I knew that I wanted to join the military in some capacity at a very young age. I knew that my dad had been in the Air Force during the Vietnam War and that my grandfather had been in the Navy and my uncle in the Army and I wanted to join too. While we were living in North Carolina, a friend of my parents was often around and he was a retired Marine. I don’t recall individual discussions with Milt Cruver, that was the Marines name, but I remember him discussing things like honor, duty and doing the right thing because it was the right thing. These were the ideals that I associated with military service and the people who made-up its ranks.
Our family moved from the East Coast to the West Coast sometime around my Softmore year of high school and at the new high school they had an Air Force ROTC group. I joined immediately and it was a great experience during my high school years. It was odd to wear a uniform to school at least one day a week but I enjoyed it and took it very seriously. We did drills as a unit as well as having classes on concepts like aerodynamics and the history and theories of flight. My plan at that time was to join the Air Force and become a pilot if I could. The Air Force ROTC program was fairly new in that school and I ascended to the rank of Major Hooker in 2 short years. This included being in charge of many other cadets in the program and my second in command was Captain Kirk… no joke we were Major Hooker and Captain Kirk!!
During my senior year I took the asvab test, which is a military aptitude test used to gauge what jobs you would be suitable for if you joined the Armed Services. I scored exceptionally high on the test and this was far more important to me than the SAT testing that we also did in the senior year. Because of my high score a few of the armed service recruiters added me to their list and began to check in with me regularly to see if I was interested. The Navy recruiter had the widest options of job titles that I could apply for and they were willing to put that in writing as part of my enlistment contract. Basically the Navy recruiter said I could have any job in the Navy including possibly pilot but there were other options that had significant benefits if I chose to pursue those routes. The best program that he suggested was the Naval Nuclear Power program which included a sign on bonus as well as instant rank promotions upon completion of specific school requirements. My understanding of the program was that I basically would get the equivalent of a four year degree program in two years and it was all math, physics and chemistry related. This was the option that I selected and I signed up before even finishing high school and set my date to go to boot camp a few months after high school graduation.
I left for boot camp on the 15th of August 1989. The Navy flew me from San Diego CA out to Boot camp in Orlando Florida. This was the first significant time away from home but I was on a mission and boot camp was relatively easy for me. A significant amount of the time in Florida during boot camp there was a thing called Black Flag days. This basically meant that it was too hot and humid to run and do exercise outside so instead we used our indoor gymnasium and a lot of sit-ups and push-ups in the barracks. The general Navy training was a breeze and I mastered it quickly and even helped others becoming a squad leader in charge of 10 other guys. Straight out of boot camp I basically went across the street to the military barracks there and began what’s called an A school for mechanics. One thing that the recruiters failed to mention is that the naval nuclear power program had a significantly high dropout or failure rate. To offset this and make any dropouts or failures still employable by the Navy they did the mechanic A school first so that if you failed you could go to the fleet as a mechanic instead of a nuclear mechanic. The mechanic A school was very easy and most people passed with only a few dropping out due to behavioral issues. The group that you started with in A school went as a group to the nuclear power school. So by the end of the mechanic A school I already knew most of the guys that I would be going through the nuke program with and made a few good friends during that time.
Naval nuclear power school was a whole different program on a level that I had not expected. For the first time in my life things were not easy for me and I really had to give maximum effort and focus to be successful. The failure or dropout rate for our Navy nuclear power class was over 60%, that means only one out of three people who started the program actually finished. This was in my opinion a means test to see who really had the smarts and the determination required to be a nuclear power plant operator. Many of my friends didn’t make the cut and went to the Navy fleet as what we call A-gangers which are the mechanics who take care of everything except for the engine room aboard nuclear powered ships. During nuclear power school, a typical week of instruction was eight hours of classroom time where you basically just took notes and learned new concepts followed by a minimum of two to four hours of homework every day. There were some people who were extremely book smart and this process of cramming information was fairly easy, however i was not one of those. I learned more about myself and my ability to learn and techniques to retain information during that time, than I could ever imagine both before that time or even after in a college setting. I was perpetually on what we called a “mandatory 40”. This basically meant that I had to actually log 40 hours of homework time every single week in addition to classroom time. So during power school I did roughly 80 hours of learning every single week for six months straight. While it did not come easy, I managed to complete nuclear power school having never failed a single test and producing one of the highest grade point averages of my class (Class 9005 I was 38th out of 200+). This was one of the first times that I had pushed myself past what I considered to be a limit that only existed in my own mind!
Between power school and prototype I returned home to Hesperia CA to see my family and my future wife Stephenie. I had given Stephenie a promise ring when I came home from the completion of Mechanic A school and we got engaged between nuclear power school and nuclear prototype school. We had a very long extended and remote relationship while I completed the first phases of military training. Also during this time I got my first driver’s license and purchased my first car for the trip to Idaho Falls, Idaho of all places. The Navy at that time had several nuclear reactors of various types similar to those on aircraft carriers and submarines located in the middle of the desert in Idaho. I actually did my prototype school on a reactor plant designed for an Aircraft Carrier. It wasn’t until mid way through prototype that I volunteered for Submarine assignment.
The next step in my military journey was to go to nuclear power prototype school which is basically where the graduates of nuclear power school go to learn how to actually run a power plant. This was a huge transition for many of my classmates because it took the brainiac and theoretical training that we had just endured for the last six months and put it to operational and hands on application. One huge thing that I learned during that time is that there are not a lot of book smart people who also have common sense. I would estimate less than 10% of the nuclear power school brains also had common sense and could perform mechanical tasks. Lucky for me I had learned a lot of mechanic skills just growing up on a farm and having to do things that required the use of tools and thinking through a project before you even started. On the farm in North Carolina I had driven multiple vehicles learned how to build fences that would keep in animals and tinkered with a lot of mechanical stuff.
Naval nuclear prototype school was very different than anything I had done before and was the first time that I had to learn to live on my own and pay my own bills. I arrived in Idaho Falls and met a few other Navy guys and we started renting an old home. The three story Victorian style house was probably 50 years old and the rooms were so tiny that a bed and dresser could barely fit. This was my first time paying rent and partial utility bills along with having to manage money and purchase my own food. The nuclear prototype schedule was very challenging but in a different way. We would be picked up by bus very early on Monday morning and drive about 3 hours out to the Navy nuclear power prototype site where we would spend 4 days at a time. During the four days out we would stand various watches and have classes on how to perform various tasks and procedures as well as do a qualification process that guided us through understanding how all of the various systems. I found this part of the nuclear power pipeline to be very easy however many of my classmates were book smart people and not mechanically inclined so they had problems. At the conclusion of each four day on site, we got three days off usually over the weekend so it was pretty good deal as far as military assignment goes.
During nuclear prototype school each person got to put in their top three requests for where they wanted to be stationed once they completed the full program. I thought at that time that I wanted to see the world and be deployed as much as possible so my first selection was a fast attack submarine out of San Diego, my second was a ballistic missile or trident submarine out of bangor WA and my third and worst possibility was being on a fast attack out of Hawaii. Lucky for me my second choice was the one selected and I was assigned the transfer to the USS Georgia SSBN -729 ballistic missile submarine out of Bangor WA as my first deployment. At this point I thought I was set and my Navy career was taking off exactly as I had expected. I had gained E3 rank as part of my recruitment contract upon completion of mechanic A school and I received E4 rank as part of my completion from the nuclear power training program. After nearly two years of training and preparation I finally was on my way to my first ship.
