FEATURE
Some of the earliest and fondest
memories Brian Mast has
aren’t of birthday parties or
first bicycles — they are of
time spent at the beach and
on or near the water. Though born and
raised in Michigan, Mast says his family
spent nearly every possible vacation in
Florida, and the water was his first love.
“I realized from about the age of
three that this was where I wanted to be
forever,” the Florida congressman says.
When he graduated from high school
in 1999, he didn’t miss a beat and drove
his Ford Mustang to Florida to attend
Palm Beach Atlantic College.
Now in his third term representing
Florida’s 18th Congressional District, it
was in college that Mast says he first felt
the pull toward service and chose to enlist
in the military. The initial plan was
for a lifetime of service in the Army,
following in the footsteps of his father,
but there is no doubt that the adventure
was alluring, too.
As an explosive ordnance disposal
specialist under the elite Joint Special
Operations Command, Mast’s role
was to “research and identify military
weapons, assist leadership in the
preparation and use of advanced robotics,
dispose of hazardous objects, and
perform missions in support of Army
units worldwide, across all environmental
conditions.”
“We worked only at night and only
on high-level targets, to kill or capture
terrorists,” he says. “My job was to lead
and clear the way of explosive hazards
because they are the biggest killer.”
WOUNDED IN AFGHANISTAN
On Sept. 19, 2010, while stationed in
Afghanistan, a roadside bomb he found
detonated underneath his feet, resulting
in the loss of both of legs.
“I remember everything about it,” he
says of the catastrophic event, “being
tumbled through the air, the tourniquets
and my colleagues wrenching
them down on my mangled legs, being
put on the stretcher, and loaded onto
the helicopter. After that, I have no
memories for about a week until I was
in D.C. in the hospital there.”
He says there were moments when he
was conscious and communicating with
others during that week, but even 11
years later, he has no memory of them.
It was a very dark time, but Mast is
nothing if not tenacious.
“Some of my first thoughts were
naive,” he says, “and mixed with some
realism. I was laying there at Walter
Reed National Military Medical Center
in Bethesda, Maryland thinking ‘I
am going to slap on two prosthetics,
do a couple weeks of therapy and go
back into the next rotation with my
comrades.’ ”
Despite the innocent optimism, he
says that at the same time, there was a
part of him that realized he wasn’t going
to be an asset the way he had been
before. During this dark time, Mast’s
father gave him a piece of advice that
served as the inspiration to help him set
his coordinates in a forward direction,
14 Port St. Lucie Magazine
telling his son to make sure the greatest
service he gave to his country was
the best example he could set for his
children that were yet to come.
He says, “My next battlefield would
be one of words and action.”
PERFECT PLACE TO LIVE
Since 2015, Mast and wife Brianna
have chosen St. Lucie County as the
perfect place to live and raise a growing
family. The couple lived in Ocean
Village, then moved to Palm City near
Harbour Ridge, and most recently chose
another home with beautiful views of
the area’s waterways.
As it is with nearly everyone in St. >>
During Operation Enduring Freedom in 2010,
Mast served in Afghanistan where he lost his legs
in a roadside bomb explosion.
Mast, a Harvard graduate, meets with community leaders and defense officials at his alma mater.
There is no doubt about it;
the principles carry over in the
way that you fight. That’s one of
the places I connect most well
with the people who give me the
honor of representing them. My
commitment hasn’t changed; the
battlefield has. I nearly gave my
life once before for my country
and I still would. I hope the
people I meet feel the same way
about me.