144/365 (5/24)

It's been 11 years today since I graduated from the Naval Academy. It seems like such a long time ago, but at the same time, it seems like it was just yesterday. Crazy how time flies, yet doesn't...

Patriot Week and In The Shadow of Greatness

This week marks the official launch of my Naval Academy Class's Book, In The Shadow of Greatness. I've posted about it several times, and hopefully some of you reading this have had a chance to check it out. We're super excited about the book and everything that is happening with it. We've had some great feedback so far.

In light of the anniversary of 9/11, we're working an effort we're calling Patriot Week - basically this week is an opportunity to reflect on the day our homeland was attacked, take pride in the servicemen and women who defend our way of life, and support veteran charities. One way to do this is to buy a copy of our book. If you go to the book's website you'll find an awesome video about the book and the efforts of Patriot Week (also at the end of this post), information about each of the charities that the book will support, and more information about how to buy it. If you actually buy from one of the charity information pages, all of the proceeds will go to that charity. Otherwise, the proceeds will be split among the charities.

Tom Brokaw has called the book "...a must read for all Americans." An interview with two of the editors is on the Time Magazine website. There are feature stories this week in several newspapers (here's one from the Miami Herald), and multiple radio and TV outlets will be talking about it as well.

Please consider buying a copy of the book - hard copy or E-book. And while all of the charities are awesome, consider supporting the Matthew Freeman project. Again, I've written many times about Matt, and this charity was created by his parents after he died.

Also, my story will be featured in the "additional stories" section of the website, along with about 35 others. They should be up at the end of the week.

Thank you for your support!!

In The Shadow of Greatness, Part 2

I posted a few days ago about my USNA class's book, In The Shadow of Greatness, that is going to be out on 15 August.  I was lucky enough to be able to purchase an advanced copy, and I couldn't put it down. I started it Monday morning on my way to work, and finished it last night. And I have to say, I am so incredibly proud to be able to call myself a member of the US Naval Academy class of 2002. I also fully understand why my story wasn't chosen to make the print edition of the book. The stories that did make it were all better than mine, no question.

Our class was the first to graduate from the Naval Academy after 9/11, and the first to graduate during a time of war in our lifetime. The stories contained in this book include so many different experiences of my classmates since that May day in 2002. We have the last female F-14 pilot, who shared how she was able to live her dream. We have an explosive ordinance disposal officer who lived in real life what was portrayed in the movie The Hurt Locker. We have someone who took advantage of the Blue to Green program (which I almost did myself) and transitioned to the Army, and then had the responsibility of delivering the casualty notifications to families of his soldiers killed in action. We have the first military member to legally marry after the repeal of Don't Ask Don't Tell. We have a classmate who was commissioned into the Air Force and finally found her calling when she got out. We have four stories written by the mothers of classmates who have died since graduation, one of cancer, two in training accidents, and one (which is written by his mother but in his voice) of our only classmate to have been killed in action. And these are just a few of the examples of the stories contained in the book.

Bottom Line: I very highly recommend this book. And not just because I'm biased.

My story will be included on the book's website along with many others that were submitted but didn't make the print edition. They say the goal publication date for those stories is September 11, 2012. Appropriate, I think. I can't wait to read the rest of them.

All profits from the book will go to the U.S. Naval Academy Class of 2002, Inc., a 501(c)(3) (status pending) organization set up exclusively for charitable and education purposes that support education, training, and excellence within the Navy, Marine Corps, and veteran communities. Specific organizations that have been tagged to benefit include The Travis Manion Foundation, The Matt Freeman Project, Run To Honor, the Semper Fi Fund, Mission Continues, and the USMC Scholarship Fund.  It is available for preorder here, here, and here. Also, please go like the book's facebook page.

In The Shadow Of Greatness

I've mentioned before thay my USNA class was putting together a book of our experiences. Well, its just about out, and available for preorder now. I hope you'll consider it.

I think this makes me old.

As of today, I can officially say that I graduated from college more than 10 years ago.

Holy. Crap.

Yesterday was the 10 year anniversary, if you will, of my USNA graduation. I remember very little about 24 May 2002, to be honest. Just that it meant it was all over, and that was fantastic. I remember lining up on the (now nonexistant) hill waiting to march into the stadium. I remember Ken Neptun's mom Wendy standing at one of the corners as we marched in, telling us to throw our covers up to Ken and making me cry. I remember being grateful I didn't fall in my horribly dress white shoes up and down the ramps to get my degree and shake Dick Cheney's hand. I don't remember any of the speeches. I barely remember throwing my cover. I remember Tara giving me my first salute, and getting my shoulder boards changed out. It's all pretty spotty.

