A Letter to a Veteran

I’m the son of a son of a Sailor.  My grandfather served in the Pacific during the Second World War aboard the USS Florence Nightingale (AP-70).  Like many of his generation, he rarely talked about his service.  He told me about a failed attempt to smuggle aboard a bottle of gin under his pea coat after a port call  (it fell and broke as he saluted the watch officer on the quarterdeck).  Once, he mentioned a kamikaze attack during the invasion of Okinawa, and how years later he read a passage in a James Michener novel that was uncanny in its similarity.

He never mentioned the letter he received a few months after his discharge from the navy.  It was only after he passed away that my father found it tucked away in a box of papers.

                                                                                                         November 9, 1945
My dear Mr. Volpe,

            I have addressed this letter to reach you after all the formalities of your separation from active service are completed.  I have done so because, without formality but as clearly as I know how to say it, I want the Navy’s pride in you, which it is my privilege to express, to reach into your civil life and remain with your always.

            You have served in the greatest Navy in the world.

            It crushed two enemy fleets at once, receiving their surrenders only four months apart.

            It brought our land-based airpower within bombing range of the enemy, and set our ground armies on the beachheads of final victory.

            It performed the multitude of tasks necessary to support these military operations.

            No other Navy at any time has done so much.  For your part in these achievements you deserve to be proud as long as you live.  The Nation which you served at a time of crisis will remember you with gratitude.

            The best wishes of the Navy go with you into civilian life.  Good luck!

                                                                        Sincerely yours,

                                                                        James Forrestal

I never tire of reading the letter, a copy of which I have framed and sitting on my book shelf next to Samuel Eliot Morison’s The Two Ocean War. (You can see an image of the original letter here)

Secretary Forrestal managed to convey a sense of avuncular warmth and pride rarely seen in a form letter.  Given the nearly infinite tasks the Department of Navy had to conduct in the immediate postwar period, it is remarkable that he made this gesture of appreciation a high priority despite the enormity of the undertaking (over four million Sailors served during the war).

I feel equal parts pride and humility every time I read it:  pride in knowing that I serve in the same Navy and help carry on such a lofty tradition, humility in realizing that we stand on the shoulders of giants.

Please take a cue from Secretary Forrestal and go out of your way to thank a veteran this weekend.

Honor, Courage, and.... what's that third one?

Lieutenant (junior grade) Eric Kettani got some disheartening news from the Navy.  His saga is described in detail in a recent Navy Times article.  Long story short: He attended the U.S Naval Academy where he played football, served two of his required five years in the fleet, and now wants out so he can pursue his dream of playing in the NFL.  Call him the anti-Tillman.

The Navy said, “Nice try, now get back aboard your ship.”

The argument in favor of letting Kettani skip the rest of his commitment goes like this:  A ridiculously small percentage of college football players are talented enough to play in the NFL.  An even smaller percentage of service academy players can make that cut. By allowing those one-in-a-million cases to pursue their dream, the service academies can attract a much larger number of student-athletes to attend their schools. 99% of them will fulfill their commitment when the NFL doesn’t offer them a spot.   Recruiting extremely athletic people is a good strategy for a military organization, especially when the pool of qualified applicants seems to be dwindling in this country.

This must be the logic used by the Air Force and Army, who have recently waived commitments from their academy graduates who have opportunities to play professional sports.  Kettani’s agent has raised this as an issue, citing some sort of double standard.  His real issue is that his client is being held to a standard at all.

Because here’s where the previous argument falls short:  athletic ability, while a highly sought after attribute in the Navy, even in today’s technologically advanced military, is not even in the top three in our list of desired character traits.   The Navy’s core values are “Honor, Courage, and Commitment”, not “Honor, Courage, and Run the 40 in 4.5 seconds”.  

Or to quote a Senior Enlisted Advisor who gave a talk to my class at Command and Staff College, “No amount of ability will make up for a lack of integrity.”

The Navy Times writes, “While he likes Navy life, he’s concerned that the Navy just yanked his best chance to play in the NFL.”  Besides the incredible sense of entitlement that statement exudes, it misses the larger point that those of us who go to college on an ROTC scholarship or attend a Service Academy and fulfill our commitments have also forgone other professional opportunities.  One might argue that, unlike becoming a doctor or lawyer, there is a short window for Kettani to pursue his dream.  If he waits another three years, it will be too late to play in the NFL.

