Their son has served two tours in Iraq, but at no point during those 30 months were Mike and Karin Formento more worried than Thursday afternoon, when they waited for any information from his base, Fort Hood.

Across the nation, people were gripped by the news of a mass shooting at the Texas military base that killed 13 people and left dozens wounded. By the end of the day, the suspected gunman, an Army psychiatrist, was hospitalized and in custody.

But shortly after the 1:30 p.m. shooting, with Fort Hood on emergency lockdown, the initial news reports were slow to come and at times conflicting.

Neither Spc. Daniel Formento, working on the base, nor his parents in Glen Ellyn knew all that was going on, said father Mike Formento.

They wanted to hear nothing more than word that their son was OK. That call did not come for an excruciating several hours, said Mike Formento, who is a former Glen Ellyn village president.

After repeatedly calling his son’s cell phone without success, the Formentos finally heard from him at about 5 p.m.

“He called us and said three things: ‘Hello, Dad. I’m OK. Bye,’” Mike Formento said. “That’s all we needed to hear.”

It was a world of relief, he said. Until then, only bits of information had reached them, though it was enough to cause alarm.

“He’s in personnel, and one of the things they were identifying was (the shooting) was in ‘the personnel building,’” Mike Formento said. “The fact we were unable to reach him made it even more distressing.”

After a second, longer phone conversation Friday, Oct. 6 morning, the Formentos learned how close their son was to the violence. His building is less than a block from the processing center where military officials say the alleged gunman, Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, fired into a crowd.

But thanks to a quick lockdown procedure, Dan Formento was never in danger, he told his parents.

“He just found it so effective that they were able to step right in and handle an emergency circumstance like that,” Mike Formento said.

The next day, as the base observed a day of mourning and Daniel Formento and other personnel were given the day off, some information was still hard to come by. He knew one of the people wounded, though he could not garner much more.

“He didn’t know what the injury was or how serious they might have been,” Mike Formento said.

By Friday morning, military officials were reporting at least most of the wounded victims were in stable condition.

In that way, Daniel Formento also found Thursday’s ordeal more challenging than his two tours in Iraq, he told his parents.

“‘When we were in Iraq we could see what was going on,’” Mike Formento said, recalling his son’s comments. “‘In this particular case, there wasn’t anything for us to see.’”

Himself a Navy veteran, Mike Formento said he understands the military’s initial tight grip on information.

“They don’t release anything until they’re sure what happened and what the outcome was,” he said. “It had to be very nerve-racking for him, but Dan’s a pretty strong young man. He’s been in circumstances that, frankly, he knows how to react to.”