ORONO, Maine — It was late Monday night when Mark and Lynn Silk peered out their living room window and saw the uniformed man and the chaplain approaching the door.
They didn’t need words to know what had happened.
“Our only hope was that they might have the wrong address,” Mark Silk said Tuesday from that same living room.
Sadly, the two men had the right address and their hand-delivered message was one the Silks have feared for the last seven years: Their son was dead.
“You always hope it doesn’t happen to your children,” said Lynn Silk, who sat next to her husband.
Sgt. Brandon Silk, 25, died Monday in Afghanistan from injuries he suffered during a hard helicopter landing. Silk was a Black Hawk crew chief, a member of the U.S. Army’s 101st Airborne Division, and was on his fourth tour of duty since 2003, when he enlisted shortly after his high school graduation.
Among numerous house visits, flower deliveries and casserole drop-offs Tuesday, the Silk family received condolences from Gov. John Baldacci and all four members of Maine’s congressional delegation.
“A hole is opened in many lives,” the governor said in a statement. “The men and women who serve in the military have earned our respect and our gratitude. In Maine, we’re all an extended family. At times like these, we have to reach out and take care of one another. Sgt. Silk was a hero, and we will honor his life and his sacrifice.”
The Silks said they haven’t been given all the details of Brandon’s fatal flight, and they didn’t want to spread any rumors with the little information they did have.
Mark Silk did say that his son, who grew up watching “Top Gun” and dreaming of flying, lived and died doing what he loved. Most people don’t.
“He wanted to go out with his boots on,” said Silk, himself a veteran of the 101st and now a detective with the Maine Bureau of Motor Vehicles office of investigations. “I think his hair was on fire his whole life.”
Silk said he had the same conversation with all three of his sons when they were old enough. You don’t need to join the military just because I did, he had said. Their mother agreed that the military was never her first choice for her boys.
But they joined anyway. All three.
David, 22, and Blaine, 18, are guardsmen with the 101st Air Refueling Wing in Bangor. Brandon already had been deployed to Korea and Iraq and was on his second tour in Afghanistan when he died.
Military service is a family thing for the Silks.
“We just grew up in a service-oriented house,” said David Silk, who last saw his brother in Tennessee shortly before he was sent overseas. “We’ve always been taught to put others first.”
Brandon Silk was in high school when his parents moved to Orono. He played football and ran track — showing off his competitive edge. In his first-ever football game as a junior, Silk scored a touchdown the first time he touched the ball — on a 60-yard punt return.
He graduated in 2003 and enlisted in the U.S. Army, where he found his purpose. From basic training, he ended up with the 101st Airborne based in Fort Campbell, Ky. He came home to Maine from time to time between deployments and other duties, returning last summer to be the best man at David’s wedding. It was his last visit to his home state.
“He was that crazy Mainer in his unit, which was all mostly Southern guys,” David Silk said. “He loved being from Maine.”
As a family, they hunted and went shooting together. They watched movies; Brandon loved comedies such as “Christmas Vacation,” but old Rat Pack movies, too. As the family sat together in their living room Tuesday, the memories of Brandon were still fresh but solemn.
“He glossed things over sometimes,” Mark Silk said. “I think he wanted to be 10 feet tall and bulletproof. This last [deployment], he had a choice. He didn’t have to go. But he had been training all these other guys. He didn’t want them to go without him.”
Before his last deployment, Brandon turned down a promotion because he didn’t want a desk job. He talked often about returning to Maine soon, his family said, but he didn’t know what he would do. Everything else seemed boring when compared with flying Black Hawks. But Brandon missed his family. His brothers were young when he left for the first time. David was just entering high school and Blaine was in fifth grade.
“I think he tried to take care of all of us,” David Silk said. “Even now, he’d want to make sure we were all OK.”
The family said the funeral arrangements would not be made until Brandon’s body is back in the U.S, but the service will be held in Old Town. Baldacci said he would order flags lowered to half-staff on the day of Silk’s funeral. The Freedom Riders already have told the family that they plan to attend.
Lynn Silk, a middle school principal, remembered a recent conversation with her son about a book they both had read recently: “The Odyssey” by Homer.
“He said, ‘I think I got it, Mom. It’s a metaphor. We’re all just trying to get home,” she said.
When Brandon Silk gets home, he’ll be a fallen but not forgotten hero.