VIRGINIA BEACH ? The problem for this oceanside city in a post-Osama bin Laden world is how to honor the hometown heroes who got the al-Qaeda leader especially when the military is telling city fathers here to hush up about it.
By H. Darr Beiser, USA TODAY
"Gentleman" Jim Birkbeck, left, and Keith Maynard, both tattoo artists at Blue Horseshoe Tattoo, talk about local reaction to Navy SEALs killing Osama bin Laden.
By H. Darr Beiser, USA TODAY
"Gentleman" Jim Birkbeck, left, and Keith Maynard, both tattoo artists at Blue Horseshoe Tattoo, talk about local reaction to Navy SEALs killing Osama bin Laden.
The secretive SEAL team that raided bin Laden's Pakistan compound, killing him with two shots, is based near here. Kimberly Barnes, 28, who works the front desk at a Wyndham hotel here, says she feels "honored to know that it's our town" from where the commandos headed to war.
"I take pride in it. I'm happy that it was someone from our state," she says.
But the chance for the kind of ticker-tape parade that hailed others from past wars is not an option here.
When Mayor Will Sessoms publicly toyed with the idea of including the members of the commando team in the city Patriotic Festival in June, the Navy told him to stop talking about the team's hometown lest they make Virginia Beach a target for al-Qaeda.
"We're trying to respect what they want," city spokesman Mary Hancock says of the U.S. Navy. "It's hard, because we're really very proud. We really are. (But) we have to protect our community."
Residents understand the caution but cannot hide the buttons bursting off their collective vests.
"I'm going to be saying that for a long time, 'Virginia Beach killed Osama bin Laden!'" said tattoo artist Keith Maynard, who says Navy SEALs are regular customers at Blue Horseshoe Tattoo.
"Come to VB, town of terrorist killers!" echoes his body decorating colleague, "Gentleman" Jim Birkbeck. "America needed something like this to pull people together."
At Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 392, folks have been buzzing about the attack on bin Laden.
"As a matter of fact, our bartender out there, she's been chirping all day. She's from New York," says Doug Keller, 63, a former post commander.
Keller says it feels good having a local man dispatch bin Laden. There is "a certain amount of pride. You're in a military town."
As a Navy veteran himself, he understands that a celebration is out of the question.
"How can you have covert operations when they're on the cover of Time magazine?" Keller says.
"It would be great," says John Phillips, 67, another veteran. "But you can't do it. They don't want these guys' faces in the news."
Though some scoff at the idea of the city coming under attack.
"You want to attack Virginia Beach? Bring it. Every redneck in town is armed to the teeth," Birkbeck says.
At the A&P Arms gun shop, manager Glen Grayson says it would "be cool" to have a celebration for the local heroes. But he knows, like many other residents that it can't happen.
"We know they're from the Virginia Beach area. And it makes us happy," says Grayson, an Army veteran.
But, he says, "they provide a service to America that is far behind the scenes that the average American isn't aware of what they do. And they try to protect their identities to keep bad people from discovering who did this to them."
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