 Tell that to Roger Staubach.  The Dallas Cowboys drafted him in 1964, but he didn’t play for them until 1969, after he completed his full commitment to the Navy, including a one year tour in Vietnam.  But of course, Ensign Staubach understood the real meaning of “America’s Team.”

Time Away

I have been on TDY (temporary duty) this week, attending a training course in Tampa.  It’s the equivalent of a business trip in the civilian world.  Although I would much rather be on a weeklong trip staying in a hotel room than a months-long deployment in more austere conditions, the shorter absences are not without their challenges.

While a deployment or training detachment is mandatory and non-negotiable, the short but frequent trips typical of staff duty (or the business world) are often a nebulous requirement: the dates may be negotiable, or perhaps no superior has actually told you to make the trip.  Instead, in the course of your duties, you have recognized that an opportunity has presented itself in the form of a conference that holds the promise of long sought after professional knowledge or connections.  Perhaps a simmering issue has come to a boil and the best course of action is to visit the higher or adjacent headquarters (or company office) to sort out the particulars.  Such discretion makes the time away from family difficult to swallow, for it puts at odds our competing desires for career accomplishment and quality family time.

As I wrote in an earlier post, however, the demands of work and parenthood are not always mutually exclusive.   Succeeding at the job may require long hours and frequent absences, but there are benefits besides the prospect of bringing home a bigger paycheck.  It is important for our children to see us devoted to our jobs, to know that our careers give our lives fulfillment and purpose.   They may not fully grasp it while they are young, but it will set an inherent standard they will seek to emulate when they are older.  By our very actions and example, we can help instill a work ethic based not on monetary reward but the sublime satisfaction of making the sacrifices necessary to perfect one’s craft.

Such philosophical outlooks can be cold comfort in the near term.  The key to surviving any absence from family (be it one week or 52 weeks) is all about attitude.  My father’s adage of “don’t whistle while you pack your sea bag,” is good advice for maintaining a healthy marriage, but that doesn’t mean you need to speak negatively of your trip, either.   If I have a positive attitude about my trip, that helps set the tone for the entire family.  That begins with taking the time to explain why the trip is so important.  We told my daughter I was going to Afghanistan last year because there were people there that needed my help.  In her own way, she understood that she was also helping simply by sharing me with them.  When my own father was out to sea for months at a time, my mother made it clear that he was doing a job few other people could do, and that important things wouldn’t get done quite as well if he weren’t there.

Another key to surviving the time away is to make productive use of whatever free time is available.  Communicating with the home front is easier than ever these days thanks to smart phones and Wi-Fi that enable texting, email, and video chat in almost any location.  Beyond that, in spare moments I try to accomplish tasks on the road that would otherwise take time way from the family if I did them at home: professional reading, long-term planning, writing, or more grueling workouts, to name a few.  Longer absences such as deployments demand larger projects, such as a correspondence course, learning a language, or losing a certain amount of weight.  Nothing makes time go by faster than having a deadline for accomplishing a goal.

Finally, it helps to not underestimate the difficulty of the transition back to home life when you return.  Even after only a few days away, habit patterns change.   The children have not been waking me up at night or interrupting my thought processes with snack requests.  When the initial joy at being back home fades and I find myself getting annoyed at the smallest things, I try to take a step back and recognize what I am feeling.  It helps to remind myself that I’ve had it relatively easy while I was away, and now that I’m home, the real work begins. 

The Case for Learning a New Language

I was in Washington, D.C. last week participating in a conference at the Center for Hemispheric Defense Studies, a section of the National Defense University that focuses on the western hemisphere.   The conference was a great opportunity to meet with individuals from throughout Central and South America, as well as the Caribbean.  Spanish was the predominant language, not just in the passageway during breaks but during most of the lectures as well.   As I dusted off my high school Spanish and struggled to keep up with conversations, it got me thinking about Americans and foreign languages.

