Why I joined and made the Navy my career.

Me in my Navy Blues, after Boot Camp

Observing Veterans Day stirs a bit of Patriotism. Technically I am a veteran however, to my knowledge, I was never in danger of some one looking to kill me but then that is not a part of the definition of Veteran. I joined the US Navy on 10 October 1957, retiring as an Electronics Technician Senior Chief (Submarine Qualified) 20 years 2 months and 5 days later on 15 December 1977. After boot camp and ET school my service started as shore duty at the Sub Base Groton, Connecticut and finished with a patrol on the USS Sam Houston SSBN 609 Gold Fleet Ballistic Missile submarine based in Hawaii. I served the Submarine fleet the whole time plus another 11 years as a defense contractor.

The thing that is bothering me today is that my joining the Navy was never a thing of “In defense of my country” or other patriotism which is the appearance of all the lauding of military personnel today. With just a high school diploma I did not see much of an alternative. It was a way to get a good trade. VA school benefits were vaguely a possibility but …nah! I was not sure I had what it takes. School required work. It required hard work and setting goals and that was not really my thing. I was in the go along to get along mode and did not have any plans for the future. In retrospect I now feel patriotic about my service.  Growing up if I needed money I went to my father and petitioned him to fund what ever I wanted or worked to earn my own way. Often the answer was “We cannot afford it.” That phrase gave me a false impression that College was not a possibility in my life. Besides, my grades were not very impressive. Mom and Dad arranged for a tutor because my math grades were weak and I was in danger of not passing for the year. I do not ever remember Mom or Dad assisting me with my home work except to inquire about it occasionally. There was kind of a blasé attitude about school and goals etc. I didn’t know that mother went to college and Dad never discussed his education efforts. It just was never mentioned.

Bleacher Crowd (GREASE)

I would begin the school year doing well but motivation tapered off after a few months and my association with the “Bleacher Crowd” was not real motivating. The bleacher crowd was those portrayed by John Travolta et al in the movie Grease. It was also the only place on campus where you could indulge in my habit of smoking at the time. Very few of the kids headed for college hung out there. I even wore a black motorcycle jacket. Realize that this is 20/20 hind sight and trying to be brutally honest. I also do not remember either Mom or Dad asking about my friends except after I joined the Navy and then they liked Dick McNeely whom I brought home often.

USS Nautilus Launch
at Electric Boat

Because of the “we cannot afford it” attitude and more significantly never a mention of college as a goal, I settled on joining the Navy. I was working as a salesman of women’s shoes at Reid & Hughes department store in downtown Norwich. Fitting women for a pair of shoes got me a view of some interesting legs but there was no future there. The main employment in the area was at Electric Boat 15 miles away in Groton. EB was the premier builder of submarines in the World. I could go there and get a job but I had no training other than my High School Diploma and I figured that didn’t really qualify me for anything exciting. They probably would train me in something but that was not even interesting to me. There also was Pratt & Whitney in Manchester, Connecticut where they build jet engines but that was 45 miles away and again I had no training.

Norwich Post Office

Norwich Free Academy

My military service intentions began with visiting the recruiting offices out of curiosity as a teenager. Their offices were at the opposite end of the hall from my father’s office in the basement of the Norwich, Connecticut post office. I would stop by to see Dad on the way home from Norwich Free Academy which was across town from our home.

I checked out the different services and determined that the Navy had the best training to offer me. Besides that, walking long distances, carrying a heavy pack and a rifle and then trying to shoot someone else did not appeal to me. I definitely was not a jock. That kind of war was a bit too personal for me and the chances of me getting shot did not impress me. That eliminated the Army and Marines. The Air Force training seemed to me to be too job specific in that what you became trained on became your job. IF you trained to be a B57 tire changer that basically was your career. The Navy training seemed to be much broader. A Navy ET had many more options from working on all kinds of communications equipment to working on the different ships radars making it much more interesting to me.