And it was more than ten years ago.

In some ways, those ten years have just flown by. I can't believe its actually been 10 years. But on the other hand, it seems like so long ago. I've done so many things in that 10 years. So many Navy experiences in the first 6 - Paris, Newport, two ships, a deployment, moving to DC, a shore tour that set me up for later. Since getting out, I've moved twice (well, more than twice, but moved cities twice), decided I wanted to stay in the defense world, found a niche, and established myself in it. Personally, I've become an actual adult, had my heart broken a few times, chosen poorly in some things and wonderfully in others, learned a lot about people, become less naive, bought a house, left that house, had a nightmare tenant, been unemployed, gotten two cats, and met the man I plan on spending the rest of my life with.

More than ten years. I can hardly believe it...

A little story about curveballs

My Naval Academy class, being the first to graduate after 9/11, is publishing a book for our 10 year reunion. I submitted a story that didn't make the final cut, so I decided to share it with you. Without further ado...

Afloat Forward WHAT?

I am a legacy. My mother’s father graduated from the Naval Academy. After he passed away, my grandmother married another Naval Academy graduate. My father graduated in the last all-male class in 1979. My father was a career Naval Officer, so I spent my life around the Navy and the Naval Academy. I went to my first Navy football game on my first birthday. We moved every three years, at least - often, it was much more frequently. I adapted to each new town, each new school, each new set of people. I made new friends, and I managed.

And then I went to the Naval Academy. In fact, I’m the first child of my father’s class to graduate. The irony isn’t lost on anyone, believe me. You’d think, after the childhood I’d lived and the exposure I’d had, I would have known exactly what I was getting into. I sure thought I did. But I was absolutely wrong. Plebe summer, and the ensuing four years at the Naval Academy, made me realize that I would never be fully prepared, but I could do just about anything. This realization and confidence in my own strength and fortitude came in real handy in the summer of 2004.

My ship, an amphibious dock landing ship or LSD, was deployed to the Middle East. An LSD’s primary mission is to transport Marines, their vehicles, and their equipment to a designated location where they will move ashore in an amphibious assault. After training and exercising with our Marines on the East Coast, we ended up dropping our Marines off in Qatar for a mission in Afghanistan. We headed towards our operating box off the coast of Pakistan to wait for them to complete their mission so we could pick them up and head home. The Quartermasters, upon pulling out the navigational charts for the region, realized that it was the exact same operating box that the ship had been assigned to on the previous deployment two years earlier. Everyone was ready for a boring deployment.

But then, on April 24th, 2004, everything changed.  Terrorists had attacked near the Al Basra Oil Terminal (ABOT) in the Northern Arabian Gulf, or NAG, killing several people, including 2 Navy Sailors and one Coast Guard Sailor. Within days, we were headed to Bahrain to pick up a Special Boat Team and two helicopters. This would be the first time an LSD had ever embarked a helicopter detachment - while the class of ship does have a flight deck, it does not have a helicopter hanger. It would also be the first time an LSD had served as an Afloat Forward Staging Base (AFSB), which is what we were told we would be doing upon arrival. We didn’t really know what this meant, but off we went. Once all of our new embarked personnel and equipment were on board, we headed north towards ABOT and its sister platform, the Khawr Al Amaya Oil Terminal (KAAOT).

I had only recently earned my Officer of the Deck (OOD) qualification, which allowed me to stand one of the most important watch stations on the ship. The OOD is the watchstander who, in the absence of the Captain, is responsible for the safe navigation and operation of the ship. It is the last major hurdle a junior officer is required to clear prior to sitting in front of a board to earn the Surface Warfare Officer qualification and is described by many as similar to getting a drivers’ license. The requisite time has been spent standing the watch with supervision, and the Captain feels confident in the watchstander’s ability to do the job alone. However, nobody expects a brand new OOD to be one hundred percent confident, and new OODs are highly encouraged to keep asking questions. I felt pretty good about standing my watches in our decent sized box off the coast of Pakistan, but I had only stood a few watches before we were called away to the NAG. Once again, life handed me a situation that far exceeded my preparation.

