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This date in history
Jun. 14th, 2007 04:20 pmToday has a couple of bits of historical significance.
On the one hand, it's Flag Day, celebrating the 230th anniversary of the Continental Congress's approving the Stars and Stripes as the national flag:
On a more personal note, though, today is the 25th anniversary of my flying out to Recruit Training Center Great Lakes for eight weeks of boot camp "fun", which was followed by six years and change of other Fine Navy Days. Somehow, I ended up as the man-in-charge of ten other recruits flying out of Logan that morning. I had a few nervous moments when several of the other recruits figured that this was the last chance for two months to wet their whistles, so they hit the airport bars running. Luckily for me, nobody missed the flight, and nobody missed the bus at O'Hare, so my first "leadership" mission was successfully accomplished. The next morning, at zero-dark-thirty, we got the traditional Flying Trash Barrel wakeup call ...
Looking back, joining the service was definitely the right thing to do at the time. Had I stayed in, I'd be either a master chief petty officer, a chief warrant officer, or (most likely) a mid-grade officer by now. However, that would have required some things to have gone rather differently; as it turned out, leaving the service after just shy of seven years was also the right thing to do at the time.
On the one hand, it's Flag Day, celebrating the 230th anniversary of the Continental Congress's approving the Stars and Stripes as the national flag:
Resolved, that the Flag of the thirteen United States shall be thirteen stripes, alternate red and white; that the Union be thirteen stars, white on a blue field, representing a new constellation.Remarkably, the current fifty-star flag is less than a year older than I am, having been put in place on July 4, 1960, following Hawaii's statehood the previous August.
On a more personal note, though, today is the 25th anniversary of my flying out to Recruit Training Center Great Lakes for eight weeks of boot camp "fun", which was followed by six years and change of other Fine Navy Days. Somehow, I ended up as the man-in-charge of ten other recruits flying out of Logan that morning. I had a few nervous moments when several of the other recruits figured that this was the last chance for two months to wet their whistles, so they hit the airport bars running. Luckily for me, nobody missed the flight, and nobody missed the bus at O'Hare, so my first "leadership" mission was successfully accomplished. The next morning, at zero-dark-thirty, we got the traditional Flying Trash Barrel wakeup call ...
Looking back, joining the service was definitely the right thing to do at the time. Had I stayed in, I'd be either a master chief petty officer, a chief warrant officer, or (most likely) a mid-grade officer by now. However, that would have required some things to have gone rather differently; as it turned out, leaving the service after just shy of seven years was also the right thing to do at the time.
