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Chances are, if you spent time in the water this weekend, it was at a pool or a beach. That would be amateur hour compared to the approximately 350 retired Navy Seals and other first responders who swam to various spots in the Hudson River. New York City Seal Swim 2025 was an event held on Saturday to raise funds for charity. The event was cut short due to the choppy current stirred up in the already overpowering Hudson as Hurricane Erin churned up the Atlantic; nevertheless, the site of so many real American heroes- some of them broken and pieced back together- testing their mettle one more time to help the less-fortunate had to be breath-taking.
Award-winning NorthJersey.com columnist Mike Kelly saw the spectacle- not as a writer looking for a column, but simply as an invited guest. He appeared on 710 WOR’s Mendte in the Morning program to try and describe how awe-struck he was by the sheer spectacle of the event.
“In order to make this swim, you have to qualify,” Kelly told host Larry Mendte. “[Due to] the rough water, they had to cut the swim short, but let me tell you what they did or were supposed to do… They jump in the water at Liberty State Park in Jersey City. They swim to Ellis Island. They get out. They do 100 push-ups and 22 pull-ups, in honor of the average number of veterans who commit suicide every day. They jump in the water again, they swim to Liberty Island, the Statue of Liberty, get out- 100 more push-ups and 2 pull-ups… it was really quite inspiring.”
The whole event then finished with a boat ride to Ground Zero, where Kelly saw the same push-up and sit-up regimen- and not one single TV camera or politician waiting for America’s true heroes: “If you’re a television producer, this is a great visual. 350 guys, and there were about a dozen women [who] did this as well… a couple of Seal Team Six guys; the guy who killed Bin Laden was there… I mean, that’s made-to-order TV, isn’t it?”
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