Goodbye, Rob
Remembering a friend.
I don’t remember what time we got into the water. Only that the swim started late at night and ended not long before dawn. My kidneys felt like someone was cutting them out with a dull knife, probably because of dehydration and a few accidental gulps of water tinged with pollution in the San Diego Bay.
Voices on the shoreline called us out as we drew nearer. The blurry shapes of a few instructors waving their arms, guiding us toward the beach, where the next phase of punishment awaited.
I pulled into the shallows and brought my legs under me, working the straps on the fins that had brought me this far. Second-hand, stiff rubber things that I had gotten as a gift from a diver. The wetsuit, too. It was a spring suit, not rated for cold, long night swims. The skyline to my left turned an ocher blur as I stood to run and veered to the right and faceplanted in the surf. Hours of kicking had turned my legs into mush and required a moment of sensory recalibration, but there was no time to rest.
I stood and ran and fell again just as hard into the dark churn. A belly laugh ripped out into the night above me. I looked up and saw the broad-shoulder silhouette of Rob Roy, an old-school Navy SEAL and the man who would become my mentor.
Last month, Rob died of a heart attack. He had been experiencing chest pain one morning and drove himself to Naval Medical Center San Diego, where he passed away at the gate. I’ve been putting off writing about it because it means saying goodbye. I wish I had been able to tell him how much I appreciated all he did for me, even after all these years.
Rob was the kind of man for whom death seemed implausible, larger than life and legendary among his peers. He graduated from BUD/S Class 147, one of only three classes in SEAL history at the time in which no candidate quit during Hell Week. He went on to spend twenty-one years in the SEAL teams, including a decade at DEVGRU. But you’d never know it if you bumped into him on the street. Rob was intense yet jovial and funny as hell. The definition of a happy warrior.
I met Rob by chance around 2012. I had, believe it or not, started writing on Tumblr about my long, doomed dream of acquiring a waiver to overcome a permanent medical disqualification for a benign condition and enlist in the military. I already received a hard negative from the Marines after multiple attempts. A friend who had been a SEAL told me that, if I wanted it so bad, I should get in touch with a dive mentor.
“It’s a smaller community,” he said. “Maybe they can help with MEPS.”
The prospect gave me the hope that I needed, but there was one problem: I wasn’t a strong swimmer. Very fit, yes. But a mediocre swimmer, which seemed like a problem for obvious reasons now. I started posting about pool workouts, asking for advice on how to quickly remedy that shortcoming. Before long, I connected with guys who were in the teams and a few others who were like me, trying to “get in,” and writing about it under pseuds.
There was a Lost Boy culture to it. Not everyone, but many of the guys I knew who were after the same thing had a chip on their shoulder, had something to prove, or just wanted—needed—to be tested. I did. So did a kid I’ll call Matt. He was further along in the process than me when we met. Matt told me about a preparatory program for people who wanted to go to BUD/S. SEAL training has a high attrition rate. A lot of people get hurt or ring the bell and quit. The point of programs like these is to improve a candidate’s odds by subjecting them to just a fraction of the physical and psychological strain that lies ahead, administered by retired and active members of the Naval Special Warfare community. It screens out people who would have quit anyway, saving their time and trouble, while steeling the rest to give them the best chance of success in the pipeline.
Matt told me about an upcoming “pool comp” (pool competency training) hosted by the program. He said it would be a good way to improve my swimming. What he should have said is that they were going to do their best to drown me for a few hours.
He emailed me the address. A school about two hours from where I lived in San Diego. Start time was bright and early. I don’t recall if I drove there the night before and slept in my car in the parking lot, but that became my thing later. Some of the guys who had pickup trucks with campers would throw a mattress in the bed. One dude literally lived in his truck for the entire time that I knew him in the program. It was his vision quest, the only thing he wanted to do. It was like that for a lot of us.
It was a hazy morning when guys started gathering around the school’s entrance. I walked across the lot to join them, taking steady breaths of the crisp and damp early air to settle my nerves. It was mostly twenty-somethings, though a few were older. A mixed bag of surfers, skaters, frat bros, guys who had already been in the Navy and wanted to do something more, lifeguards, and so on. One of them showed up with his arm in a cast. He couldn’t do the pool portion of the training session that day, but did push-ups on his stump and ran with us afterward. He became one of my best friends and went on to have a career in the teams. Many of the guys who stuck with the program and weren’t bureaucratically blocked did.
The people who had already demonstrated their commitment to the path wore shirts bearing the group’s name and logo. I asked one of the shirted what to expect. I didn’t know much other than that we were going to be in the water a lot.
He grinned. “You’re gonna have fun. Just don’t quit.”
We milled about until a barrel-chested man called us to order and explained what was about to happen over the next few hours. He had a satiny voice and reminded me a little of Mike Tyson. There was also something very familiar about him, but I couldn’t place it. Later, I realized that I had seen his face on the cover of SOCOM: U.S. Navy SEALs, one of my favorite PlayStation 2 games.
It was Rob Roy.
By this time, Rob had already been involved in various media projects, including consulting on the SOCOM series. There’s a picture of him from 2003 with Bruce Willis at the premiere of Tears of the Sun, handing the actor a plaque that reads “Honorary Frogman.” A non-insignificant chunk of the internet has seen the clip of Rob on Deadliest Warrior hacking away at a ballistic gel dummy with the hand speed of a professional boxer while screaming at the top of his lungs. Again, one of the friendliest people I have ever had the pleasure of knowing.
I spent a lot of time in fighting gyms where oversized egos and dick-measuring were common. Never did I see that from Rob.
He walked with the lightness of a man who had proven his mettle.
If I was not the weakest swimmer in the group initially, I had to have been in the bottom three. The beatdowns outside the pool were actually a nice respite from what went on in the water. Not swimming really, but drownproofing, or just drowning. At least that’s what it felt like. Treading water while passing around a full five-gallon jug until it drained, holding a big line overhead while staying in formation with other swimmers, diving deep to retrieve weights when our lungs were already screaming, swimming with our hands behind our backs. My entire body felt like a lactic acid molecule. The guys who had played water polo had the easiest time, and it was still tough for them. I got through it by deciding that I would rather black out than quit.
I remember Rob watching me from the deck with a look that was part amusement, part something else. He saw that I wanted to be there. That was all he cared about. “How bad do you want it?” The rest—swim times, run times, and so on—could be improved through practice and technique. But you had to want to be there, and Rob could tell who did and who didn’t.
When I shook his hand afterward, he encouraged me to keep coming back. And I did. I never missed a training session. I ended up being one of the strongest swimmers in the program. Rob pushed me beyond what I thought I could do—and then kept pushing. The long night swim in San Diego was one of the moments when I did something I had no idea I could do, and it was because of Rob’s program.
We became good friends. When I needed work, he would throw me stuff from his other business, SOT-G, and I got to travel around with him. Rob did everything he could to help me get a chance to go to BUD/S. Through him, I met others who stood in my corner as well. We kept in touch after the Navy delivered a definitive and irrevocable “Sorry, kid,” despite so many attempts. I still have the letter of recommendation he submitted on my behalf. Reading it now stings a bit. I’m sure he would tell me to knock it off, in more colorful terms.
Rob believed in me when few others would. But that’s just what he did. He saw potential in so many young men and inspired them to strive to be the best version of themselves.
It was an honor to have known him.