A Still Ceremony for a Fallen Hero at Arlington National Cemetery
HARDY
Union Leader
Matt Negrin
Boston University Washington News Service
15 February 2008
ARLINGTON, VA. — A bright sun shone upon the green patch of sacred ground at Arlington National Cemetery as birds sang from budding trees Friday morning. Standing in a horseshoe around the grave of Navy Chief Petty Officer Nathan Hardy, hundreds of mourners were silently still.
It was exactly the kind of peace Stephen Hardy said his son died fighting to protect.
The Navy SEAL was put to rest in the earth as flags flew at half-staff across New Hampshire, ordered by the governor. His family and friends were still as the American flag was held and folded above his remains. They were still as seven rifles cracked three times over them.
And they were still when his younger brother Benjamin praised his work ethic and values, beaming as he recalled Hardy’s 29-year-long life.
“He laid down his life for his team,” he said.
Hardy, who was serving his fourth tour of duty in Iraq, now rests among the thousands of others honored with a spot in the country’s most elite burial ground. He lies next to Chief Petty Officer Michael Koch, a 29-year-old SEAL killed in the same small arms fire in Iraq on Feb. 4.
“I can’t think of a more wonderful thing,” said his father, a professor at the University of New Hampshire. “They were comrades right to the end, and they’ll be buried side by side.”
One by one, friends and family said farewell by kissing their hands and touching the top of Hardy’s urn. One man wept loudly as he placed his hand gently down. Another woman knelt and cried softly.
Stephen Hardy recalled the camaraderie of his son’s relationship with his fellow SEALs, many of whom paid their respects Friday amid a sea of white hats.
“Their devotion to this country and to each other is simply extraordinary,” he said. “I wish there were a way that more Americans could understand this.”
Jeanne Beland, 62, a retired teacher in Durham who has known the Hardys for 20 years, called the fallen sailor and former soccer star a team player on every level.
“You’ll never have to worry about your back being covered if Nate is on your team,” she said.
In sixth grade, Hardy wrote an essay about how he wanted to be a SEAL.
“He always enjoyed being assertive,” Stephen Hardy said. “He always enjoyed trying to take charge. He always enjoyed hard work.”
When Hardy was in eighth grade, in 1993, his older brother, Joshua, died of brain cancer. His soccer coaches helped him “learn how to channel his anger and his energy,” Stephen Hardy recalled.
Hardy grew up with a group of kids who called themselves the “super seven,” said Madiha Farag, the mother of one of his friends, Sherif. By the end of high school, that group had doubled in size, she said.
“They’re all like brothers, so we feel like we’ve lost one of our children,” she said.
Hardy joined the Navy in 1997 after graduating from Oyster River High School in Durham. After he passed the grueling six-month gauntlet of SEAL training, he was assigned to Virginia Beach, Va., where, through a roommate, he met his future wife, Mindi. He was 24. They married in 2005, and she gave birth to their 7-month-old son, Parker, last year.
“They had it all. He had everything he wanted in life,” Stephen Hardy said. “And Mindi made him whole.”
Family members, joined by Rep. Carol Shea-Porter, D-N.H., sat a few feet from the grave as they watched a six-member honor guard meticulously fold the American flag into a taut triangle.
As the family and friends departed from grave 8567, they were saluted by a line of Patriot Guard Riders, a group of motorcycle buffs who shield military funeral services from protesters.
After the trumpeter played the slow Taps tune and a bagpiper in a green vest performed the Navy Hymn, groups of loved ones began to trickle away. Some lingered by the grave, embracing each other as they stared at the rows of white tombstones that seem to stretch for miles.
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