MILITARY - 49 YEARS W/ ALMOST 20-YEARS BEING PART TIME)
I had no connection with military growing up, other than as a “townie” occasionally witnessing Coast Guard Bootcamp recruits marching through the small town of Cape May NJ. I had taken a semester off to make a few bucks when I got my 1A Draft Notice, which means you’re next. Rather than heading off to Vietnam where some of my high school friends had already died, I was signed by the Navy with promises of lots of educational opportunities. I was indeed well-schooled in electricity & electronics, interior communications, and nuclear power ops. After that initial schooling, I was assigned to my 1st ship: USS Nuerios (AS17) in San Diego. After NucPowerSchool in Vallejo CA, the Navy decided to send me to college (NC State) for a computer science degree. NucPower? Computer Science? Never had heard of either. Lucky me that computers were about to take over most of technology and engineering forever.
My first assignment as an officer was to the shipyard where the aircraft carrier Nimitz was being built. That is engineering at a scale that few people witness - longer than the Empire State Building is tall, a flight deck of over 3.5 acres, holding more than 100 combat aircraft with room for more than 5000 crew and supplies for the ship, the people, and the fuel for the jets. I earned special recognition as the 1st officer to qualify as Officer of the Deck - responsible for the safety of the ship when the senior officers were asleep for the night. Crazy. But nothing like being on the bridge of an aircraft carrier in the middle of a windless moonlit night somewhere in the Mediterranean Sea, looking like a sheet of black glass. During the 4-years on Nimitz we tested our systems in Quantomino Bay Cuba, visited ports throughout the Med and North Sea. Certainly an adventure.
From there, I worked for a year in software test before Navy sent me back to college for a Masters in Electronic Engineering, Digital Systems. Who could turn down an opportunity for a few years in Monterery CA? Of course, being the only officer in the USNayv with a BS in computer software and an MS in computer hardware meant that I’d get assigned to WashDC, the commands who purchased them. Working for 2-star and 3-star Admirals who know nothing about computers. Nice! I tell them the questions to ask, then explain what the answers meant. In the course of that assignment, I came to the conclusion that I did not want to remain on active duty in pursuit of those promotions & jobs, so I resigned my active commission for a reserve commission.
My reserve career was mostly in command at those same places where I worked on Active Duty. I managed to get promoted to CAPT (Same as Colonel) over those 20-years.
During my reserve time, I began my entrepreneurial career because the reserve commitment was one weekend a month and 2-weeks during the year. Easy.
Just before my uniformed career was to end, I was recruited to return to Navy as a civilian GS15 to help in both Reserve Management and Cybersecurity. My original intent was to stay only for 4-years to qualify for another pension, but I was having so much fun that I stayed for 16.
In the end, I had spent a total of 49-years with Navy, 36-uniformed; 16 civilian; 3-year overlap. The people I worked with exemplified the best of the best: Courage, Honor, Commitment. Integrity as core values. And folks really lived it every day. There was not a single moment in my uniformed time when I had to deal with anyone who was not completely honest in every way. It’s hard to explain just how great a work environment is when your shipmates are well educated & trained, committed to excellence, and respectful of everyone, no better the gender, religion, race, country of origin, etc.