Mike wanted to earn a living driving semis. He got his class-one license right out of high school and hoped to get a job running short-haul routes. His father had no objection to his choice of career, but thought it was too early for him to settle down in Maine. “Mike, you need to see the world first. You need to know what’s out there before you can really know that here is where you want to be.”
Leslie suggested that Mike join the armed forces. “I was in the Air Force, so I’m a little biased, but it beats the Army. In the Air Force, you don’t have to go camping, sleep in a tent or carry a gun.”
Mike agreed, signed up and began active duty on September 28, 1998. The Air Force stationed him at Dyess Air Force Base in Abilene, Texas. Nicole and Mike kept up their sibling-like connection, talking on the phone once or twice a week whenever his work permitted it. When he came home on two weeks’ leave, Mike, Nicole, Frank and Brooke hung out together, driving around in Mike’s old clunker.
Nicole noticed a big change in her stepbrother after joining the Air Force. He was still reserved, but the painful shyness had faded away, replaced with a core of self-confidence. It seemed to Nicole as if he had found himself and his place in the world.
Mike found his first steady girlfriend in Texas, Hillary Langley. The young woman had been wounded by a recent date rape. She did not trust easily, but Michael’s gentleness broke through her defenses, helped her heal and captured her heart. They dated for months and Mike became a well-loved member of her family. He had a lot in common with her father Frank and brother Graham. They rode four-wheelers together, ate homemade ice cream and went on hunting trips. Hillary’s mother, Janis, had an international Coke can collection. Every time that Mike was deployed, he brought back a can from a different country for her.
Mike, however, was only 20 years old and not ready to settle down. When the relationship grew serious, he backed off. He showed Hillary the respect of sitting down with her and explaining his feelings. He wanted to maintain a connection with her family, though, and did so with her blessing.
In 2000, Mike got a new roommate, Shane Zubaty. It was the beginning of a great friendship—so much so that Mike vowed to name his first son Shane. His military life was pretty peaceful until September 11, 2001, when hijacked planes took down the twin towers, slammed into the Pentagon and crashed in a field in Pennsylvania.
As a C-130 crew chief, Mike’s services were needed in Operation Enduring Freedom. He landed in Uzbekistan at Karshi-Khanabad Air Base—known as K-2 to the servicemen. When the United States took over the old Soviet-era base, it was cluttered with equipment from the 1970s, left behind when the Russians abandoned the facility. The conditions there were harsh—the land a flat-to-rolling sandy desert.
K-2 was a small facility, one square mile in size. It became home to Camp Stronghold Freedom, an army logistics operation. Air-conditioned tents were laid out in a grid along streets with names borrowed from New York—Fifth Avenue, Wall Street, the Long Island Expressway.
Mike called home to talk to his father. “Dad, remember what you told me about the Air Force? Well, I’ve got an M-16 on my back and I’m sleeping in a tent. Do you think I’m camping?”
C-130 crews, like Mike’s, ferried people and supplies into Afghanistan for the conflict. Mike was one of the first to touch down on Afghani soil.
On one three-hour stopover in that country, the crew retired to a tent for a few beers. They were all exhausted, but Mike was the first to drift off to sleep. While he dozed, a prankster shaved off half of Mike’s eyebrows. Mike was ticked off when he saw the damage in the mirror, but that just made his buddies laugh even harder.
Always on the look-out for the enemy, Mike sometimes spent ten to twelve hours at a stretch patrolling the air. The night vision goggles provided to the crew did not have straps. That meant Mike had to press his face against the porthole to hold them on for hours at a time. But Mike wasn’t a slacker. His commander had to speak to him about his enthusiasm for the job. “Don’t volunteer so much—let the others go on some of these dangerous missions.”
He was deployed to the Middle East five times. Because of the secrecy of his missions, his family back in Maine often had no idea of his location. One time when he flew out of Kuwait, kids threw rocks at his plane. Mike shook his head in dismay. “They sure forgot fast,” he told his dad.
