Getting to Know Our Veterans - An Introduction from @mtnmeadowmomma

I'm a 6-year veteran of the U.S. Navy, and would like to share a bit of my military background as part of @shadow3scalpel's "Get to Know Our Veterans" initiative. You could say that Naval Aviation support runs in my blood, since I was born to two Navy parachute riggers (PR's), and grew up to become a Supply Officer who deliberately gravitated to the aviation side of the house. And I married a former Aviation Ordnanceman!

All photos were taken by me personally. This is from my second deployment.

I was born in Guam, and experienced my first military move at a few months old when my dad was transferred to Hawaii. (My mom got out of the military when she became pregnant with me. I would love for Mom to record her stories one day, since women in aviation rates back then were not nearly as common as they are now.) When I was four, he transferred to USS Theodore Roosevelt (CVN 71) in Norfolk, VA; when I was in second grade, he made master chief and transferred to D.C. to be the PR detailer. His last duty station was as the Command Master Chief of Argentia, Newfoundland, and then he retired when I was 12 years old. After he retired, we lived briefly in New Mexico and Minnesota before settling in Pensacola, FL, where I attended both high school and college.

Whew!! And I'm not even in the Navy myself yet in this story.

So, the whole point of that background is that moving around and traveling adventures and military life were nothing new to me. Off and on throughout childhood, I'd think about going into the military, too. I veered off that course in college, where I majored in History with the grand idea of becoming a National Park Service interpretive ranger. I even volunteered at Fort Barrancas (Gulf Islands National Seashore) for 5 years with the idea of getting job experience. BAHAHAHAHAHAHA I had NO idea what a vast hookup system US Government jobs are, and that for park jobs especially, somebody has to basically bequeath it to you before they die off. (That's an exaggeration, but not by much. I became a hiring authority for DoD civilians later on, and discovered this firsthand.)

I was by far the youngest volunteer...almost all of them were retirees. I was an odd college kid, it seems.

Mike Rowe has a really great video on PragerU about "Don't Follow Your Passion" and I agree with it because it's the advice I followed without actually hearing it the way he explains it. After a year or two of hundreds of rejections from the Park Service, Forest Service, etc, I decided I could either live at home fruitlessly applying to park ranger jobs indefinitely, or I could turn my sights onto something more productive.

Getting into the Navy as an officer was a daunting experience of navigating bureaucratic red tape and conflicting information and unnecessary delays, and gave me my second of many tastes to come of governmental ineptitude (the first was the debacle with the mowing contractors at Fort Barrancas, obviously not relevant), but I doggedly persevered, kind of like you are doing right now with this post ;) Maybe they do it on purpose to see if you really, really, REALLY want the job, and to make sure you can handle years of nonsense, who knows? At any rate, I cleared all the roadblocks and was accepted in early 2007! I classed up at Officer Candidate School when it was still in Pensacola, FL, in April 2007. Unfortunately, I got pneumonia and rolled back through several classes, but graduated at last in August.

Swearing in.

Then I went to Navy Supply Corps School when it was still in Athens, GA. My wish to go to an aircraft carrier (at all costs) was granted, and I got orders to USS Abraham Lincoln (CVN 72) which was then homeported in Everett, WA--but the ship itself was currently on deployment in the Persian Gulf. As a shiny new inexperienced Ensign, I got the experience of flying from Seattle to Amsterdam, then to Bahrain, and then boarded a C-2 Greyhound for the final leg of the journey to the Lincoln's flight deck.

Watching the back of that plane open up, and seeing only a patch of nonskid deck covered with aircraft and people in flight deck gear, and surrounded by water, water everywhere, was the most surreal Twilight-Zone-style experience of being plucked out of "normal" and deposited into an alien world, that I've ever had in my life. This was THE REAL NAVY AT LAST! The air was hazy with thick dust, suffocatingly hot, and buzzing with deafening noise; the deck was rocking slightly, and I distinctly remember feeling overwhelmed, elated, frightened to death, and bursting with excitement all at once. Then we went below decks, and I spent the next month or so usually getting hopelessly lost in the maze!

No flight ops going on this day

Just a smidge of the laundry generated by a floating city of 5,000 people. About 95% of my headaches came from laundry.

Part of the laundry spaces

Second deployment, presiding over mail call as the Postal Officer

Some of the mail in the hangar bay after a Replenishment at Sea event

$100,000 in $100 bills. As Disbursing Officer I also got the fun of writing a million dollar Treasury check to myself, to get cash for deployment

This would be my office building for the next 2 years and 10 months, where I was first the Sales Officer (do I ever have stories from herding those cats in the ship's store, laundry, vending, and barbershops), and then did dual duty as both the Disbursing Officer (ship's banker, to put it simply) and Postal Officer. I completed 4 months of deployment in 2008, getting to see Dubai and Thailand in the process; then we did a lengthy shipyard period for most of 2009, before deploying again in 2010-2011. I had WAY more fun on the second deployment since I was now one of the "old hands" among the junior officers, and had a considerably smaller division (Sales had ~60 people on deployment whereas Disbursing had 10) so fewer, better behaved cats to herd = more time to actually enjoy life. We enjoyed port visits in Malaysia, Dubai, Bahrain, and Singapore this time around.

Oh, I met the Husband aboard the ship, too. That's a bit important, huh? He was the "Sheriff"--the Security Officer (he started in the Navy as an AO, then switched to Security when he became an officer.) Long story short is that we fell in love and all, he got transferred to Kings Bay, GA, and then my detailer basically made me hurry up and get married on the fly in order to get co-location orders to be with him. Thanks, Navy. The detailer made it up to me with the coveted job of Officer in Charge at Aviation Support Detachment, Mayport FL. We took care of supply needs for the SH-60B and MH-60R helicopter Wing based there, as well as providing what is called "Pack Up Kits" for detached helicopter units deployed aboard all East Coast small ships.

Command photo after we were awarded the Blue "E" for excellence. I'm second from the right.

It was an often stressful and demanding, and sometimes fast-paced job that pulled me in a million directions, but it was a really FUN one despite the challenges, and taught me a lot about leadership and management. I promoted to Lieutenant (O-3) while there. After two years, I became pregnant with just a few months left on my orders, and put in my resignation. I had never intended to make the Navy a full career, and like my mom had done 32 years previously, I couldn't bear the idea of leaving babies behind while I deployed somewhere, so the 6 year mark seemed like a good point to leave the military life behind.

And now here I am carving out a homesteading style life in WV with the Husband and my two kiddos and a little menagerie of animals. Quite a difference! I wouldn't change a thing about my military experience, and am grateful for everything it taught me, all the adventures I had, all the truly amazing people I encountered along the way, and the way it changed and shaped my life. I'm proud to be a veteran, and I hope you enjoyed reading about it! :)