In the same vein, this week my daughter told us that there is a boy in her kindergarten class that only speaks Spanish.  She wanted to find a way to befriend him, and asked me to teach her how to say, “How old are you?” in Spanish as a way to break the ice.   In seeing her make the connection in her mind that learning a key phrase might unlock the door to a new friendship, I’m not sure I’ve ever been quite so proud of her.   

Foreign languages have always fascinated me, yet I have never been able to progress beyond a modest proficiency in the handful of languages I have studied to varying degrees.  I took five years of Spanish in high school and college, but I never made that ultimate leap to fluency and my skills have since deteriorated after a lack of use.  I have dabbled with Portuguese after a vacation in Brazil and grappled with introductory Mandarin in preparation for a visit to Beijing.  My lack of fluency in any single foreign language may have as much to do with my own intellectual limits as much as anything else, but I think that for most English speakers, especially Americans, there are considerable challenges to mastering a new language.

  First, English speakers must decide which language to learn.  For non-English speakers considering learning a second language, the logical choice is fairly obvious: English is the lingua franca throughout the world.   But what do you choose when you already speak the lingua franca?   Should you pick Arabic since we seem to deploy most often to the Middle East?  Or Mandarin, since in the future we will either be working for or fighting with the Chinese, depending on which commentators you believe?  French is always a smart choice, given that it is a typical second or third language amongst the well educated.   Ultimately, it is difficult to predict which language you will have the most opportunity to practice and will be the most useful to you at some future time.   

Second, because of the ubiquity of English throughout the world, practicing on a regular basis is not easy.  Many foreigners I have met would rather practice their English then bother listening to me struggle in their native tongue.  The immersion required for true fluency proves elusive, especially for those of us in career tracks with no requirement to master a language or spend long stretches of time living in a foreign country.

Third, due to geography and the nature of our society, the United States can be an extremely insular country when it comes to language.  Throughout our history, English has been strictly enforced, both officially and unofficially, as a societal norm for true integration.  Our public education system played a large role as well, ensuring that immigrant families learned English within a generation. Changes in demographics due to the influx of Spanish-speaking immigrants over the last few decades have eroded some of this insularity as many cities in this country are increasingly becoming bi-lingual, but for most regions of the country, English is not just the predominant language, it is the only one.

Despite these challenges, the rewards for learning a new language far outweigh the costs.  You will open your mind and your home to a different culture, because it is impossible to study a foreign language without being exposed to new food, music, films and literature.  You can make the process a fun activity for the whole family by learning a few simple words and phrases each day and practicing them around the dinner table, or labeling everyday items around the house with the corresponding foreign word.   Much like crossword puzzles, Sudoku, or other mental games, spending 20-30 minutes each day to study will exercise your mind, which may help reduce the risk of Alzheimer’s and other diseases.  In the short term, your studies will have the added benefit of improving your understanding and appreciation of English grammar and vocabulary, as they will show you previously unnoticed nuances of your native tongue.   Finally, proficiency in a second language can open doors for career opportunities and even provide extra pay if you are assigned to a language-coded billet.

You might think that it’s too late to tackle a second language.  Although there is truth to the notion that children pick up new languages relatively faster than adults, this doesn’t mean it’s impossible to learn a foreign tongue past a certain age.  Modern technology and recent advances in language education have made the process easier than ever.  Software programs that aid in immersion, coupled with on-line tutoring by native speakers and the increased and instant availability of foreign language podcasts, periodicals, books, films and television programs can put you on the road to language learning in a short period of time.

No matter if the final end state is fluency, proficiency or simply a greater appreciation, making a modest effort to speak a foreign language will go a long way toward helping you build key relationships with partner nation allies and fostering goodwill whenever you deploy or travel overseas.  Happy learning!

Never Forget

“The worst times, as we see, separate the civilized of the world from the uncivilized.  This is the moment of clarity.  Let the civilized toughen up, and let the uncivilized take their chances in the game they started.”  Lance Morrow

Ten years ago, my friend and I arrived in Milan by train from Florence on the last day of a long-planned Tuscan vacation. As we checked into our hotel, an old man sitting in the lobby said to us in halting English, “You are American?”   I initially hesitated.  Even prior to the attacks, the military had trained me not to advertise my nationality overseas.   I was already fully aware that the world was a dangerous place for Americans.