Standing watch in the NAG got very interesting, very quickly because at that point, it was a pretty tightly wound environment. Along with us, there was another Destroyer from our group and several Coastal Patrol ships (PCs), Minesweepers, and Coast Guard Cutters, along with the lines of merchant oil tankers waiting to fill up and Iraqi, Kuwaiti, and Iranian dhows (wooden fishing boats) filled with men trying to make a living. A sunken crane just inside Iranian territorial waters had become a favorite surveillance spot for the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, and our lookouts were constantly monitoring the movements of the Iranian boats to and from the crane. Tensions between the US and Iran have always been high, and at that point American and Coalition ships were experiencing higher than normal levels of harassment from the Iranians. The fear of another terrorist attack was always present.

Every ship’s captain has a set of Standing Orders, designed to spell out the requirements of the OOD and other key watchstanders. The Orders include times when the OOD must call the Captain, no matter what, to include when another vessel is expected to close within a certain distance of the ship. The Captain quickly figured out that the distances specified in his Standing Orders, should they be maintained in the crowded environment we had entered, would result in his phone ringing off the hook. He adjusted those distances, but, unfortunately, the dhow fishermen still didn’t understand our comfort levels. The fishermen felt much more comfortable with the beefed up military presence in the area. We, however, had no way of knowing if the approaching dhows, whom often did not show up on our radar screens, were filled with harmless fishermen or explosives and a suicide bomber (the method used in the attack on ABOT). Our crew served weapons teams were forced to man the guns several times a day and, in multiple instances, fire warning shots near the dhows who did not heed our warnings to back away. I felt awful for most of the fishermen; even on the rare occasion when they did have working radios on their boats, they likely didn’t understand our warnings. Most of them were just trying to feed their families and make a little bit of money. But the situation necessitated our tendency toward fear, and while we never knew if this would be the time we’d have to actually fire upon one of these dhows, I know I speak for most when I say that we were glad that it never came to that.

The powers that be had divided the areas around ABOT and KAAOT into sectors resembling pie pieces, and assigned the smaller ships to patrol the sectors. Because of our size, we were rarely given an actual sector; instead, we were given an operating box kind of in between the two platforms with the occasional movement to a sector to cover a ship that needed to leave to resupply or refuel. Our small operating box made life even more interesting when we realized what our mission, as the afloat forward staging base, would be: send out our small boats twice a day with meals and supplies for the personnel working on board the platforms (primarily SeaBees and other engineers building living quarters), and launch helicopters, amphibious hovercraft (LCACs), and special boat teams in support of other, often classified even to us, events going on in the region. And oh, by the way, we had to do all of these things, which required certain wind envelopes, sea states, and speeds, in a small operating box, and all at the same time, and while being surrounded by dhows, and while trying not to run over the fishing nets said dhows had laid with no regard to our operating area. All of these tasks had to be monitored, and all of the operational requirements to carry them out met, by the OOD.

With the standard craziness of the NAG and all of our operational requirements, there was rarely a dull moment on watch. Even in the middle of the night there was excitement, quite often in the form of the VHF radio and the infamous “Filipino Monkey.” For years sailors have heard those words on the radio in all parts of the world. Our Filipino Monkey calls were often followed by discussions of bananas and sheep and/or monkeys designed to make fun of the information gathering techniques used by our ships to track ships in the NAG. I seemed to be handling the challenges of being an OOD - feedback from the Captain and some of the more senior officers was good, and my watch team responded well to my leadership. However, I was reminded not to get complacent on more than one occasion, with one event in particular standing out. We had been assigned an actual sector of two pie pieces surrounding ABOT. The radars were not cooperating at such close range to the other ships, and our sector was much smaller than what I was used to. I thought I had plenty of space before I encroached on the sector owned by a Cruiser until I heard the radio call. First, it was their OOD asking my intentions. I stated them, said I was about to turn, and the next thing I heard was their Captain telling me I’d better hurry up, and I’d better tell my Captain that I’d almost t-boned his ship. Needless to say I had not been prepared for this. I quickly turned the ship away from him, and called my Captain, letting him know that I had gotten a little too close for comfort, and he may hear something from the other ship’s Captain.  Luckily, he was understanding, told me to make sure I kept a further distance, and carry on. But my nerves were shot for the rest of the night!

We remained in our box in the NAG for 48 days straight. 45 days qualify for a “beer day,” a Navy tradition in which ships who remain at sea for 45 days without pulling into a port are entitled to 2 beers per of-age crewmember, provided operational conditions allowed and the chain of command approved. The day after our beer day, we were directed to head to Bahrain - our time in the NAG was over, at least for the time being. However, the mission we began continued in the NAG, and more ships were tasked with missions outside of the ones normally given to its class.

