What are some of your greatest memories from the Academy?

Graduating. :rolleyes:



Oh, okay! I'll answer the question! :redface:

Let's see....

- Halloween Night simply has to be experienced to be believed. You would never even dream of some of the costumes those nutcases can create. Oh, and then there's the food fight in King Hall. :eek:

- Watching a Mid ('90) make an absolute bubbling buffoon out of Carl Sagan during a Forestal Lecture.

- Being there when a fellow Mid committed suicide. You could have heard a pin drop in King Hall during that lunch...

- Watching Alumni Hall being built. Too bad they cut down the stunning (and old) tree that used to be there.

- Walking out of the Hall to go to the library after dinner during the winter: the silence and the peace of it all.

- Watching other classes fail to beat our time on Herndon.

- 100's Night.

- 2-for-7 Night.

- Watching so many of my NAPS classmates fall out for grades. :frown:

- Sitting outside of my window up on 1-4 with my roommate, just shooting the breeze and admiring the view of the river.

- The Brick! The Brick! Who gets the Brick? (And the mayhem that followed).

- Papering the CO's office during Army Week.

- Having my room shave-bombed during Army Week.

- Diving in the test tank at NSWC Dalghren to test the first USNA human-powered submarine.

- Shelf Clip Races.

- Madmen. (Never did one, myself).

- Learning that my friends hated me because I was a 2/C Flamer.

- Learning that my friends loved me when I stopped being a 2/C Flamer.

- Getting the right answer the one time I was asked to Stop The Music.

- When the NAPSters reported for Plebe Summer the day before the rest of our class. While being led from 4-0 toward 8-0, we immediately fell into step (we marched all the time at NAPS). 40 pair of boondockers pounding a cadence down the passageway. We were gods come to claim what was ours!

- Watching us beat Army.

- Christmastime in the Yard.

- The first time I drove my car onto the Yard.

- Watching the tape of my graduation, and hearing my mother crying on it after the hat toss.

- My first night at USNA.

- My last night at USNA.

- Memories of classmates who have assumed eternal watch across the oceans of heaven.

- Tecumseh painted up as Batman.

- The 12th Company Players before football games.

- The day I visited the then-new Visitors Center circa 1999 or so. They used to have a computer that you could search for graduate's names. I did mine, and the realization that I had actually graduated when I saw my name come up.

- Watching the Gulf War on CNN, with all of us praying they'd wait until we got there.

- Watching the Berlin Wall come down.

- The Blue Angels.

- Falling into the Severn while the jellyfish were so thick you could walk on them.

- Running (and finishing) an Outer Perimeter.

- The 40-year Swim.

- Sitting in the back of my Strength of Materials class (second time around) having gotten a 27 on my second exam, and realizing I wasn't going to graduate.

- Did I mention graduating? :thumb:
 
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Some more....

- Driving over the last hump on Route 2 when the Academy and the Severn spill out before you in all their glory, and listening to my mom suck in her breath every time.

- Seeing my father crying like a baby as he presented my with my sword after graduation.

- Learning to Scuba dive.

- My time aboard my beloved submarines. Too short. Shoulda studied harder. :frown:

- Wanting to throw myself from our room on 3-4 when I received a rejection letter for Nuclear Power School.

- Sitting there on Service Selection Night, watching so many of my classmates achieve their dreams after I'd let mine slip away.

- The Brigade praying before lunch and dinner, and no one whining about it.

- Beat Army cakes.

- Milk and Ice Cream from USNA's own dairy farm.

- Our pet mouse.

- Being all excited beginning 2nd semester of 4/C year because we got a 100% pay raise! to a whopping $100 per month...

- Living largely off what I had saved while at NAPS.

- Not getting paid for six weeks as a 2/c because I had overcharged my Midstore account.

- The reverential silence of John Paul Jones' crypt.

- The first time I walked THROUGH the main doors of Bancroft Hall (Strictly speaking, only grads are supposed to).

- The first time I walked down 1/c Alley in King Hall.

- How I still avoid Bilger's Gate, even as a grad...

- My first PC issue. You'd laugh today...

- No A/C in Bancroft Hall. :thumbdown:

- Standing behind Chauvanet Hall at night. Felt like I was alone in the world, which is a coveted feeling in the Navy.

- Working the Pistol Detail my 2/C Summer.

- Receiving my first shoulder boards. Even as a Plebe, I'd been after them for...7 years?

- Learning Navigation.

- Watching an LCAC come roaring up the Severn at full speed, stop, hop the seawall at Hospital Point, and settle down on the field. Then doing the same thing in reverse...
 
farewelltoforeignshores24 said:
Does everyone have to participate in the 40 year swim? I swim on Delphi Swim Team, and 40 minutes seems like a lot of swimming!!
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Required for graduation.

It's not too bad. Besides, you're wanting to be in the Navy for crying out loud! If water scares you, join the Air Force! :wink:
 
One stands out for me. It was just after plebe summer, hot, humid and I was in the mess hall between two “Toms” sitting in a brace and attempting to sneak some food in between the yelling, hollering, sweating and barking out answers to the upperclassman’s professional questions. I screwed up royally in some way---it wasn’t hard—and was ordered to “shove out” by some loud voice at the end of the table. For those who did not attend the academy during the old all-male years, “shoving out” was a very physically stressful position in which you grabbed a heavy pitcher of iced tea in each straight-out stretched hand and the chair was kicked out from under your butt, however, you stayed in the sitting position, balanced by those 2 heavy pitchers. It was sheer agony and quite illegal but such was life and I was caught. I strained, trembled, yelled out my answers and my thighs were on fire from the strain AND I was slowly collapsing downward. Right at the height of my mounting misery, I felt the back of my legs sinking onto the tops of the legs of my two classmates. Tom(left) had slid his right leg under my shaking legs and Tom(right) had slid his left leg under them. Now there was no way they could have communicated or planned this in advance. Both guys risked an equal punishment of mine if they were caught but both gave not a second thought to saving a shipmate. I gratefully sank down on their thighs and put on the greatest act of straining and shaking above the table for the benefit of the sadists at the table end until they relented and commanded “come aboard”. Both Toms reached back and scooted my chair back underneath my grateful butt and I resumed that relaxing brace at the table.

