Terrorist and Navy hero both called Patchogue home

They grew up about one mile - and seven years - apart.

It's not hard to believe that they probably passed each other on Main Street. Or maybe even bumped shoulders at the Dunkin' Donuts on Route 112.

Did they ever speak, the Navy hero Michael Murphy and the terrorist Bryant Neal Vinas?

By the time Vinas had left North Patchogue for Pakistan, Murphy had already died on a mountaintop in Afghanistan while fighting the Taliban. That was 2005, and Murphy's heroism later earned him the Medal of Honor, the nation's highest honor. Vinas turned against the nation, for reasons no one can really know.

"If Michael had met him and that boy was troubled, Michael would have tried to help, tried to turn him around," Dan Murphy, Michael's father, said on Friday when he spoke.

"But once he made the decision to go against his country, to go against everything Michael stood for, he was the enemy," Dan Murphy said. "Michael would do his job and defend his country."

On Friday, the village where the two young men might have walked by each other a hundred times closed off Main Street as it does about every other week during the summer. It was 7 p.m., and the place was crowded with locals, taking in music, sitting down to dinner outside popular restaurants, lining up for fried Oreos. Later in the evening, a 17-year-old resident would be charged with stabbing a security guard. But for the first few hours anyway, the street festival was peaceful.

There are signs of Michael Murphy everywhere in Patchogue.

And everyone remembers the Navy SEAL who knowingly put himself in the line of enemy fire so he could radio for help. He dropped the radio after he was shot in the back, picked it up to complete his transmission and went back to join the rest of his team. His action saved lives.

A portrait of Murphy hangs in the newly renamed Michael P. Murphy Post Office. There's a memorial to him near the railroad tracks. And his alma mater is raising money to add one in a plaza outside the high school.

Every local resident I spoke to on Friday knew or knew of Murphy.

No one could remember anything of Vinas, including a pair of young adults who said they attended Longwood when Vinas, 26, was there.

Near the Four Corners, as the village's major intersection is known, Anthony Parlatore, a former flotilla commander for the U.S. Coast Guard Auxiliary, was shaking hands with anyone willing to stop. He's running for district court judge.

"People will always remember Michael Murphy," he said. "He's the one worth remembering."

Friday's festival, during its early hours at least, seemed to be the break Patchogue was looking for. Last year, an immigrant, Marcelo Lucero, was stabbed to death in an alley off Main Street after a group of teens - many of the accused are from nearby Medford - surrounded and taunted him.

And this week, Mayor Paul Pontieri had been stunned to learn of Vinas. He got the news from his Patchogue Google alert system. "It's unbelievable, just unbelievable," he said the day the news broke.

There was a time when Vinas seemed like any other boy growing up in North Patchogue. The former altar boy liked sports. And was shy around girls. But then something changed.

Murphy said he holds no animosity toward Vinas' parents, who, from news reports he said he's read, did their best for the young man.

"Any child is the product of their parents, of their community," Murphy said. "There's . . . always some child who grows to be a lone wolf. Those children can be anywhere, and this kid, this other kid, is an aberration, a lone wolf."

Two kids, one community.

One knowingly put himself in harm's way so his hometown could thrive.

The other knowingly pitted himself against all he had ever known.

Which was impossible to fathom, especially on a Friday evening, standing on Main Street, watching a growing crowd of residents talking, laughing and even singing together.

Just another night in a small town in America.