When I was 16, my neighbor was a nuclear engineer on the USS Oklahoma City stationed at Norfolk. He took me to tour the sub once and it was amazing. We even got to eat lunch in the galley. A few weeks later his wife left on a deployment on the USS Truman, so he took leave to drive to visit family in Minnesota. He offered to drive me to Evansville, IN along the way to help me escape from a very abusive home. After I got to Evansville I got my GED and took the ASVAB. When I turned 17 I forged the parental consent and joined the U.S. Army Infantry Paratroopers on June 21, 2001. Years later I was stationed in Hawaii and decided to explore areas of Pearl Harbor that were restricted to civilians and anyone without a TS clearance. Eventually I found myself logging into the sub piers and got to tour two attack subs and one boomer that was there at the time. I did tour a destroyer that day too. I felt like I was being treated as royalty that day. The sailors thought it was so cool that a decorated paratrooper with, at the time, 4 combat tours wanted to hang with them that day. I personally see submariners as heroes and to have them see me as a hero meant the world to me. After that, I took every opportunity to eat chow at the mess halls on Pearl. Not only was the food and facilities steps above what we had at Schofield Barracks, but it was always something special to hang out with the best sailors in the world.