The sequel to the story is that Tom(left) became my roomie for a couple of years, the best man at my wedding, and covered himself with courage, a sucking chest wound, and the Navy Cross on a mountain in South Vietnam. Tom(right) quit soon into the academic year but he is still a classmate and I still owe him.
 
Z, you brought back a lot of memories. And I second many of them.

Here are a few more:

Sitting on the very tip of the bow of a 100' sailboat (on lookout) on my way to the Bahamas 3/C summer and thinking, "They're paying me to do this!"

Our DDG barely avoiding a collision with a carrier during 1/C cruise.

Lining up before graduation and hearing an officer tell us, "Look around. You've been together for four years but this is the very last time your class will all be together." He, of course, was right.

Shaking hands with President Reagan at graduation.

The smell of fresh whiteworks.

Heinz Lenz screaming at us during PEP, "Come on '85. Follow the man in the red corvette."

Finishing what was (at the time and believe to still be) the longest parade in the history of USNA (2.5 hrs).

Ross Perot's Bore-Us-All Lecture where I'd swear every mid stayed wide awake in the dark when we were all dead tired. (He was fantastic!)

The Army-Navy Game in Pasadena and having Disneyland open for one night only to mids, cadets and their guests -- no lines!

The first time we got to wear a combo cover (vs. the plebe cover).

Getting physically ill before the mile run.

Uniform races.

Putting on my class ring for the first time.

Seeing the pride in my parents' faces.

Swim call on Hell Night.
 
Zaphod said:
- When the NAPSters reported for Plebe Summer the day before the rest of our class. While being led from 4-0 toward 8-0, we immediately fell into step (we marched all the time at NAPS). 40 pair of boondockers pounding a cadence down the passageway. We were gods come to claim what was ours!

:thumb:
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<3
 
Not dumb at all.

Swim call is being allowed to "play" in the pool. In the days when there was no AC in Bancroft Hall, 20 minutes in nice cool water with no one yelling at you was . . . heaven!

Uniform Races occur only during PS, although they prepare you for Ac Yr. You are standing in the corridor in Uniform A (say, PT gear). The detailer yells, "Whiteworks Charlie with rain gear. 2 minutes. Go!"

And you run into your room, look up what WWC requires as a uniform (in your manual), throw on your rain gear, neatly store the stuff you just took off, and scramble back to the corridor in the new uniform within the required time period. Detailers can come up with some very innovative uniforms -- they make them up!

It's helpful when, during Ac Year, you have a class in Nimitz (the furthest classrooms from Bancroft), you're wearing a different uniform than what's required for noon meal formation, your prof lets you out 5 minutes late, and you have to get back to your room (w/o running b/c you're not allowed to run in the "front" Yard), change, and be at come-around or a chow call in a VERY, VERY short time period.

And, trust me, it really helps in later life. To this day, I can go from working in my yard to being ready for a formal dinner in a very short time period. I owe all of that to uniform races. I hope they still do them . . .
 
usna1985 said:
Z, you brought back a lot of memories. And I second many of them.

<snip>

The smell of fresh whiteworks.

Heinz Lenz screaming at us during PEP, "Come on '85. Follow the man in the red
Corvette!"
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Ah..... Memories of Plebe Summer! :rolleyes:

For those who have never experienced it, Fresh White Works have a smell that is utterly unique in the annals of olfactory stimuli. It's not BAD, but it's definitely UNIQUE. I can't even describe it, but nothing, NOTHING, smells like it.

It's a lot like the Halsey Field House and the gym at NAPS.... Totally unique, and when smelled again instantly catapult you back in time.

As for Heinz Lenz, I'm convinced that SOB was in the SS during WWII. Only they could be that sadistic. :thumb:

Uniform races.
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WHITE WORKS BATMAN! THIRTY SECONDS! GO! :yllol:

Swim call on Hell Night.
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Now that one I'm not familiar with.

I do remember us having to test our raingear, though! :shake:
 
usna1985 said:
Not dumb at all.

Swim call is being allowed to "play" in the pool. In the days when there was no AC in Bancroft Hall, 20 minutes in nice cool water with no one yelling at you was . . . heaven!
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You see? Only '91 had a REAL Plebe Summer! :shake::yllol:

And, trust me, it really helps in later life. To this day, I can go from working in my yard to being ready for a formal dinner in a very short time period. I owe all of that to uniform races.
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My wife still marvels at my ability to come in from the garage, shower, shave, get dressed, and be ready to head out the door in less than 10 minutes.... :shake:
 
You may want to move this to a different forum if you want replies from more alumni than just USNA.
 
For those who have never experienced it, Fresh White Works have a smell that is utterly unique in the annals of olfactory stimuli. It's not BAD, but it's definitely UNIQUE. I can't even describe it, but nothing, NOTHING, smells like it.
Click to expand...

Sad to say, I was recently informed that the material of WW has changed and they no longer "smell" the same as they did in our day.
 
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