Stories from Bob's Life

I graduated from BUD/S in August 1975, and my parents come out for the graduation.  I don’t recall seeing many other parents or family members there but there were some.  It was a small ceremony with maybe 30 folding chairs on the BUD/S grinder right behind the quarterdeck, facing the “So you wanna be a Frogman?” creature, and the main speaker was the Surface Warfare Captain who commanded the Amphibious School, under whom BUD/S served at that time. There were 19 of us graduating.

My father at the time was a Rear Admiral and I asked him not to werea his uniform at the event, as I knew that if he did, he would be the center of attention and the whole ceremony would be largely about impressing him. I wanted to savor this day as being about me and my classmates. My father graciously agreed and showed up in a suit – my classmates were stunned and disappointed – they wanted to see a real-life admiral at their graduation ceremony.  Oh well….

The ceremony was pro-forma – a few words from the Captain, and we all came up and were given a certificate of graduation.  Over the years, as SEALs and SEAL training have received a lot of press and publicity, and these graduation ceremonies have become rather extravagant, almost Cecil B Demille, self-celebratory events.  This, in spite of the SEAL Ethos stressing our humility, promoting ourselves as common men with an uncommon desire to succeed.  In 1975 when I graduated  most of the public had never heard of Navy SEALs or BUD/S training and our graduation was an appropriately humble event.  We’d gotten thru a significant rite-of-passage, but we were still young, unproven, a long way from being the super-commandos we imagined ourselves to be, and hadn’t (yet) achieved anything worthy of public adulation.

I’ve often joked that when I was in BUD/S, chatting up and trying to impress a young lady at a bar, I told her I was training to work with the SEALs. She thought I aspired to work at Sea World

After our humble ceremony, we had organized a graduation party that night in the “ball room” of the Officers Club at North Island. But before that the party, my parents took me and my date out to the Coronado Boat House for dinner. My date was an attractive, sexy and feisty gal who was well known to have a penchant for young men in BUD/S training.  I was one of many BUD/S trainees from multiple classes she had “dated,” wasn’t bothered by her reputation – I liked her energy and feistiness.  At dinner she was polite,  lively and unintimidated by my parents –  I recall her and my dad sparing with good-natured one-liners – some with racy inuendo – thru dinner.  Later my dad mentioned to me that she seemed to him to have been around the block a few times – yep!  I liked her bold and feisty energy, but it wasn’t a “romantic” date.  I believe her name was Melissa

After dinner we went to the graduation ceremony   I recall that the highlight of the evening was a slide show of photographs from our training. The girl friend of one of our classmates (now his wife of 50 yrs) was a Navy photographer’s mate, and she’d gotten permission from her chief and from BUD/S to attend and photograph a lot of events in our training.  So we had an impressive slide show.

I was nominated to narrate the slide show, and was a bit nervous about doing that in front of my classmates and most of the instructors, but I do recall that when the time came for me to narrate the slide show, I was pretty well lubricated, uninhibited and had a lot of fun with it and felt like I created an atmosphere of jovial and good natured celebration.  I remember one slide of me running on the beach, and that I commented to much hilarity – “Ah there’s Ensign Lost in Space” – my BUD/S nickname (another story.)  I don’t recall my parents’ reaction.

I also recall that the party included dancing and a lot of fun, and a couple of our more prominent Vietnam era SEALs, well known as BS artists, sidled up to my father, also an accomplished BS artist.  Harry Constance and Mike Thornton (MoH recipient) and my dad had a good time sharing stories and BS while I danced and hung out with my classmates.   Over the years I know my dad and Mike Thornton stayed in touch – my dad would reach out to Mike occasionally and ask how I was doing.  Through the MoH society, Mike became a close friend and personal escort and guardian to my parents’ friends Sybil and Jim Stockdale (MoH recipient.)

I also recall that my classmate Duane Dobstaff’s sister was unescorted and smokin’ hot sexy, but lo, I was with my parents and a date.  At the end of the evening, I dropped Melissa off and slept alone – which was Ok.  I never saw Melissa again, but hope she has done well and had a good life – I liked her and wish I’d stayed in touch.

The next day my parents drove with me up to San Francisco where I believe they were going to see some friends and fly back to DC.  My father and I took turns driving, but my father was nervous when I drove -I remember him admonishing me to please keep both hands on the steering wheel!  I was going up to Palo Alto to see some of my old Stanford buddies – it’d been only 9 months since I’d left school, and a lot of my freinds were still there.  And I had another little chore to take care of that I didn’t tell my parents about – getting married.

The rest of the story in Driving Across Country after BUD/S