On Monday, Rep.-elect Dan Crenshaw (R-Texas) posted a video on his Twitter account to explain why he wears an eye patch and the types of glass eyes he wears underneath. Crenshaw lost his right eye, while serving as a Navy SEAL, due to an improvised explosive device in Afghanistan.
Despite losing an eye, Crenshaw deployed two more times before being medically retired.
“One of the first [eye patches] I had were actually wooden,” Crenshaw said. “And they had certain SEAL symbols in them, Navy SEAL symbols. Not only a trident, but what we call the bone frog.”
The bone frog represents when a Navy SEAL or SEALs loses one of their own. The frog is based on the nickname frogmen, due to their amphibious training and line of work.
Crenshaw went on to explain why he does not just wear his glass eye at all times.
“Truth is I have about ten different glass eyes, [with] all kinds of different symbols,” he explained. “The one I wear the most is the Navy SEAL trident. What that actually is, is a gold earring that they sell in Coronado, California that we had implanted into a glass eye.”
Crenshaw says he decides to wear the eyepatch depending if he is in a formal or informal, private or public setting: “There’s really no reason to wear an eyepatch around family and friends because they’re used to my many different glass eyes.”
Over the last year, I've gotten a lot of questions about where I got my eye patch, why I wear it, and the glass eye underneath. So here is the scoop. I get my eye patches at https://t.co/H6fZqbcFRk pic.twitter.com/pctcy1Iq6S
— Dan Crenshaw (@DanCrenshawTX) December 10, 2018
The Congressman-elect said he noticed how the glass eye can be distracting when meeting new people since it’s not a look people are used to seeing. He also admits he feels self-conscious about the glass eye sometimes.
“That sort of the life we live, those of us who know what it’s like to live with a prosthetic eye,” Crenshaw added, teasing he will be wearing some new eye patches.