America Lost its First Navy SEAL, Jan 26,2021. Harry Beal Died at 90

The year is 1962. Harry Beal was in the US Navy as an underwater demolition expert or "frogman". Beal's specialty caught the attention of John F Kennedy who showed up asking the team of frogmen to sign a clipboard and volunteer to be part of a brand new unit. JFK explained the new unit would be called SEALs (Sea, Air, Land). President Kennedy wanted men who “could go anywhere in the world at any time and do things that were needed in a moment’s notice.
The men looked at each other and wondered who would be the first to sign, after all, President John F. Kennedy himself was asking.
When Beal's best friend Harry Williams, also a Navy Frogman, said "You don’t have the guts to sign that clipboard", Beal stepped forward and into history.
With that signature, Beal, the son of a coal miner from Pocahontas, Pa., became the very first U.S. Navy SEAL, an elite special forces unit of the Navy created by JFK.
Beal is recognized as the first official SEAL. Marcus Luttrell, the SEAL depicted in the movie “Lone Survivor,” heard about Beal and sent him a flag that says “Same blood different mud.” Luttrell was the only survivor of Operation Red Wings in Afghanistan in 2005.
Beal spent the next year in Vietnam during the build up to the war. In 1963, he came back to the Naval Amphibious Base in Virginia and became a SEAL instructor. Later, Beal was credited with pulling John Glenn (1921–2016) out of the water after his historic spaceflight.
He spent 20 years in the Navy from 1948 to 1968. Beal's stint in the service took him to South America, Europe, Southeast Asia and the Caribbean Sea, including Cuba.
America has lost a pioneer and true patriot.
RIP Harry Beal