My father and my grandfather passed me only two real pieces of advice regarding my Naval career: no matter what, make sure that when you go to bed at night, you can look in the mirror and feel good about what you did that day, and if you stop having fun, find a new job. I made mistakes as an OOD, and I was yelled at plenty of times. I learned that it was OK, even a good thing, to ask questions, especially if I did not fully understand the task I had been given. This was not the first mentally tough situation I had encountered in the Navy, and it wasn’t the last either. But through it all, I never once felt as though I had compromised my own integrity, and I became a stronger person, learned more about myself, and realized that no matter how difficult the situation, I could make it through. My time as a SWO was not fun for me, and when my initial service obligation was up, I chose not to follow in the footsteps of my father and grandfather. However, the lessons I learned, both about life and about myself, made that time worthwhile. If nothing else, I learned that no matter how prepared I may think I am based on past experiences, life has a funny way of throwing curveballs.

Need something funny to brighten your day?

I have the answer!

My friend and fellow USNA grad Julia Lillis has always been a pretty funny lady. Following her time in the Navy she decided to pursue her version of stand up comedy, and has done pretty well for herself. She's been on USO trips as Dennis Miller's opener (and is, in fact, his official Jingle Writer), and performed all over the US. Her brand of stand up is a little different, as it tends to involve songs - instead of standing up and telling jokes, she sits at her keyboard and sings them. They're pretty funny, not gonna lie. Check out a few of them here.

Recently, Julia has started up a website called Naked Fan Mail.  The description of this site, as listed on her home page, says: 

Comedian Julia Lillis, who lives by the motto "if you love someone, tell them" but more importantly, "if you're creepily obsessed with someone, write them a letter!" sends daily heartfelt fan mail to celebrities and Z-listers alike.

And seriously, its funny. Its fairly new, so there aren't too many submissions yet. But if you need a daily dose of funny, add this blog to your rolls. And support Julia - she's based out of LA, so most of her shows are in SoCal, but if she comes near you, make sure you hit it up!

Thirty Days of Truth, Day 15

Day 15: Something or someone you couldn’t live without, because you’ve tried living without it


This one's easy. Music, hands down.


Plebe year at the Naval Academy, we weren't allowed to have music. No stereo, no walkman, no mp3s (they searched our computers), no clock radio... NOTHING. Getting caught with music got you written up, or got you "Extra Military Instruction," which was usually some torturous event filled with physical training, standing in uncomfortable positions with a rifle for long periods of time, or nameless other silly games. 

Most of us didn't make it the whole year without. We found ways to hide the files on our computers, or we found upperclass teammates/friends who would let us hang out in their rooms and/or hide our stuff. We went to concerts on the weekends. We sang in choirs. We found ways. 

There were some people who were somehow not so bothered by the lack of music. Me? I can barely make it through the day in my office, where we can't bring anything electronic. 


Never again will I even attempt to go any longer than absolutely necessary without music. No, thanks.

Brothers In Arms Buried Together

As so many kids worship pop stars and actors, I wanted to take the time to share a story of two true American heroes.

Travis Manion was one of my plebes my 2nd year at the Naval Academy. He didn't have the easiest time at USNA, but graduated and became a Marine. He was killed in 2007. His best friend and roommate, Brendan Looney, became a Navy SEAL and was killed recently. Travis had originally been buried at his family cemetery in PA, but when Brendan was killed, his parents knew that the right place for Travis to rest for eternity was next to his friend.

The following video showed on CBS News in the last couple of days, and a very similar story aired on NBC Nightly News as well. RIP together, gents. And thanks for your service.

Where's the Grease?

Yesterday was 8 years since I graduated from USNA. It was also Herndon day for the class of 2013. They did it 2 minutes, 5 seconds. Yup. You heard me. Blink, and you missed it.

CDR Salamander, a Navy blogger I've been reading for several years now, had this picture on his page this morning:

Glad to see they were at least a little bit upset about it.

As for the removal of the grease... LAME. Seriously, there are more injuries in FAR more events than Herndon every year. There's something to be said for the tradition of it all, stupid, not all-inclusive, a litany of other arguments against it notwithstanding. I would NOT want to be a part of the first class that doesn't climb Herndon, and I would NOT be happy to be a member of the class of 2013 that had to climb it ungreased. Just sayin.