But even though I was not wearing a Yankees cap or a Texas belt-buckle, I knew that once I began talking, our identity would quickly become obvious.  “Yes,” I replied, “We’re from the States.”

He nodded grimly.  “They attack your building in New York. The big one.”

“The Empire State building?” I asked incredulously.

“No, with the two…” he did not know the word for “towers”, so he made them with his two index fingers.

“The World Trade Center?”  He nodded.  “No, they attacked that years ago.”

He shook his head furiously.  “No, they attack today.  And in Washington, your military building.” 

“The Pentagon? What?  Really?  Who?”  He merely shrugged.  We quickly finished the check-in process and hurried up to our room, turning on the television in time to see the second tower coming down.

The next day we knew we could not fly home, but decided to at lease make our connection to Frankfurt and wait there.  During every step of our journey, we experienced an outpouring of sympathy for the United States.  Countless Germans at the airport offered to let us sleep in their homes instead of in the terminal. On our last day in Frankfurt, we had to make our way to the U.S. consulate to handle a passport issue.  The taxi could only take us so far because the Germans cordoned off a large area around the building.  After identifying myself and passing through the checkpoint, we walked down sidewalks that were covered with flowers, candles, and messages for blocks and blocks.

Despite the fact that the attacks were conducted inside the United States, I felt more vulnerable being overseas than I would have sitting at home.  In those fearful days, I was comforted by many things:  the companionship of my close friend, the presence of heavily armed guards at the airport, the knowledge that the rest of the civilized world was on our side, and my faith that the United States would make it through the tragedy and soon confront the animals that did us harm.

Today is not the day to pass judgment on what we have done correctly and what we have done wrong over the last decade. There are 364 other days in the year for such discussions and debates.

Today we remember the sacrifices made by so many on that tragic day and to be thankful such dedicated firefighters, police officers, and paramedics protect us every day in our communities.  If we never forget, if we never lose the spirit of solidarity and selflessness demonstrated that day ten years ago, we will never be defeated.

God bless the USA.

No, the other Doctor Spock...

When I found out my new job would involve the Caribbean, my first step was to pull up Amazon to find books on the region's history and politics.  Two years ago I was supposed to go to Japan to work as a political-military planner, and I read at least half a dozen books on East Asia security issues.  All for a ten-day exercise. This week I even bought a reference book for Windows Office 2010 after realizing that my Microsoft skills are not quite up to the level I need to work efficiently as a staff officer.  

I mention all of this because the other day it dawned on me that since I became a father, I have not read a single parenting book.  Of course, I read "What to Expect When You're Expecting" before my daughter was born.  And I will occasionally thumb through my wife's parenting magazines.  But beyond that, I have sadly made little effort to educate myself as a father.

This bothers me.  Raising my children is the most important thing I will ever do in my life.   So why haven't I conducted at least the same level of preparation that I would for a six month deployment? I came up with a handful of semi-plausible but ultimately insufficient justifications:

My wife is the parenting expert in our team.  She worked as a nanny and ran a day-care center before we were married.  She has read as many books on parenting as I have read about airplanes.  Other mothers often seek her out for advice and recommendations.  But this shouldn’t excuse my ignorance.  Sure, it often makes sense for a couple to divide up household responsibilities based on knowledge and expertise:  I change the oil in the car, and she tells me why my shirt doesn't match my pants.  But when it comes to raising our children, it’s a team effort.


Parenting is primarily instinctive.  Children are unique, developing at their own pace with their own personality.  No book could possibly capture all the nuances of our family's situation.  There is some definite truth here, but leadership is also primarily instinctive, and yet I read countless books and articles on that topic in the hopes of gleaning new insights.    I should approach parenting the same way.

Parenting books often provide contradictory advice.   Of course they do.  So do the books I have bought on financial management, auto maintenance, and religion.  Oliver Wendell Holmes said he valued “the simplicity on the other side of complexity.”  Only after considering all the relevant facts, reading from a variety of experts and thinking critically can we reach our own solid and straightforward conclusions.  This applies to every subject one might ever hope to master. 

