By Amelia Mugavero
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ROANOKE, Texas (KTVT) — This week marks one year since Roanoke native and Navy SEAL, Nathan Gage Ingram, was lost at sea and presumed dead on a mission overseas. To the country, 27-year-old Gage is known as a national hero, but to his father, Chet Ingram, he’s just his little boy.
“I miss him. I’d like to him again,” Ingram said with tears in his eyes.
Gage grew up in Roanoke and after graduating with a kinesiology degree from Texas Tech, Ingram says his son came up to him with a different dream; to become a Navy SEAL. “He didn’t say it with a question mark. He stated it to me. All I said was ‘okay, lets go,’” Ingram said.
Gage enlisted in the Navy on Sept. 25, 2019, and graduated boot camp on Nov. 22, 2019. He graduated Basic Underwater Demolition /SEAL Training Class 346 in December 2021 and reported to his first operational tour as SEAL Team THREE.
However, in his first deployment, Gage and fellow SEAL, Navy Special Warfare Operator 1st Class Christopher J. Chambers, disappeared near the coast of Somalia last year on Jan. 11, 2024. According to the Navy’s report, their mission was to board a ship smuggling Iranian missile components bound for the Houthi militants in Yemen. Chambers was knocked off by high waves and Gage jumped in to save him. Search crews looked for them for 10 days and neither man was ever found.
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