Beach teen who lost Navy SEAL father helps others

VIRGINIA BEACH

As a youngster, Mark Wilson couldn’t fall asleep without the comfort of his white, plush teddy bear.

His mom, Anne Schafer, said he would go to bed clutching the bear, twisting the tag on its back – the soothing, familiar sound lulling him to sleep.

“It went everywhere with us,” Schafer said. “It’s very loved now, with very little fur and holes.”

The beloved stuffed animal was given to Mark when he was 10 weeks old, shortly after his dad, a Navy SEAL, died in a training accident. The teddy bear was a present from the commander of his dad’s SEAL team.

As a toddler, Schafer said Mark gravitated to the stuffed animal for some reason, even when he was too young to understand its significance. He would always pick out that teddy bear, she said, from among the countless others in his bedroom.

“It’s just funny how that particular stuffed animal ended up being so important to him,” Schafer said.

Now, the 16-year-old Wilson hopes to provide a similar comfort to other Navy SEAL children who lost their fathers. After learning of the U.S. helicopter shot down over Afghanistan in August, killing 17 Navy SEALs, Wilson decided to turn a class project into an opportunity to help.

Wilson is a junior in the International Baccalaureate Middle Years program at Princess Anne High School.

“I wanted to do something that was really meaningful to me,” Wilson said.

After coming up with the idea for his class project, Wilson got in touch with David Guernsey, the director of development with the Navy SEAL Foundation. Guernsey helped facilitate Wilson’s idea and suggested the teen reach out to find a corporate sponsor to help pay for the stuffed bears.

Wilson worked with a Build-A-Bear store to have 19 bears donated. He also emailed them a photo of his original bear, to give them an idea of what it looked like.

When he saw the bears they donated, he was surprised at how much they looked like his original white teddy bear.

“They’re perfect,” Wilson said of the replica bears.

But these new bears do differ slightly. Inside each of them, Wilson also placed a heart and a SEAL trident.

He has begun hand-delivering them to the children and is happy knowing they will have the bears to hug and cuddle as he did.

“It’s been one of our favorite projects,” said Beth Camper, the International Baccalaureate teacher overseeing Wilson’s class project. “Everyone’s been very, very proud of Mark.”

“To make something positive out of something so tragic just shows what kind of kid he is,” Camper added.

Since the initial 19 bears, Wilson has purchased three more bears on his own, and given them out to a few other Navy SEAL children who have also recently lost their dads.

“His plan is to keep doing this,” Schafer said. “I’m very proud of him. He knew what those children would be going through. He knew what it was going to be like for these kids. He also remembered how that bear was comforting to him.”

Even now, although Wilson has long since given up sleeping with his beloved bear, it’s still nearby.

“I cherished that thing all through my childhood,” he said. “I know where it is to this day. It was really important to me and really meaningful.”