What a beautiful feeling: to know that the thing she grew up with, the thing she always loved and felt familiar with – the ocean – now holds her husband.
Jewel Ingram says she can go to the sea any time and know that she is meeting him there, at his last resting place.
She’s talking about her husband, Navy SEAL Nathan Gage Ingram, who passed away in January during a night mission off the coast of Somalia.
Her name is Jewel Ingram.
The mission
Her husband, who went by Gage for most of his life, jumped in the water after his teammate fell in. His unit, based out of Coronado, was conducting a night-time seizure of a vessel illegally transporting advanced lethal aid from Iran to resupply Houthi forces in Yemen.
“’It was an instinctive act, honed by years of training, one teammate going to another’s aid. But weighed down by their body armor, weapons and heavy equipment, the two SEALs plunged into the depths of the Arabian Sea and died, said the officials…’” says an article from the Associated Press.
The next 10 days were an unsuccessful search-and-rescue mission, trying to recover both Ingram and his SEAL Team 3 comrade, Chris Chambers. Gage was 27 and Chambers was 37.
They were both declared deceased on Jan. 12, 2024.
Jewel and Ingram’s family were told by the Navy that they had done operations like this before, but the Indian Ocean waters on the night of Jan. 11 were rougher than normal. There isn’t much more the family could say due to an investigation that is still ongoing.
The Navy did not respond for a comment on deadline.
His resting place
“I come from the islands where I grew up with the water. You don’t underestimate the water,” says Jewel, who grew up on Oahu. “Just knowing how bad the water [was], these guys are Frogmen. They’re built in the water, you know, they thrive in the water.”
She references the name Frogmen, meaning people that have been trained extensively underwater. It’s a name that belonged to units of underwater demolition experts within the Navy prior to the creation of SEALs.
“There’s so many drownings in Hawaii. It was something I grew up with where it’s like, you know, they just fell asleep and there wasn’t any pain. They don’t even know,” Jewel says.
She chooses to look at his death in the water as a place that she can always go to and visit him.
But it took her a while to get to this point.
“How could something I grew up with, love so much, always in, take away the person that was the most important person to me?” she asks rhetorically.
But now, I’ve grown to love it even more. Like, thank you for being a little piece of my heaven on earth where I can always find him, visit him and be with him. How beautiful is it for my favorite thing to take care of and take home, my best person?
Jewel Ingram
“But now, I’ve grown to love it even more. Like, thank you for being a little piece of my heaven on earth where I can always find him, visit him and be with him. How beautiful is it for my favorite thing to take care of and take home, my best person?” Jewel reflects.
Her mother-in-law, Kristi Hughes, is on the video screen next to her. Hughes is in Texas where Ingram was born and raised, while Jewel sits in her bedroom in San Diego. Hughes wipes away tears as Jewel speaks about her son. Jewel calls her mom.
When he was younger
Hughes and Ingram’s father, Chet Ingram, have been divorced since Ingram was about 5 years old. Ingram and his older sister, Jaci, spent one night a week and every other weekend at their father’s place. But they only lived about 15 minutes away from each other, Chet says.
He wanted to be outdoors. He wanted to ride his bike. He wanted to play football; he wanted to do sports. Baseball was a little slow, to him. It was not enough action.
Kristi Hughes
“He wanted to be outdoors. He wanted to ride his bike. He wanted to play football; he wanted to do sports. Baseball was a little slow, to him,” Hughes recalls, laughing. “It was not enough action.”
Ingram was always an athlete, but apparently didn’t hit his growth spurt until about junior and senior year of high school.
“He fell in love with basketball…but he was just a little fella,” Chet says. “He didn’t fit that stereotypical type, so he chose to be with his buddies and he managed the basketball team.”
Ryan Johnson, Ingram’s best friend since childhood, offered similar childhood memories, often accompanied with a smile or a laugh.
If his friends needed a ride or anything from him, Ingram was there to help. He was humble; he was kind; he was quiet but goofy, they all said. He did what he was told in school and he was a hard worker. He was also competitive, Johnson says.
Johnson laughs as he recalls the two of them always talking trash with each other, “I remember my team winning the championship one year, and [Ingram] said, ‘No, it didn’t happen.’”
Johnson tells another story about how he visited Ingram back home one summer while they were in college, and Ingram only had one towel in the bathroom.
“There’s a towel hanging up, but it’s clearly been used, and there’s blood on it,” Johnson emphasizes. “[Ingram] just looks at me. He goes, ‘Towels? Buddy, we got a towel.’” Johnson looks off in the distance as he remembers story after story, talking about his friend, and laughing a lot.
