In October of my senior year in high school, me and three other friends were in the library during a study hall period when one of them tells us he’s in the Navy. Of course we question him, and that is when we learn about the “delayed entry” program, where you can sign up but hold off on going to boot camp until after you graduate high school. So a few weeks later I go to the Navy recruiter in a neighboring town and start talking with him. I knew I didn’t want to go to college, and my father was a loving man, but had the rule like any father in the mid 1970s: “my way or the highway”. I did have a job in town and knew I could continue to work and go full time after graduation, but I also wanted to get out of my very rural, small hometown in northwestern Connecticut, and I really didn’t want to continue to say under my dad's "house rules."

I thought about some of the other services, but the Navy seems to have more fields/job skills to get into, along with travel and seeing the world. So the Navy it was. I ended up serving over 23 years and have been all over the Mediterranean Sea, Red Sea, Persian Gulf, North Sea, Baltic Sea, Caribbean, both coasts of the United States and as far west as Australia.

Stephen Hall, American Legion Post 135, Cookeville, Tenn.