Veteran 4 23 2015

Page 1

35 cents

VOL. 3/ISSUE 25

THURSDAY, APRIL 23, 2015

SEAL compares today’s troops to ancient epic Patrick McCallister FOR VETERAN VOICE

patrick.mccallister@yahoo.com

“When I was a kid, we had this book, ‘The World’s Greatest Stories,’ and one of them was about ‘The Odyssey (by Homer),’” said former Navy SEAL Cmdr. Dan O’Shea April 15 at a meeting of the Veterans Resource Committee of the Melbourne Chamber of Commerce. “And it never left me. It guided me to go to Annapolis (U.S. Naval Academy) and on into the SEALs. “So today, I’m going to talk about how today’s returning vets have gone through a lot of the same things Odysseus did.” O’Shea apologized for his casual dress, but as he had to squeeze in his appearance at the Holiday Inn in Viera between getting ready to go overseas (“can’t tell you where”) it was understandable. His friend, committee chairman and Navy veteran John Moser, asked him to speak as a favor, “and we don’t let each other down,” O’Shea said. A veteran of 20 years’ service, O’Shea is co-founder and senior vice president for Personnel Recovery/Kidnap and Ransom of GROM Technologies, headquartered in Tampa Bay. He has extensive special operations experience on multiple Middle East and Africa deployments. He is a recognized subject expert in counter-insurgency, terrorism and hostage rescue operations. He has appeared as a panelist on a number of terrorism and anti-piracy symposiums, and is a frequent CNN, BBC, FOX and MSNBC military and counter-terrorism analyst. Using a Power Point presentation, O’Shea titled his talk “The Odyssey — The War of the Homecoming.” “Today’s troops coming home have been fighting for 10 years, in back-to-back deployments in many

See EPIC page 6

Staff photo by Mary Kemper Former Navy SEAL Lt. Cmdr. Dan O’Shea, right, stands with his friend and fellow Navy veteran John Moser, chairman of the Melbourne Chamber of Commerce Veterans Resource Committee April 15 after O’Shea gave a presentation to the committee at a breakfast meeting.


Turn static files into dynamic content formats.

Create a flipbook
Issuu converts static files into: digital portfolios, online yearbooks, online catalogs, digital photo albums and more. Sign up and create your flipbook.