragedy. Eighteen SEALs and four other Special Warfare members were killed in Afghanistan last August when their helicopter was shot down near Kabul.

In both good and terrible times, their families remain at home and the long, frequent separations are especially hard on children. Enter the foundation, which, since 2000, has helped the families get through tragedies, established scholarships, and sought to bolster morale.

It’s a charity that can have a bearing on national security. As a SEAL commander told me, “If the families fail, we end up losing the operators.”

As a SEAL spouse put it during the same phone interview, “The dad knows someone back home is helping his kids get through the years.”

The Navy SEAL Foundation is private and separate from the Department of Defense, which is not permitted to raise money.

The summer-camp program started last year and was such a hit with the 125 kids on the East Coast who participated that organizers aim to invite nearly 600 kids next summer in Virginia and California, where the eight SEAL teams are based.

“Our kids live in the dark,” said a SEAL wife about the secrecy surrounding missions. “And they live with a lot of disappointment. The fact that Dad didn’t come home when he said he would is part of the life.”

She said the camp helped her two children “face their fears” and better understand their father’s life.

“SEAL moms are protective,” she said, asking that she not be identified. “We’re picky about who our kids are with, but in the camp, they realized they are not alone. They came home feeling it’s kind of cool what Dad does.”

Physical activity in the morning was followed by explanations of military life and equipment, then evening campfire conversations about their lives.