Obama meets with family of slain LI Green Beret

President Barack Obama met the family of slain Long Island Green Beret Keith Bishop early Thursday, at one point dropping to a knee and consoling Bishop's 11-year-old nephew, family members said.

The meeting took place during the president's surprise pre-dawn visit to the military mortuary at Dover, Del., where the bodies of 18 Americans killed in military action Monday and Tuesday arrived in the United States.

>>VIDEO: Click here to see Obama at Dover Air Force Base

"He knelt down and put his hand on his shoulder and took his hand," Bishop's father, Robert Bishop, of Carlisle, Pa., said of the president's intimate exchange with his grandson, Tristen Bishop. "He said he felt bad that we lost our son."

"It was comforting that he came to meet the families, even though it is hard to remember everything he said because it felt almost like a dream," said Tristen's father, Stephen Bishop, of Middle Island, a brother of the dead soldier. "He didn't act like a president. He acted like a regular person - very caring. You could tell he really meant it."

>>PHOTOS: President Obama, Keith Bishop and the U.S. war in Afghanistan

Keith Bishop, 28, a staff sergeant in the Army's elite Green Beret special operations group, was among seven U.S. troops and three Drug Enforcement Agency personnel killed Monday after a predawn raid on a drugs and arms-dealing operation near the border with Turkmenistan in Afghanistan's west.

Also Thursday, the Defense Department confirmed Staff Sgt. Luis M. Gonzalez, 27, of South Ozone Park, as one of seven soldiers who died Tuesday in Arghandab Valley, in the south.

In the crash in which Bishop died, the helicopter crew was blinded by dust kicked up by propeller wash as it lifted away after completing a successful mission, the Pentagon said. It clipped a tall structure and fell to the ground. The raid was part of a wide-ranging U.S. effort to stem the sale of heroin-producing opium, the proceeds of which are often used to pay for bombs, guns and other support of the Taliban insurgency.

"I said 'I hope God gives you the answer on how to end this,' " Robert Bishop said of his exchange with Obama. "If he pulls out, it is as if they won. But if he stays in, it's like a meat grinder for the men and women who he will have to send there."

Staff Sgt. Bishop was a 1999 graduate of Patchogue-Medford High School who joined the Army in 2002. He lived just outside of Fort Bragg, N.C., with his wife, Maggie.

Members of Bishop's family plan to commemorate his life at a gathering organized by some of Bishop's childhood friends at 8 Friday at a playground behind the Barton Avenue Elementary School.

The playing fields were a favorite hangout for Bishop and friends during their teen years.

>>PHOTOS: President Obama, Keith Bishop and the U.S. war in Afghanistan

>>MORE: Long Island native Keith Bishop killed in action