Who I Am
A Narrative Explaining a Bit of Why I am Me
Not many people can say that they are a child of a career service member. I think this is an important factor when I think about what shaped me into who I am today. Seeing that my father served in the U.S. Navy for 25 years, it is of little surprise that I too, joined the military. But who my dad is, and what he did, does not have as big an impact on my life as all the places I’ve lived.
I don’t remember anything from my first home, Charleston, South Carolina. We lived in Charleston all of six months after I was born. My family spent five and a half years in Virginia Beach, Virginia. My sister was born three years after I was in Portsmouth, Virginia. I remember quite a bit from living in Virginia, the first time.
I remember riding my bike and big wheel with my friends from the street I lived on. I remember the house, the neighborhood, and my friends. But when you are a “military brat,” you eventually learn that you are going to move again it’s just a question of when and where. You have to learn, almost from the beginning, how to say goodbye to your life as you once knew it.
Living in Groton, Connecticut was unlike anything I had ever experienced. The winters alone, as a child, were awesome. It was never dull when the first snow of the season came. My sister and I would always head out into it, usually without any cold weather garments on, and revel in playing in the snow. It was there that I first began bowling, a sport I still enjoy to this day. It was also there that I developed a fondness for auto racing and tree climbing. I gained a passion for reading. Not much time would pass that I did not have a book checked out from the local library.
All of my friends in Connecticut were also children of military families. So, we all had at least one thing in common, when our dads would go out to sea, we were never sure if he was coming back. This knowledge is not with you when you are only six or seven years old. When it does hit, you know that you are not experiencing what a majority of kids go through every day.
My father was a missile technician aboard a nuclear missile submarine. Which meant he spent about two and half months at home, only to go back out to sea for at least three months at a time. When you learn that your father is mortal at such a young age, something happens within you and you realize your own mortality. But, that’s not the only thing I’m here to talk about.
When you live in a military town, you encounter almost every kind of person you can think of and because you move around a great deal, you see more of the country and her cultures. It was this aspect of life that can have a bit of a down side.
My family moved to Pensacola, Florida in December 1988. I was only eleven at the time. Pensacola still has a good deal of prejudices left despite the years since the civil rights movement and the Civil War. I did not make many friends at my new school. I was branded as either another “white boy” or a Yankee. A kid who had just moved into the South from New England undergoes a trial most individuals never know. I was persecuted just because I had lived in the North and was now in the Old South. Those who say that white males in this country never know prejudice and discrimination are gravely mistaken. I did not understand why people were like this at the time, but I do now, it stems from ignorance.
Eventually, I did make many friends, some of whom I still keep in contact with. I was slowly integrated into my surroundings and listened to country and western music almost exclusively. Thankfully, that changed in a few short years. Because we had more than two acres of land, my father decided that his only son should learn how to drive at the tender age of 13. On weekends where I had all my chores finished ahead of time, I would take his little Toyota for a spin around the yard. He was hell bent on me being able to drive a vehicle with a standard transmission before I was licensed to do so.
We moved to Satellite Beach, Florida when I was 15, only four short years since our last move. I was now surrounded by the beach and pop culture, quite different from the backwoods lifestyle in Pensacola. I stood out at first because I did listen to country and wore cowboy boots almost all the time. Then I met Mike Javornik. I don’t think we would have met had I not started smoking at 15. But, that’s not the important thing here. Mike took me under his wing and showed me the beach. I was fascinated by his ability to surf. He tried teaching me but I guess I wasn’t cut out for surfing, only body boarding. Eventually, I moved past my redneck lifestyle and moved headlong into the surfer culture. My friend Kerry introduced me to Hip Hop and dance music, a thing I had only seen and heard on MTV until then.
Most would say that they quit growing up when they hit 18 or graduate from high school. I think I am still growing up. I discovered this when I joined the Florida Army National Guard at 17. I went to Basic Combat Training (boot camp) between my junior and senior years of high school. I cannot quite place the moment of change during that summer, but I was forever changed because of that experience. Something happens to you deep inside when you are confronted with the realities of war at such a young age. I had done something very few of my generation had done. I was prepared to go into the military as an active member of its forces before I graduated high school. I was trained for death and destruction before I was 18. It was during the summer of 1994 that I learned what real discipline is. Even after a span of eight years, some of it is still with me. Things like being responsible for my own actions and decisions. You also gain a new outlook on life, you can’t explain it, but you know it’s there. This kind of thing rides with you when you go back to the saccharine coated culture of high school. I consider myself lucky for that knowledge.
When I graduated from high school in 1995, my parents had been divorced for over a year and a half. I did not get along with my mother’s new husband, so I left for the suburbs of Washington D.C. that summer to live with my dad and his new family. I was not quite ready for the hustle and bustle of big city life. Needless to say, I did grow to enjoy it as something new and different. I go back there on occasion to visit my sister and her husband. Each time I find something I did not know about before.
I joined the active duty Army in April 1996. This was to be my first time truly away from home, on my own, and not in a rigidly structured environment. In my first year of active duty, I was stationed at Ft. Jackson, South Carolina, Ft. Gordon, Georgia, and Ft. Huachuca, Arizona. I had to learn to depend on no one other than myself. The drive from Georgia to Arizona was a learning experience in itself. You realize that the human body is very vulnerable to long expanses of mind numbing interstate.
I spent two and a half years in Arizona. In that time, I got engaged and made a ton of friends, many I still talk with regularly. I began to expand my knowledge base by being assigned to exercises that lasted a month or more. You would think that the amount of politics inherent in the military would be minimal at a lower enlisted level. How wrong I was. I had to make allies in the upper echelons and try to keep enemies to a minimum. I also learned a tremendous amount about interpersonal relationships. My engagement broke up, and I was sent off to the Republic of Korea..
All of my life’s experience came into play while stationed in Korea. You had people coming and going on a monthly basis. My assignment in Korea was as close to a normal job that I have had since. I was the shift supervisor at a strategic satellite communications facility. Being responsible for millions of dollars worth of equipment was something different. I left Korea in August of 2000 just to be sent to Georgia, again, this time to Ft. Stewart, about thirty miles from Savannah. While serving with the 3rd Infantry Division, I spent six months in Bosnia/ Herzegovina. I guess living in a new area with different people and cultures all my life was the main thing that helped me out in Bosnia. There I encountered not only the nationals, but also a plethora of service members from around the world. I made friends quickly while in Bosnia, all of us knowing that the experience was not going to last forever, so we made the most of it.
I left the Army in April 2002, after serving the country for a total of eight years. I decided that there was no time like the present to take the necessary steps to make my life better and to get myself onto the path to where I want to be, which is the reason I am attending college. I could go into the myriad of places I’ve been, and the people I’ve met, but that would be a novel in itself. I hope that this bit of background helps explain where I come from and how it helped me become who I am today.
