This Saturday night Che and I had our dining out…hilarity ensued. More on that later. Sunday lunch we spent at a friend’s house, having a typical Spanish formal lunch of baked fish and vegetables. Fernando, a merchant ship Captain, told us stories of sailing through the Caribbean and passing the Gulf of Aden. He told us about his long family history of mariners, going back to his Grandfather’s family of Italian merchants. It made me nostalgic of my time on the Chesapeake and racing sailboats in the summer for Navy. He is a man so deeply rooted in his family’s tradition of sailing it appears as though his great, great grandfather chose the career for him today. Although I was raised on the ocean and grew up fishing and boating, I was never preordained to this a career. I have been reflecting about what exactly attracted me to this profession. As a young adult I decided that I wanted to pursue a career on the ocean or intimately tied to the ocean. I choose, what I believed and still believe, to be the most prestigious careers at sea, that of one as an Officer in the United States Navy. After five years studying to be an officer, four of which have been spent at the Academy, I am still in awe when I realize the nature of what I have embarked upon. I speak of the connection to my country and thus to history, that I feel when I put on the uniform. I also speak of a relentless feeling I get that we are embarking on history, that we are making history every time we sail. The US Navy has dwarfed every naval force that has ever been. We dominate the world’s seas unlike any Navy in history, enabling or denying the movement fisherman, tankers, and pirates throughout the world. The combined naval force of the rest of the world does not equate that of the United States Navy. Anyone who wishes to dispute that statement need not look any further than a Carrier Strike group.
My intentions are not to toot our own horn here at the Naval Academy, but rather to refute the nay-sayers about the declining power of the US or its influence it the world. My intention is also to describe enthusiasm of the officers soon to join the fleet in four months.
This post came as an itch I have had to describe my appreciation for this service and its mission. I majored in Economics when I arrived here, with the intention of one day becoming a Wall Street broker. Rather, I have only fairly recently realized that I have no interest in that profession because it could and would never give me the satisfaction of what I do now. As little as I have done, there are those few things each person knows to be true about themselves. For me, one of those is that I will continually seek employment in public service. One day perhaps, I will find myself in DC, making a far greater contribution than I do now.
-Turbo
