Gutsy Youth Sees a Future in SEALs : Cancer-Fighting 16-Year-Old Gets His Wish to Spend Day With Navy Unit

Aaron Enright’s climbed, swam and boated Wednesday with the elite Navy SEALs he is determined to eventually join, once he overcomes an even more rigorous test--cancer.

Enright, 16, of Sacramento, was found to have life-threatening Hodgkin’s disease in late February. The reeling news seemingly spelled an end to his plans to become a sea-air-land commando.

But after spending several hours with students, instructors and full-fledged SEALs at the Naval Special Warfare Command in Coronado--a visit set up by the Make-A-Wish Foundation--Enright said he is even more resolved to beat his illness into permanent remission and enter the strenuous SEAL training program.

“Now more than ever,” said Enright, clad in a SEAL uniform, after running a 23-station obstacle course, helping six SEAL trainees carry a 250-pound inflatable boat through the surf, and driving both a Seafox transport boat and Zodiac inflatable in the bay. Throughout it all he was cheered on by SEALs not much older than he.

The SEALs, which one officer said are “the first ones in and the last ones out” of special military operations from Panama to the Persian Gulf, specialize in stealthy entry, demolition, underwater maneuvers and hostage rescues. Three SEAL teams, plus training classes, are based at Coronado, while three other teams are on the East Coast.

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Training, like the exercises Enright sampled Wednesday, encompasses four phases that include fitness, combat, parachuting, demolition and diving specialties. Trainees undergo a grueling “Hell Week” in the first phase.

Coming off the last of three boats he helped steer, a jubilant Enright said “There’s not any question” of overcoming the cancer and trying out for the program. “It’s just a matter of time.”

In the meantime, Enright had two certificates presented to him Wednesday that make him an “honorary frogman” and “honorary patrol boat captain.” “I want to get into the thing that can teach me the most,” said Enright, who quietly but determinedly followed the instructors’ leads while running the obstacle course. It has been called one of the nation’s most challenging and includes running atop rolling logs and climbing a 4 1/2-story rope ladder.

“Give me 10 minutes and a drink of water and I’ll be ready again,” he said breathlessly after finishing. “I just get a ‘do it’ rush.”

Later he helped hoist an inflatable boat overhead, ran into the surf and paddled out, then worked to right it when it overturned in the waves. Slipping out of his life jacket, he then jumped into a swimming pool and tried to master a wriggle-like propelling motion in which the SEAL cannot use his arms or legs.

“It shows what you can do,” he said.

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Fresh off six months of chemotherapy and now taking antibiotics, he soon will begin three weeks of radiation treatment. Next week he turns 17 and also starts his senior year at Sacramento High School, where he has an A average.

“I’ll glow in the dark while I do homework,” he joked.

Once those treatments are over, his prospects for remission are good, he said, adding that he is optimistic about advances in treatment.

“They told me I was going to die a long, slow torturous death--in about 70 years,” said the upbeat teen-ager.

Enright hopes to return to his 6-day-a-week regimen of exercise, including running, swimming and weightlifting. Even during the most painful times since being told there was a basketball-sized flat mass in his chest, he has tried to work out at least once a week.

After several months of feeling tired, coughing deeply and fighting a strange itch that never materialized into a rash, and then discovering a lump near his collarbone in January, he was diagnosed late the next month with Hodgkin’s disease. He began chemotherapy in March.

“I just went through the worst . . . I hated every day of it,” he said, adding that one of the medications he had been given had caused some depression.

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But his mother, Lily Enright, added that she has a picture of her son eating a pizza while hooked up to the medication apparatus, a photo taken by a nurse who was amazed by Enright’s physical and mental response to his illness.

Acknowledging that at times he is angry over his situation, he said he tries to turn that emotion into greater energy to beat the lymphoma.

“I’m not going to sit in the house and die,” he vowed.

The SEALs who accompanied Enright on the base tour and took him through the various paces were also impressed with his self-confidence and determination.

“He’s got some guts,” said Lt. Cmdr. John Brindley, Naval Special Warfare Command spokesman.

The Make-A-Wish Foundation, which grants wishes to children with life-threatening illnesses, flew Enright and his parents to San Diego on Tuesday and organized the visit with SEAL commanders. It was the first time the military unit has provided such a “wish,” officers said.

“Your Make-A-Wish is not to go to Disneyland, it’s to work out with these guys,” a proud Lily Enright said to her son. “That shows you’re different, Aaron.”