Bank Street, New London, CT

I really did not have a clue as to what day to day life as an enlisted man was like. I did not realize that the junior enlisted guy was the guy that washed dishes, swabbed the decks, and all that other unattractive grunt work like cleaning the toilets. Being brought up 12 miles from the Sub Base in Groton, Connecticut also had little to do with the decision. I never interfaced with the base or the sailors except to be aware of the seedy reputation of Bank Street, New London with its tattoo parlors and bars (They were cleaned up in the early 60s as urban renewal.)

I did get a tattoo at age 16 but that is another story. “Join the Navy, See the world” did have appeal. I knew a guy who had enlisted and gone to Japan on a carrier and he regaled me with stories of his adventures ashore. That did have an influence. Being on my own to indulge in those storied liberties in foreign exotic ports was enticing. Being 18 and having raging hormones also had a part in the decision.

My re-enlistment ceremony

I realize now that I never involved my parents in the decision process to join the Navy. I wish I had. My dad embarrassed me at my last re-enlistment ceremony. I thought he and Mom would be impressed with a re-enlistment ceremony so I invited them to witness the ceremony. During conversation with my CO Dad told him that they had always hoped that I would go to college. Frankly I do not ever remember college being mentioned as I was growing up. I realize now that if I wanted my kids to go to college that I should have started when they were small and even then establishing savings accounts tagged for school. Start discussing college early in life. If it is expected it has a much greater chance of happening. I will pass this on to my children as they interact with their children. I did go to college but it took me 10 years to get a BS and my grades reflected that it was not my first priority in life. But it does indicate that I could set and attain a significant goal in life. No one has ever asked for my GPA (2.54 but that too is another story)

I do not regret the decision to enlist but it could have been much different if I had gone to college. My earnings would have been better, my life in the Navy much different. An enlisted man is a second class citizen, there to do the bidding of the officers. The officers do the planning, and make the decisions. The enlisted carry them out under the direction of the senior enlisted who are the supervisors of the military. By necessity senior NCOs do make on the spot decisions but are little involved in the long range planning and especially in the tactical military planning. That is a significant difference.

Navy Dolpins welcome
you at Sub Base

I took the Navy entrance exam three times, the first time was as a lark at age 14 and the second as a practice about 6 months prior to the real one just before enlisting. I passed it the first time but the third time I really scored high which qualified me for any basic school that I wanted. One big thing this did was to get me out of the basic enlisted grunt stuff of mess cooking (washing dishes/peeling potatoes) and other grunt work. I looked through the ratings book and decided that Electronics Technician the best kind of schooling that would be marketable when I got out in 4 years, so when I enlisted it was as Electronics Field Seaman Recruit which guaranteed me a school in that field. So right after boot camp at Great Lakes Naval Training center I went right back there for ET school.

During Boot camp I got separated from my company and approached an officer to ask if he knew where they were. He chewed my butt for daring to speak to an officer. That formulated an opinion of officers that tainted my naval experience until after I joined the Church and got to know some officers. They were human and not a......s (the nice word is jerks). Because of that I did not take advantage of the enlisted to officer programs that were available. Oh Well. Coulda, Shoulda, Woulda. Spit in one hand and wish in the other and see which one fills up first.

Aerial View of Naval (Submarine) Base in Groton, CT

Barracks at Groton Sub Base

 My first duty was shore duty at the Sub Base and I lived in a barracks. I was in a room shared with 30 other guys and there was a community bathroom that all on the floor shared. The life style was ok as I got 3 square meals a day, a bunk, a blanket and a locker to lock up my personal stuff. But privacy was something for the Navy in the future. When I got transferred to the Fulton I slept in a compartment with racks 3 high with over 100 other guys. Again no privacy! The bathrooms there were much more cramped than the barracks but adequate. Because it was a ship that did get underway there were no provisions for housing for junior enlisted. Married guys did have a dependants allowance and could get Comrats (commuter rations, a stipend to cover meals not eaten on the ship). Some of the younger single sailors did get together and establish civilian apartments ashore. Four of us guys did establish an apartment downtown New London over a store that was a dive shop in the summer and a gun shop in the winter and that is another story.

