I came to USNA off a cattle ranch and wanted to be fighter jock zorching around in an F-4 with my hair on fire and sliding down the final approach on a dark, wet night to a slippery deck for the rest of my life. Of course, it never turned out that way. I went aboard a destroyer and served a couple of years and then went to Vietnam as a riverboat advisor. Wading through muddy rice paddies with bandoliers over my shoulders was not on my big plan for life but it was what the Navy said it wanted. After that tour and a subsequent one as an instructor at the Riverine Warfare school, I was burned out on the military. I had thought that combat would cleanse my Navy of all the BS that is shot through the peacetime organization but it did not and I wanted out and something totally different.
A friend and I decided to start a business together and after resigning my commission (and going into the Reserves) we threw ourselves into it as only a small business owner can understand. I loved being out of a large organization and calling my own shots and being responsible for my own successes. The money was always just around the corner and while I could provide a decent living for my family, I was not getting rich but just a little bit further and it would be there. My confidence in this ultimate reward kept me fired up and working hard. Interestingly enough, I found my stiff Plebe Year was the best training I could have hoped for. Regrettably, the rest of the world never had a Plebe Year and I ran into few men who had the same values incalculated so vigorously and completely as the as class of 1965 did to me and my Plebe classmates. I would sit in conferences seeing the smartest guys in the room dodging responsibility, taking undeserved praise, passing the buck, evading answers, and making promises they were not going to keep. All I could think about was, “Buddy, you would not have lasted 2 weeks of Plebe Summer.” Interestingly, I also found that surrounding myself with ex-military types did NOT solve that problem. Many (not all but many) ex-military people approached civilian work with the same work ethic that made them a success previously and that was: Do your job and do it well. Don’t do anybody else’s job and don’t build an empire-----just do your job. While that worked in the Navy, Army, or big corporation, in a small business, it was a disaster. Everybody had to be a salesman and promoting what we could do for any customer that came into sight. The comments about sales and promotion made by USMCGrunt earlier are dead on. Finally after 20+ years, as much as I liked what we had done, I realized there was no big money coming for a lot of reasons. I shook my partner’s hand and gave him everything and went into the corporate aviation world and back into a big organization. The grass looked so green there.
I managed FBOs, refueling operations, flying schools, and maintenance shops for a company and threw myself into it with the commitment I did for my own business. I also experienced the famous corporate sale and “personnel consolidation” which meant the bosses were fired and their responsibilities were dropped on their assistants. So in my 60’s I found myself reading the want ads again. I never went back to formal work, though, as I had been slowly accumulating rental properties over the years and managed them rather haphazardly as they were not my ticket to success, or so I thought. I now took a look at them and turned that into my new career and could kick myself for not doing it sooner. Within a few years I was making more than I ever had in either my own business or the corporate world---combined. I also had the freedom to enjoy my money for a change (and my wife and I are). Monday morning quarterbacking is so easy but if I were to do it over again, I would have gone into real estate ownership (not sales, necessarily) immediately out of the Navy and taken any job to put food on the table until it became self sustaining. I try to convince my sons of my late-life epiphany for themselves and, of course, they humor me.
It has been 51 years (Jeez Louise!!) since I walked through the Main Gate of USNA but Plebe Year still sticks with me. Old age does mellow you as I became a BGO hoping to steer some other ranch kid to Mother B on his way to a hot fighter or, at least, high adventure.