I was a kiddie cruiser, that is, I joined the Navy when I was 17 and would get discharged from active duty when I turned 21. I would fulfill my four-year obligation in a little over three. Heck of a deal, I thought. I persuaded my parents to sign for me, and off to Great Lakes Naval Training Center I went.

I was a young-looking 17 year old, a naïve 17 year old, and shortly after arriving at Great Lakes by train, a scared 17 year old. This was the fall of 1961 and JFK had just issued a call for young men to join the military, so boot camp was quite overcrowded. There weren't enough barracks, so there were hundreds of us housed in a huge drill hall. The act of processing us all moved slowly and the beginning of actual training was delayed.

The first night in the drill hall, after lights out and "Taps" had been played, I could hear homesick young men break down and cry. To my embarrassment I became one of them—briefly, quietly, before I suppressed it.

Several days later we still hadn't been issued uniforms or even had our hair shaved off yet. We were woken up at some ungodly hour to go to morning chow. There was a steady rain falling, and we were issued ponchos to put over our civilian clothes. It was still dark outside as we tried to do some semblance of marching to the chow hall. Of course, once we were there we just stood in the cold rain and waited and waited.

Cold, wet, shivering, people screaming at me, I came to the conclusion I had made a mistake of grand proportions by joining up. At that point, in my head, I may have started the earliest short-timers calendar in history. It wasn't the least bit reassuring to realize I would have to endure 1,102 more days of this.

At that point, outside the fence, a train rumbled past, perhaps the same train that had deposited me here. The train blew its whistle, a mournful sound. I couldn't help myself, I broke down. With wet hair plastered against my face and cold rain dripping inside the poncho down my neck, I started to cry. Tears rolled freely down my cheeks, but because of the rain, nobody knew.

Then as the train, and its whistle, disappeared into the distance, I became angry at myself, at the situation, and a resolve began to grow. I stopped crying; in fact, that would be the last time I cried. I told myself I could do this, and while there were many trying situations in boot camp, I did do it. I successfully completed training and was sent to Bainbridge, Md., for school to become a radioman.

But it was on that cold, wet autumn morning that the Navy started to perform its magic of turning a 17 year old into a sailor.