A friend of mine once told me, “Parenting is easy.  You turned out fine. So just do what your parents did and your kids will be fine too.”  I completely agree with the last two sentences of that statement.  The fault lies in the first, which assumes the ease that I might replicate my parents’ efforts.  Parenting is tough, and I need all the help I can get.   I just downloaded “Strong Fathers, Strong Daughters” by Margaret Meeker on the advice of a good friend.   A good first step, I think.

If you have a good parenting book or article to recommend, please post in the comments section.

Turning Corners

As a father, I am often relieved when a corner is turned in the development of my children.   When the baby finally sleeps through the night, my son becomes potty trained, or the kitchen no longer requires baby-proofing, these are milestones that call for minor celebration.  Each event represents progress, and an easing (albeit slight) of the demands and anxiety that parenthood brings.

My wife holds the opposite view.  She resists every such hint of her babies growing older.  If she could, she would freeze our children in their current stages of development so that we always have a five-year old princess, a three-year old daredevil, and a six-month old giggle machine.

We turn corners throughout life.  For me, finishing college is a particularly salient example, because graduation meant that I would no longer have to toil over research papers and midterm exams.  I very much enjoyed my college experience, but I was anxious to start my naval career and go to flight school.  Surely life at 20,000 feet while making $3,000 a month would be far preferable to nights spent in the library while struggling to get by on $300 a month.  And it many ways, it was.  (Living in a beach-front condo on Perdido Key didn’t hurt either…)

Yet I spent flight school waiting to turn another corner: earning my wings and joining the operational fleet.  Learning navigation and basic airmanship was all well and good, but the whole point of flight school was training to be a combat aviator, and I couldn’t wait to take the fight to the enemy.  (Didn’t matter who that enemy was.  In the late 90’s most likely it would be Serbia or Iraq, although Iran and North Korea were possibilities as well.)   More prosaically, I couldn’t wait until I could fly without being graded, judged, and critiqued.  Yet once I completed flight school, another corner waited to be turned:  I had to complete initial training in my fleet aircraft, the EA-6B Prowler, which meant another year of graded flights before I would be assigned to an operational squadron and go on deployment.

Predictably, once I finally made it to my fleet squadron, the Zappers of Electronic Attack Squadron 130, I had many more corners to turn: first flight from the carrier, first combat mission over Iraq, mission commander qualification and tactics instructor training.  In many ways, my progress made life easier. Each corner turned brought more trust and freedom of action.  Every flight still had its debrief, but the critiques became more collegial and less pedantic.  Soon I was the one providing the instruction and my responsibilities grew commensurate with my qualifications.   It was not long before I was wistfully remembering those halcyon days in Pensacola when all I had to do was navigate from point A to point B, or those four years in Durham when all I had to do was read books and write what I thought about them.

And so it is with fatherhood.  The infant that becomes a toddler no longer needs to be held all day, but instead has to be chased on foot as he follows his natural curiosity.  The daughter that learns to speak and tell me what she needs is now very vocal and persistent in telling me what she wants.  Each milestone brings more complexity and more responsibility to my roles as a father.

The one immutable fact of life is the passage of time.  As Heraclitus said, you cannot put your feet in the same river twice.  In the same way, each day and each year, you raise a different child, the ongoing product of your genes, your guidance, and your love.  You can no more stop the progress of their aging than you can put it in fast forward until the day of their own college graduation.

Somewhere in between my relish and my wife’s dread of each corner turned lies the answer: taking each day and each child on their own terms, and working to savor each moment, both the joyous and the frustrating, as they occur.      

Introduction

To paraphrase the scene in the hospital chapel from "We Were Soldiers," I truly believe that when it comes to being a father and a naval officer, being good at one makes me better at the other.   As its title implies, this blog will be a chronicle of my efforts to be a better father, a better naval officer, and a better citizen.  (Hopefully in the process, I will also become a better writer and thinker, but no promises.)

Some entries will focus exclusively on fatherhood.  Others will discuss the latest issues relating to the navy and national security, or my thoughts on national and global politics.   Still more will seek to find connections between the various roles in my life.  There is always the danger of trying to make this blog too many things for too many people, but I am hopeful that many will be able to relate to the experiences and thoughts that I share.

Comments and insights are welcome.  
 
Any and all opinions are solely my own and do not represent the views of the Department of Defense or the U.S. Navy.