Mike took his re-enlistment oath in Kuwait balanced on the wing of a C-130. Mike got a kick out of the odd ceremony, telling his dad that the flag painted on the plane was the only one in the area and there had to be a flag to make it official.
In between deployments, he performed regular duties with the 317th Aircraft Maintenance Squadron at Dyess Air Force Base. In his spare time, he took up the two-step, a popular Texas dance seldom seen in his home state. He also loved racing all-terrain vehicles. He was good enough that he was hired to run an exhibition race at a Big Truck Event. He won the race and popped a wheelie the whole length of the course. In a coincidence that reflected the similar personalities of Mike and Nicole, while she was racing four-wheelers in Texas, Nicole was doing the same in Maine.
His experience with these vehicles led him to seek a new challenge. In the summer of 2003, he dropped in to Mary and Danny Hogue’s racing garage in Abilene eager to try his hand at West Texas dirt track racing. He didn’t want to go through the normal levels of competition in the sport, starting with the Bombers class and working through Junior Minis, Hobby Stocks, Mini-Modifieds, I Stocks and Limited Late Models and Modifieds. He wanted to go straight to the top and start with Modified Stock Racing.
The Hogues thought he was nuts. Mike had no car, no tools, no racing suit and not much money for anything. Soon, though, they realized he had the spirit of a competitor and the determination of a warrior. Since he had no cash to invest in a car, Danny agreed to trade a car for Mike’s Raptor 4-wheel all-terrain vehicle. They made the deal on a handshake.
Mike always loved speed, and now he embraced the swirling red Texas dust and the extreme noise of the track. As a racer, Mike was fearless but never cocky. He spun out, survived crashes and kept coming back for more. He saved all the money he could for parts and repairs. He even went so far as to eat nothing but ramen noodles for a two-week stretch to get the money to feed his hobby.
Mike was not one for empty boasting. He didn’t mention the purchase to family or his Air Force buddies until he was sure he was up to the challenge. He was a strong believer in the old maxim “Actions speak louder than words.” After four races, he was confident enough to share his new interest and invite them out to a race.
He went with his new racing friends on a rafting trip on the Guadalupe River in New Braunfels. Nestled in the beauty of the Texas Hill Country, the pretty town was a world away from dry, dusty West Texas. Beer flowed and food was abundant. Mike kept a tight rein on his consumption, though, in order to focus on everyone’s safety. Whenever anyone fell off their raft, he jumped in and helped them out of the water whether he knew them or not.
Still true to his quiet nature, he spent time around others in racing on the sidelines absorbing knowledge. One of his friends, Russ Fletcher, built custom engine motors for stock cars. Many a time, he’d be out working on a car and get a feeling that someone was watching. “Mike, is that you?”
“Yep,” Mike answered.
“Oh, ’bout fifteen, twenty minutes.”
His new racing acquaintances found it hard not to like Mike. He just always seemed to do the right thing by instinct. One day at a race, someone knocked over a guy’s cooler, dumping out the ice and beer. When the owner returned, the ice was a puddle and the brew was warm. The ranting began at high volume.
Mike looked over, assessed the situation, got in his car and drove away without saying a word. The man with the violated cooler was still complaining when Mike returned with a fresh supply of cold beer and ice.
Frank moved down to Abilene to live with Mike in 2002. Mike was in Afghanistan when his brother Frank was involved in a nasty motor vehicle accident. When Mike was back in Texas, he took his brother for a ride. It was all fun until Mike whipped the vehicle around and headed straight for a ditch like the one that had caused Frank’s injuries.
Frank freaked. “Do you realize I was already involved in one accident?”
“Well, Frank, you’ve got to face your fears sooner or later,” Mike said with a grin.
One night in December 2003, 23-year-old Staff Sergeant Michael Severance went out to a bar with his buddies to have a few beers. That evening, instead of returning to the apartment he shared with Frank, he picked up 25-year-old Wendi Davidson and spent the night in her bed.