WASHINGTON — Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth met privately Wednesday with families of six service members killed in the Iran war and said afterward that the families had a consistent message: “Finish this. Honor their sacrifice. Do not waver. Do not stop until the job is done,” he told reporters.
One of the people Hegseth met at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware was Charles Simmons, whose 28-year-old son, Tech. Sgt. Tyler H. Simmons, was among six crew members killed when a U.S. refueling plane crashed in Iraq last week. Simmons said his recollection differed.
“I can’t speak for the other families. When he spoke to me, that was not something we talked about,” he told NBC News on Thursday.
Simmons, a 60-year-old music teacher from Columbus, Ohio, said he spoke separately with Hegseth and with President Donald Trump at Dover and appreciated the warmth both men showed. He said his conversations focused mostly on Tyler — his service record and rapid advancement in the Air Force.
He told Hegseth, “I understand there’s a lot of peril that goes into making decisions like this, and I just certainly hope the decisions being made are necessary.” Asked whether he told Hegseth or Trump anything about the need to keep fighting the war, Simmons said, “No, I didn’t say anything along those lines.”
Simmons said he still has questions about the war and can’t draw firm conclusions without all the information. “Who wants war?” he asked. “Sometimes it’s a necessity, and I just don’t know what’s going on.”
Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said in a statement: “Secretary Hegseth has the utmost respect for our Gold Star families and has pledged to honor the sacrifice of their loved ones. While at Dover, the Secretary spoke with each family of our fallen heroes and the details of each individual conversation remain private.”
White House spokeswoman Olivia Wales said Trump “grieved” with the “incredible families” and expressed the nation’s deep gratitude, calling the fallen “the very best of America.”
Simmons said his last conversation with Tyler was the day before the crash, when Tyler told him he loved him. Tyler had hoped to become a commercial airline pilot after leaving the military, Simmons said, and he remembered his son’s “magnetic personality” and how he “never met any strangers.”
Hegseth’s description of family messages echoes comments Trump made after meeting other families on March 7, when the president said “every single one” told him, “Finish the job, sir. Please, finish the job.” A public official who was within earshot of Trump’s meetings that day told NBC News they did not hear any family members say that.
The Dover visits were part of “dignified transfer” ceremonies at the air base, where families receive the remains of service members flown home in flag-draped transfer cases. Families who choose may meet the president, vice president or other senior officials.
Simmons said he left Dover with a different impression of Trump and Hegseth than he had before the meeting. He described Trump as teary and compassionate, and said Hegseth seemed torn and emotional about the difficult decisions tied to war. “I also let him know that Tyler was my only son. And you could see the emotion on his face. And I think those kinds of things you can’t fake,” Simmons said.
NBC News reached out to family members of the other 12 service members killed in the Iran war.
Rep. Eugene Vindman, D-Va., an Army veteran who attended the March 7 dignified transfer for a constituent, said he did not overhear Trump’s conversations with families and doubted a grieving relative would be focused on messaging about the mission. “The families there are dealing with a terrible, tragic loss,” Vindman said. “They’re still trying to make sense of what the loss means to them personally: losing a husband, father, wife. They’re not thinking about the mission.”
Now in its third week, the conflict has prompted the U.S. and Israel to say their assault has severely damaged Iran’s military capabilities and weakened its regime. The war has also driven oil and gas prices up as Iran has effectively shuttered the Strait of Hormuz, a crucial shipping lane. This week, a senior U.S. counterterrorism official, Joe Kent, resigned over the war, saying Iran did not pose an imminent threat to the United States.
Simmons recalled something his son told him before volunteering for the mission that ended his life: “He said, ‘Dad, I can’t give you any details, but if civilians knew what we knew, a lot of the criticism [of the war] would cease.’”