The USS Fulton
a sub "Tender" boat I served on

I had planned on just staying for just four years and even had a short timer’s chain of beads that represented the days left until I got out. However, on 13 August 1961 the Berlin wall went up and the Navy told me that I was in for the duration of the Crisis plus six months. I was on the USS Fulton AS-11 a submarine tender fixing and calibrating nuclear test equipment. I was bored with that work and IF I stayed in the Navy I was due for a transfer. One day the division officer mentioned that they wanted two guys to go to Virginia for a school I jumped on it. I knew nothing more than the school was NDT62-5 and was for about seven months long. No other description however, it got me off the tender! But it required shipping over for at least four more years. But I got even with President Kennedy and shipped over in the STAR program for six years receiving a guarantee for a Class C school. That is a school of at least six months in duration and this school in Virginia qualified. This decision made me a lifer. I had crossed a bridge and could never go back. The Navy became a job, a career, a means to a retirement check.

NAVDAC training in
Virginia Class C school

This school in Virginia was great. The prep school taught me the basic building blocks of computers, how it worked at the component level. I was having fun! Prep school prepared students for four different tracks of school and I started training on the NAVigation Data Assimilation Computer (NAVDAC). As I was taking the first exam the instructor held up the answer card. It had little punched holes in it so he could grade the answer card. I could see the first four answers were not what I thought the answers were so I went back over the questions. I had jumped on distractors that were close to the correct answer but not quite right. I changed my answers and because of that got an 85 on that first exam. The next closest student got a 65. I found that I was smart! I could learn this stuff! I started spending more time studying. I graduated first in class on that computer. But, I carried that grade over into the next computer class which graded a little less severely but we got a new guy in and he scored a little lower than I did but not having the lower average I had from the first computer class his composite was higher than mine and he came in first and I came in second. But I had proven to myself that I could handle advanced learning.

Me with Mike and Aaron in Hawaii

The Navy way of life was fun, for the first 14 years. But then the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints came into my life. I soon realized that the two ways of life were incompatible and that living the life of a “sailor” was not for me. I still had two years to go on that enlistment and then it was only four more years after that to earn the retirement so I stayed. The separations from my family really wore on my marriages and played a part in two divorces. Again with 20/20 hindsight if I had to do it all over again, knowing what I know now, it would have been much different.

Looking back on my experience as a member of the crew of a Fleet Ballistic Missile submarine I realized that if we did fire missiles that two things had happened. First, home probably was no longer there as the base where I lived was a target for the bad guys. Second was that when we started shooting off missiles we instantly became the target and our survival was probably nil. Our real mission was to be the deterrent in the Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) world policy at that time and if we did fire we had failed our mission.. The movie “On the Beach” would possibly be an ending.

Lessons learned: (Not in any special order)

1. Set goals that are high enough to require one to stretch oneself outside of your comfort zone. Do it while you are young as it gets much harder to accomplish later and you have a lot fewer distractions such as family and job.
2. Live your life in the today. Do not save that fancy shirt or suit for later or it will only adorn your corpse. Enjoy the good things of life. Fill it with Joy (which is much different than fun). Work your Bucket list!
3. Do good every day. There is a life after death and what we do today will enhance that life tomorrow. We will have to account for how we live our life.
4. Be a good parent/spouse. Your material accomplishments are only for this life. You need to prepare for Eternity. As I now say about my missionary service, “The pay is peanuts but the retirement plan is Heavenly.”
5. Listen to your parents. They have experiences that have shaped them with wisdom but are not infallible. Remember that they love and care about you. Use them as an input to your decision making process but make it your decision. Always involve your Heavenly Father in your decisions.
6. It ain’t over til it’s over. Repentance is a process not an instance. There is very little in your life that cannot be repented of or changed. However, that said, small sins require small repentance and large sins get much more involved. It really is much better to live a Christ like life as much as possible. BUT, He did pay the price for you and you CAN repent. Remember life always has consequences.
7. Choose your associates wisely. You learn from your associates, and you will marry some one that you date. Choosing good quality people to associate with or date can improve you. I was once told “Choose your mate carefully. Select some one that you to not have to pull up because if you have to pull someone up they just might pull you down.