The death of 22 Navy SEALs in Afghanistan immediately got me to thinking about James Parra.

It wasn’t too many football seasons ago that James was the consummate team player for the Manteca High Buffaloes.

It was never about him. It was about even more than the team for James. It was about tradition, honor, and respect. He played hurt. He always gave 110 percent and then more. He respected opponents. He kept his cool. He followed orders. He played smart. Whatever it took, James was determined to deliver victory with honor.

It goes without saying he carried an incredible amount of punch on his small frame as one of the hardest hitting Buffalo inside linebackers of all time.

After completing his senior football season in the fall of 2005, James wasn’t cruising toward graduation. Instead, he stepped up his game. He hit the weight room, the swimming pool, and the road to make sure he would be ready for the challenge he’d been dreaming of since the third grade. That challenge was to pass muster and to serve America as a Navy SEAL.

Even before the start of his final season for the Big Green Machine, Parra has signed up for the deferred enlistment program on the day he turned 17. Football was a way to the means of serving his country.

Graduating from Manteca High in 2006, James wasn’t looking to kick back for an endless summer. Just a little more than a month after walking across the stage at Guss Schmeidt Field he was headed to eight weeks of boot camp at Great Lakes. That was just the beginning. He then embarked on 2.5 years of training so he could devote four years to Naval special personnel operations that rely on highly skilled and motivated service personnel to accomplish select, high priority missions.

James credited his coaches for his attitude. They convinced James and other teen boys that hard work and delayed gratification are the real keys to success. Before heading off to boot camp, James said in an interview with the Bulletin that, “I look at it like practicing hard for two years so you can get to the big game.”

But it isn’t ordinary “practice.” The devil would have a hard time coming up with what the NAVY puts SEALs through, It is brutal training that pushes a man to his mental and physical limits and beyond while constantly re-enforcing the concept of teamwork. The end results are men who have the endurance, the strength, the skill sets, and the mental state to go the distance as the world’s most elite commando force.

They do not know from one day to another what they will be doing yet they are prepared to do anything. Their lives are essentially “classified” with only essential need-to-know military personnel knowing their missions.

For every high profile success such as taking out Osama bin Laden, there are dozens upon dozens of more quiet missions that are just as dangerous but are never acknowledged. Those “victories” share one common thread - keeping America and the world safe.

As 21st century Americans we are so comfortably removed from the reality of war, terror, genocide, and a host of other atrocities that’d make most people turn sheet white that we take for granted what sacrifices those who serve America are going through. It takes great sacrifice to keep America free and safe whether it is as a Marine, solider, airman, sailor, or those in elite units such as the Navy SEALs.

James, before embarking on his military service and making the grade to enter the SEAL training program of which many don’t make it through the 2.5 years of training, reflected on what was ahead.

He liked the fact he had to be in top physical shape and being paid to be so. He also was looking forward to the “opportunity to mess around with all sorts of high tech stuff.”

But what ultimately drove him was one desire.

In Parra’s own words back in June of 2006: “I’ve been given so much from this country. I should be able to give something back.”

We are forever indebted for SEALs and military men such as the 30 aboard that ill-fated Chinook chopper on a rescue mission in Afghanistan and who never return home as well as to all of those who do make it back safely to our shores.

You can sleep better tonight knowing men like James Parra are out there.

The very least we can do is keep them in our thoughts and prayers.