The Wardroom wasn’t the only place to recognize this potential. Standing watches six hours on and six hours off in the barely lit Combat Information Center is a lot like driving down a dark highway at 3 a.m. after driving 10 hours already. It is easy to get lulled to sleep, so it is always good to have someone to help you get to the finish line. And that’s exactly what Lee had been to Winston S. Churchill’s OSs. On and off watch she had been a team player.
“I’ve never heard her say, ‘I quit or I don’t want to do this anymore,’” said OS1(SW) Michael Harris, also assigned to the OI Division.
“She has always pushed and gone on to the next job. If she’s here for 12 hours, give her 12 hours worth of things to do and she’ll do it. She keeps herself squared-away and stays on the younger people to do the same.
“We’re absolutely going to miss Lee,” added Harris. “She carries a big load around here.”
In April 2005, Lee began her race toward her degree, leaving Winston S. Churchill and joining other STA-21 selectees for a rigorous nine weeks at the Naval Science Institute (NSI), Newport, R.I.
These Sailors, who were in the fleet just a month before, were now officer candidates. They worked every day in the classrooms, aboard simulated ships, on the parade field and followed the path to compress two years worth of Naval Reserve Officer Training Candidate’s (NROTC) academic, military and physical training into a little more than two months at Naval Station Newport.
“NSI challenges students academically, militarily, professionally and physically,” said Marine Corps Maj. Thomas G. Citrano, director, NSI, Newport, R.I. “Personal success at NSI is proportional to your level of commitment. Accountability, responsibility, authority all comes with gold bars.”
“It was a lot like an “A” school, as far as instructions and everything, but they don’t keep such a tight leash on you,” explained Lee. “The classes were hard because we had everything – navigation, engineering, sea power – and it was a lot of reading. Basically, we just had a lot of information that we had to learn in a short period of time. I think the main thing was to try to get us in the routine of going to class and doing school work.”
In August Lee stepped onto the Maryland campus of University of Maryland – College Park, for the first time, not just as a Sailor, but as a student.
Nowadays, if you didn’t know Lee, you would never recognize her as being in the Navy. In fact, the only time she wears a uniform is on Fridays when she drills with her NROTC unit. Now having to find time to get college credits around the ship’s mission is not a problem. Lee would even tell you she has too much time.
“I have a lot of free time now. The first semester I would have a couple of days where I would have three or four classes and then the other days, maybe Tuesdays and Thursdays, I would have just one or two,” she said smiling. “And every Friday morning we have drill from 7 a.m to 9 a.m. So I only had to wear my uniform when we went to drill and then sometimes for the leadership class I took the first semester and that was it.”
As each semester passes and each credit unit accumulates, Lee has never forgotten what it took to get to where she is, and she has a few words of encouragement for other Sailors who might be thinking about exchanging ship’s coveralls for fresh, new university sweats.
“Hopefully, by me getting picked-up, it will encourage others to try,” Lee explained. “You’ll never know unless you try. I think there are a lot of good Sailors out there who will make good officers. They should go for it and put their package in. And if they don’t get picked-up on the first try, they should keep trying until they do get picked-up.”
Although the uniform is away and there aren’t any quarters, field days or personnel inspections, Lee still has the same hard-charging mindset she had while aboard USS Winston S. Churchill. And as for getting back to the fleet, it seems she hasn’t completely rinsed all of the salt from her shoulders.
“This is basically my shore-duty. I haven’t had that yet. But I’m hoping I can pick up more classes here and there and not have to take the whole three years to finish. I don’t want to be off the ship too long. That will make it really painful when I go back to sea,” she said with a chuckle.
Once a Sailor, always a Sailor.
