Advertisement

Gasparilla parade's Navy 'hero' survived danger, injury

 
U.S. Navy Lt. Cmdr. Ramesh Haytasingh has been selected as the community hero to lead this year’s Gasparilla Parade of Pirates. Haytasingh specialized in explosive ordnance disposal during a number of deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan. It was a 2013 surfing accident in California that landed him in a wheelchair.
U.S. Navy Lt. Cmdr. Ramesh Haytasingh has been selected as the community hero to lead this year’s Gasparilla Parade of Pirates. Haytasingh specialized in explosive ordnance disposal during a number of deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan. It was a 2013 surfing accident in California that landed him in a wheelchair.
Published Jan. 26, 2017

U.S. Navy Lt. Cmdr. Ramesh Haytasingh will always remember the mailbox he sent hurtling into the sky.

Haytasingh was 15 at the time, growing up in small-town Red Bluff, Calif., with a love of explosives and a lot of time on his hands. He packed a hollowed-out cartridge with black gun powder and TNT, placed it in the mailbox and lit the fuse. The explosion blew the box out of sight.

"And then, as it came down, I saw the gentlemen who owned it and he was watching it come down with me, and I knew I was in trouble," Haytasingh, now 41, recalled.

Authorities would link him to thousands of dollars in similar damage and charge him with two felonies. Some years later, back in court and facing prison time if he got in trouble again, a judge told him to speak with a U.S. Navy recruiter.

That meeting led Haytasingh to deployments totalling four years and eight months in Iraq and Afghanistan, half of them as an explosives specialist helping disarm roadside bombs for Special Operations Forces. He made it home each time, physically unscathed but often grieving for fallen comrades, then a freak surfing accident in 2013 left him with the same injuries some service members suffer in combat.

Now, U.S. Navy Lt. Cmdr. Haytasingh — pronounced HAY-ta-sing — is a training officer with Special Operations Command at MacDill Air Force Base. On Saturday, he will roll down Bayshore Boulevard with the Gasparilla Parade of Pirates as the procession's community hero. The honor goes to a local person with an inspiring story.

Haytasingh's journey starts with that mailbox and takes him through basic training and basic underwater demolition training as a Navy Seal. Then, a bout with a flesh-eating bacteria on his right arm almost killed him and nearly forced his discharge from the service. He recovered and spent his first tour in Iraq during the second Gulf War.

Haytasingh trained bottlenose dolphins to detect explosives and sent them into the Tigris River looking for mines placed by Iraqi forces. He lost his first comrade during that deployment, a boot camp buddy he'd known for years. He was the first of more than 28 of Haytasingh's service brothers who would be killed in action over the next decade.

"That's something they don't teach you in school — the loss that a lot people struggle with every day," he said in an interview this week.

He would go to Iraq twice more and Afghanistan five times, assigned to both conventional and special operations missions. In Afghanistan, he worked with the Naval Special Warfare Development Group, also known as Seal Team Six. He declined to talk specifics about its classified missions. One of them was hunting down and killing Osama bin Laden.

Haytasingh also specialized in disarming and disposing of improvised explosives hidden by insurgents, the kind of work highlighted in the 2008 movie, The Hurt Locker. Sometimes, that meant sending out a robot to detonate an explosive. Other times, it required hands-on work.

Keep up with Tampa Bay’s top headlines

Subscribe to our free DayStarter newsletter

We’ll deliver the latest news and information you need to know every weekday morning.

You’re all signed up!

Want more of our free, weekly newsletters in your inbox? Let’s get started.

Explore all your options

Haytasingh felt calm around explosives and was "in his element" during firefights. He had plenty of close calls, but he doesn't talk about them. He started an explosives handling training course for Afghanistan forces that was so successful he was ordered to expand it.

His wife Crystal stayed behind with the couple's sons, Ayden, 9, and Elijah 8, and a foster son, Tobias, now 18. The family now lives in Brandon.

"War changed him," Crystal said. "It changes everybody, but he still tried to keep his bubbly self and not let it bring him down."

One of Haytasingh's biggest challenges didn't have anything to do with war or the Navy.

In August 2013, he was surfing during a family vacation in San Diego when he almost collided with a lifeguard on a jet ski. He bailed off his board and hit his head on the ocean floor, crushing two vertebrae in his neck. Surgery to repair a nearly severed spinal cord kept him from becoming a quadriplegic, but he suffered a traumatic brain injury and lost his voice for nearly two years.

He has endured a dozen surgeries since then. He has some movement in his legs but uses a wheelchair and probably will for the rest of his life.

Last summer, Haytasingh competed in the Department of Defense's annual Warrior Games at West Point in New York. He shot a rifle and a bow and arrow, threw a discus and pedaled a specially made bicycle, among other events. His team voted to give him a Heart of the Team award for his efforts. Comedian Jon Stewart was on hand to give him the trophy.

The games, he told an interviewer at the time, helped "show our other brothers and sisters that there's life after falling." He cited a quote he came up with that has become his motto: "Warriors aren't born, they are forged with blood, sweat and tears."

Some days are more difficult than others. He says his family and faith in God helps him get through those.

He also wrestles with survivor guilt.

"I just try to help others," he said. "That's what makes it feel better."

He has worked with Black Dagger, a hunting group for disabled veterans, and become involved with Gold Star Families.

SOCom officials worked with Seminole Hard Rock Hotel & Casino Tampa, a Gasparilla parade sponsor, to select Haytasingh for the honor.

"We feel his service and commitment to our country clearly fits the mold of what a 'Community Hero' should be," Hard Rock spokeswoman Nikki Yourison said in a statement.

Asked about his hero status, Haytasingh pinches his eyes closed and shakes his head, as if the notion is hard to believe.

"I don't see myself as a hero," he said. "I've seen some pretty high-level heroes in my life."

He then looked skyward.

"Pretty much all of them are upstairs at this point."

Contact Tony Marrero at tmarrero@tampabay.com or (813) 226-3374. Follow @tmarrerotimes.