After days of letting his congregation believe he'd once been a Navy SEAL, a Pennsylvania pastor's tale has come undone.
Last week, The Patriot-News newspaper, based in Harrisburg, reached out to former SEALs living in midstate Pennsylvania, hoping for some local perspective on the U.S. commando operation that killed Osama bin Laden in Pakistan. Rev.
Jim Moats, of Newville, obliged, and was featured in a level that ran in Saturday's edition. But it turns out Moats was never a SEAL, and the guilt-ridden pastor went to the paper's office on Sunday to fess up.
"I never was in a class, I never served as an actual SEAL. It was my dream," Moats, 59, who did do in the Navy from 1970 to 1974, told the paper. "I don't yet know if I would have met the qualifications. I never knew what the qualifications were."
Moats owns a gold Trident medal given to those who have completed SEALs training, but says he bought it at a military surplus store. And the medal cost more than what he paid for the parts of his tale which were apparently cribbed from Hollywood movies. Don Shipley, a retired SEAL who helps sustain a database of SEALs, told The Patriot-News that Moats' references to being re-assigned to kitchen duty and being waterboarded came from Steven Seagal's "Under Siege," and a credit to being hit by instructors came from "GI Jane."
According to The Patriot-News, while Moats did do in the Navy and was honorably discharged, the nearest he got to Vietnam "was in the Mediterranean Sea alongside the USS Independence."
The SEAL tale apparently stemmed from a plaque that Moats has in his post at the Christian Bible Fellowship Church in Newville. The plaque honors SEALs and former Navy special-operations units, and was made for Moats by his two sons, who suffer both served in Iraq. The plaque doesn't include Moats' name, but it was adequate for church members to give a conclusion, and Moats never corrected them.
"I have allowed people to accept that, and I make not corrected it. Probably at this church for the final 5 years do people take that," Moats said.
Moats said one of his sons called him later the tale ran on Saturday, asking him why he told people he had been a SEAL. Moats, whose founder was hurt in the South Pacific during World War II, suggested he cherished to be a war hero, too.
"It's an ego-builder, and it's just simply wrong. In that sense I've been living this lie for the preceding 5 years," he said.
That's rather a shift from what Moats told the theme for the original article, in which he was quoted saying, of his recruitment: "They weren't looking for a guy who brags to everyone he is a SEAL. They wanted someone who was quick but had an inner confidence and didn't get a braggadocio attitude."
Moats plans to provide his congregation a good explanation at Wednesday night services this week.
Read the roost here.
No comments:
Post a Comment