A PROUD MOMENT FOR FATHER AND SON.

Byline: DENNIS McCARTHY 

The past may slowly be slipping away from Duncan Smith, but it paused long enough Wednesday for the Woodland Hills man to find a smile and whisper congratulations to his 48-year-old son as he was promoted to captain in the elite Navy SEALs.

They say tough guys aren't supposed to cry, but Drew Smith cried.

Standing beside his father's wheelchair, the 1976 Chaminade High School grad wasn't the 22-year combat veteran and special ops officer with the Navy SEALs on Wednesday.

He was a little 8-year-old boy again, wanting nothing more than to make his ailing father proud.

"I always looked up to you, Dad," Drew said quietly, leaning down with tears in his eyes to give his father a hug at the Canyon Oaks Nursing and Rehabilitation Center in Canoga Park.

"Everything I learned about service to my country I learned from you. This is a day both of us have been looking forward to for a long time. I love you, Dad."

Duncan was too ill to travel to Coronado last week for the official Navy SEAL ceremony promoting his son to captain, so the Navy SEALs decided to come to him in his nursing home Wednesday.

With Duncan's wife of 56 years, Dorothy, looking on, Capt. Roger Herbert -- commanding officer of the Naval Special Warfare Center -- re-enacted the ceremony for Drew's dad and some of his old World War II and Korean War buddies.

"My father was a Navy man, and I owe everything I am to him, too," Herbert said. "But I would have come anyway because Drew is one of my heroes.

"This is a man who volunteered to serve his country not once, but twice. When that plane hit the second tower on 9-11, Drew was back in. Every Navy SEAL has a tremendous amount of respect for him."

And Drew has a tremendous amount of respect for his father, who served in both World War II and Korea, and retired from the Navy Reserve as a commander in 1969.

In the Navy, the rank of commander is below the rank of captain, and his dad always regretted he never made captain.

Drew made it for him.

"I remember thinking as a kid, watching him get dressed in his uniform to go to his meetings, that someday I was going to wear that uniform, too," he said.

And he has, on combat duty in both Iraq and Afghanistan. In 2003, he was in charge of a special Navy SEAL team that put itself in the middle of hot spots to videotape combat footage in Baghdad for a congressional briefing in early 2005.

Later that year, he served as special operations liaison to Gen. George Casey, head of all U.S. forces in Iraq, before returning stateside as chief staff officer for the Naval Special Warfare Operation Support Group in Coronado.

His mother can only smile at her son's career choice.

"In high school I wouldn't let him play football because it was too dangerous, so what does he do?" she says. "Becomes a Navy SEAL."

Drew was named after his father, and his friends and Navy SEAL buddies call him Duncan. But his family calls him Drew, his middle name.

"He's the only boy, with four sisters," she says. "The sun rose and set on him. His father may not be able to show it, but he's bursting with pride right now.

"His boy's a captain."

dennis.mccarthy(at)dailynews.com

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Photo:

Drew Smith receives his Navy SEAL captain's bars from Capt. Roger Herbert, left, and his mother, Dorothy Smith, as his father, Duncan Smith, looks on at a special ceremony at the Canyon Oaks Nursing and Rehabilitation home in Canoga Park on Wednesday afternoon.

Tom Mendoza/Staff Photographer