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A circle of friends mourns its first gap

Having known each other since grade school, they shared in the most important events of their lives, including a memorial service.

By MICHAEL KRUSE
Published August 8, 2005

	[Times photo: Edmund Fountain]
	Ricky D'Angelo comforts his wife, Jenna, as Mikey Mantos, far right, sits nearby during a Saturday memorial service at Springstead High School for Army Staff Sgt. Michael Schafer. Schafer was shot in Afghanistan. Ricky, Mikey and Michael have been friends since they all attended Powell Middle School.

SPRING HILL - Mikey Matos drove through the sweaty summer rain Saturday night to go to one final public memorial service for one of his very best friends.

The cab was quiet in his black Dodge pickup.

"It doesn't seem real to me," Matos said. "It seems like this thing has been never-ending.

"Ever since the phone call."

On that Monday, July 25, Army Staff Sgt. Michael Schafer was shot in Afghanistan. Two men from the military showed up later that night in Fredericksburg, Va., at his wife's front door.

Danielle Schafer called Ricky D'Angelo.

Ricky called Mikey.

They didn't need a press release from the Department of Defense.

Mikey's a mortgage broker now and Ricky sells insurance in Tampa and has a wife, a house and two cute kids. But way back when, when the three of them first met in grade school, Mike Schafer, Mikey and Ricky were all about things like sports and tree forts.

They all went to Powell Middle School. Ricky and Mike went to Springstead High, and Mikey ended up at Central because his parents moved, but it was always those three. "Me, Ricky and Mike - then everyone else," Mikey said. "That's where it started."

On Saturday night, Ricky and Mikey were wearing white T-shirts that showed a picture of Mike and said "In Loving Memory of ... ." The same ones the family had. They took their seats on the first and second rows of the bleachers in the Springstead gym.

The school band marched in to a single drum beat.

Schafer's family followed. Karen Barr, his mother, had a crumpled white Kleenex showing from the right front pocket of her jeans.

The Star Spangled Banner was played.

The colors were posted.

The gym was about half full.

"Please be seated," said Nick Morana, a member of Operation Hernando Home Front, one of the organizers of the event.

The Rev. David A. Garcia, pastor at Brooksville Assembly of God, stood behind a lectern and gave the invocation.

"We especially pray tonight," Garcia said, "that Michael's heroic sacrifice would be appreciated by all and never forgotten."

Forgotten?

Mikey introduced Mike to Danielle.

Mike was there when Ricky met Jenna, who's now his wife.

Before Mike left for basic training in Fort Benning, Ga., in 1999, Mikey and Ricky went out with him one night in Ybor City. The three of them decided they were going to get tattoos.

Mike got his on his left pec: "Defend and Protect," it said.

Mikey got a small Japanese character on his right forearm: "To endure."

Ricky? He ended up getting a slice of pizza instead.

Mike wrote Ricky a letter from basic. It's dated Jan. 29, 1999. "I thought it would be harder," the letter says in black ink. "It's actually kind of fun."

Before marrying Danielle on Dec. 30, 2000, Mike had his bachelor party in Orlando. They all stayed at the Embassy Suites and went to a Magic game. "We did the basketball thing with Mike," Mikey said. "He didn't want to do anything crazy. He just wanted to hang out."

A bartender took a picture. It's now in a stack on an end table in Ricky's home on Elnora Avenue, across the room from the black baby bag stuffed with Big Bird diapers.

"I knew he wasn't going down by some stray bullet on the side," Mikey said Saturday. "You know, like, just happen to get shot. No. It was going to happen like it did - him looking straight at whoever ... ."

Last Tuesday, after the visitation at Turner Funeral Home on Spring Hill Drive, Mikey and Ricky went out with 10 or 11 other people.

They went to the bar called Legends.

"We toasted it up for him," Ricky said.

At Springstead, at the Saturday service, Congresswoman Ginny Brown-Waite spoke.

So did Hernando County Commissioner Diane Rowden.

Springstead football coach Bill Vonada, who coached Mike in middle school, too.

And David Schoelles. He's now the principal at Fox Chapel Middle School, but he was the assistant principal at Powell when Mike was a student there, and they became close. Schoelles taught Mike how to drive a stick shift.

He called Mike warm, sincere, kind, compassionate and lovable, and stubborn, and goofy. There was nothing fake about him, he said. And he was so hard to stay mad at: "Even his ex-girlfriends liked him," Schoelles said.

"When Mike became a part of your life," he told everybody in the gym, "it was forever."

In the front row of the bleachers, Jenna leaned back and kissed Ricky. "I love you," she whispered. Ricky kissed the middle of her forehead.

"I ask that you leave here tonight," Schoelles said from behind the lectern, "committed to making a difference in other people's lives - to do everything in your power to make the world a better place, one person at a time. Because that's what Mike did."

That was his mission, he said.

Schoelles saluted and looked straight ahead.

"Staff Sgt. Michael Schafer," he said.

"Mission accomplished.

"Well done, soldier.

"Well done, my friend."

County Administrator Gary Adams spoke after that.

Then Danielle Schafer.

When she walked to the lectern, all the people in the gym stood up and clapped.

"Mike is looking down on us tonight," she said, "grinning from ear to ear."

Near the end of the memorial service Toby Keith's American Soldier was played.

Mikey looked at the floor. Jenna touched the right side of her face to the top of her husband's left hand. Ricky took off his glasses.

"God bless Michael Schafer," Nick Morana said after the song.

"And God bless America."

The people clapped again.

Then they walked out of the gym and into the rain.

--Michael Kruse can be reached at mkruse@sptimes.com or 352 848-1434.

[Last modified August 8, 2005, 02:45:22]