Johnson has been Ingram’s best friend since kindergarten, and remained close even after going to different colleges.
Becoming a SEAL
Johnson remembers Ingram taking off on a long run in the dark when they were teenagers, about 17 or 18. It was 2 a.m. on a January morning and Ingram was chugging along on the slick, icy roads. Johnson and another friend followed in a car, not sure what was happening.
“We were like, ‘This guy’s a psycho,’” Johnson recalls. “And then he came back and I remember he looked at me and was like, ‘I’m going to go be a Navy SEAL.’”
But he went to college first, at Texas Tech University, where he majored in kinesiology.
Ingram grew to a height of six feet by the time he graduated. Johnson remembers him lifting weights and swimming in those years – more than any other person he had known at that point.
The kid who was too small for basketball put on muscle and began to look like a SEAL.
And Johnson and Ingram’s family knew it was going to happen.
He had a knack for being kind of a daredevil. Like, there was nothing that he didn’t think he could do.
“He had a knack for being kind of a daredevil. Like, there was nothing that he didn’t think he could do,” Johnson says.
Chet says he knew Ingram would put everything he had into it. He says they had many conversations through the years about the notoriously tough training to become a SEAL. If Ingram messed up during the process, he would go to his dad and figure out how to do better the next time, Chet says.
Chet tells a story of how Ingram passed out during one of the underwater knot-tying assessments while he was at Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL (BUD/S) training. BUD/S is the training one goes through to become a SEAL. Ingram called his dad after it happened.
“We talked on a daily basis,” Chet says. “Anytime he ran across an obstacle: ‘How do we do it better? What do we do next time?’”
Ingram enlisted in the Navy in September 2019 and graduated boot camp two months later. He finished BUD/S training in December 2021, graduating in class 346, and reported to his first operational tour as a member of SEAL Team THREE.
Johnson says he got a text message after Ingram said started Hell Week, advising that he might not be messaging for a few days.
Hell Week is supposed to be the hardest week SEAL candidates go through, with only 25% of candidates making it through, according to navyseals.com. It’s meant to test their mental and physical strength and push them to their limits.
After five and a half days, Johnson got a text from Ingram with just one word: ‘Secured,’ Johnson says. “That was the coolest thing, ever.”
His marriage
And that’s the version of him that Jewel met and fell in love with in the beginning of 2022.
It wasn’t easy to be with a man that had such a dangerous occupation, but Jewel says he gave her confidence.
“He always reassured me that he was being safe and smart,” she adds. “We always needed to be solid, because if we weren’t solid, then he wasn’t going to be solid for work.”
Ingram didn’t share everything that he had to do as a SEAL with Jewel. Otherwise, she would’ve lost her mind, she says with a small smile. But she knew that this was for a greater good, and that his job meant everything to him.
“I hate that I lost my best friend. But, we’ve had the tough conversation where it was like, ‘You’re OK. Like, you are OK with dying,’” Jewel says. “You’re OK with dying for the country and not coming back home to us.”
Jewel says Ingram said if the mission was to help so many other lives, he would be willing to kill, and to die.
But when he’d come home from a deployment or a training, he just wanted to be with her.
“He was always calm, cool, collected, like, kind of kept everything together. And all he wanted to do was just be by me,” Jewel says.
They were together for just about two years. Jewel expresses no regrets about their relationship.
Jewel would line up her holidays and time off as best she could to be with him.
I’m happy that we took every opportunity in the life that we did because we never took it for granted. We always were there, present, feeling it all and just loving on each other no matter what.
“I’m happy that we took every opportunity in the life that we did because we never took it for granted. We always were there, present, feeling it all and just loving on each other no matter what,” Jewel says.
As she talks about her husband a picture looms in the background. It’s hard not to notice. It’s a photo of them together on their wedding day, just five months before his death.
A hero
She gets emotional at some parts, pausing before she speaks. Hughes joins her in those moments, silently wiping her face.
He died a hero, all four of them say at some point, their voices definitive.
He died giving up his life for his teammate, and none of his family was surprised by his act of valor.
Ingram had four ceremonies commemorating his life.
One of them was at Fort Rosecrans National Cemetery, a federal military cemetery in Point Loma.
Jewel placed his marker in a spot where they used to watch the sunset together.
It’s ironic, and you know, weird, that kind of full-circle type of thing. Like I said before about the water, I always find a minute and I always find him at Rosecrans. Because that’s where we spent our time, you know. In the water or there watching sunsets.
“It’s ironic, and you know, weird, that kind of full-circle type of thing,” she says, slowly. “Like I said before about the water, I always find a minute and I always find him at Rosecrans. Because that’s where we spent our time, you know. In the water or there watching sunsets.”
