Wounded Veteran Wonders Why He Got a House

Wounded warrior hopes to make a new life in donated Waco home
Waco Tribune
J.B. Smith
October 13, 2015

He was wounded on three of his four deployments, suffering a concussion, a broken wrist, traumatic brain injury, shoulder and arm injuries and post-traumatic stress disorder. He underwent six surgeries and is now considered 100 percent disabled.

Staff photo— Jerry Larson

Purple Heart veteran Sgt. Marc Seal, third from right, breaks ground at a ceremony held

by Operation Finally Home, between his son, Benjamin, and State Sen. Brian Birdwell.

A part of Marc Seal wants to be back with his troops in Afghanistan, dodging IEDs. Instead, he’s settling down in suburban China Spring to start a new chapter in life.

Seal, a Purple Heart disabled veteran, started that new chapter Tuesday as a nonprofit group and a local builder broke ground on a new home for which he won’t owe a dime.

The nonprofit Operation Finally Home selected Seal for a three-bedroom, two-bath home in the Lakeland Estates subdivision, being built by Waco-based Sorrells and Co.

Seal, 44, has been living in an RV near San Antonio, the city where he gets treatment for wounds he received during four deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan.

When military officials told him they had recommended him for a home built by a nonprofit group, Seal was incredulous. He saw the appeal of moving to Waco so he could be closer to his children in Dallas and Fort Hood, but he didn’t know why he’d be singled out.

That game was 14 years and a day after the event that started his second career as a soldier. After terrorists flew planes into the World Trade Center and Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001, he said he felt a “physical pain” and quickly signed up with the National Guard. He already had served as a soldier in 1990-96 but was ready to go fight what he thought would be a quick and decisive war.
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