Mother Whose Son Died in Benghazi: 'I Want to Make Him Proud'

It doesn’t seem like it would be too much to ask — to allow a mother to mourn the way she wants. But for Cheryl Croft Bennett, whose son, Tyrone Woods, was one of the four people killed in Benghazi almost four years ago, it has been a challenge.

“I couldn’t protect him in life,” she says Tuesday in her home in Oregon City. “The least I can try to do is protect him in death, to honor his memory, honor him the way I think that he would want to be remembered.

“I just want to make him proud.”

It’s hard to argue that she has done anything but.

It wasn’t that long ago — the death of her son still so fresh; it will always be fresh — when she had a chance run-in with Roger Rolin, who had been Tyrone’s wrestling coach at Oregon City High School.

“He wanted to tell me a story,” she says. “It had been 2009 and Tyrone had come in to talk to his global studies class. At this point, Tyrone had been a Navy SEAL for 19 years, and Roger was sure that the kids wanted to hear about what life was like in the Navy, what life was like as a SEAL.

“But, Roger said, he got up there and told the kids that he was not going to talk about life in the Navy, he was not going to talk about life as a SEAL. He was going to talk about wrestling and how it influenced the man he became.”

In high school, Tyrone had been a very good, not great, but very good wrestler. He placed second in the district and fifth in the state one year.

“Roger then told me how he told these kids about the influence that wrestling had had on his life,” she says. “How it had taught him to be a strong individual, but an even stronger member of a team. Wrestling taught him to be focused.

“And that’s when I knew what it was that I had to do.”

Cheryl had been struggling to find a way to honor her son.

“I wanted to do something, but I wasn’t sure what,” she says. “I had thought about some sort of military charity, something to help the families, but, the thing is, there are so many, and they do such a good job that I was having a hard time convincing myself there was a need for another.

“Wrestling provided the answer. It was the same for him as being a SEAL — being an exceptional individual and a member of a team.”

The Tyrone Snowden Woods Wrestling Foundation honors one outstanding student wrestler each year. This year, Tyler Self from Glencoe High School in Hillsboro became the first.

“It wasn’t just that he is an excellent wrestler, though he is,” says Bennett. “It’s that he demonstrated excellent scholarship and citizenship. And that’s the kind of rounded person that my son was. That is the kind of person we want to honor.”

The foundation also helps wrestling programs and individuals, providing grants, helping buy mats.

“It’s about helping people, setting people up for success,” she says. “That’s what my son was about. That’s the kind of legacy I think he would want to leave. It’s the legacy that I want to help build for him.”

The difficulty that Bennett has encountered is that her son died in a most public way — one of four people killed in Benghazi.

Woods had left the Navy after 20 years of honorable service, serving on SEAL teams three and five in Afghanistan, Iraq and Somalia. He was a paramedic. He was a medical corpsman. He was a registered nurse. And then he started working as a private contractor providing security for American diplomats.

Which is how he ended up in Libya, working to protect the life of Ambassador Chris Stevens who also died that day.

“He was always determined to make his own decisions,” she says. “I couldn’t stop him. But he was never reckless. He was always careful, and he always believed in doing what was right.

“I think if I could have talked to him after the fact, he would have said, 'Mom. I know it didn’t work out so well for me, but I did what I had to do.'”

Bennett tries to avoid politics, staying away from the discussions that have pushed and pulled the country every which way. She doesn’t always have a choice. Her ex-husband this week filed a suit blaming Hillary Clinton for Woods’ death.

It’s important to note that he is Bennett’s ex-husband.

“There is so much hated and anger in the world, and it doesn’t accomplish anything,” she says. “People talk so much about things they really don’t know. My son was a hero. He gave his life trying to help people. And he would have been the last person to refer to himself as heroic.

“He couldn't stand melodrama. It would be so nice if, instead of people treating them as symbols, as political footballs, when they mentioned Ty, or Ambassador Stevens and the others, they remembered that they were people. People trying to make the world a better a place.

“What a gift that would be."