A Reunion of Three Brothers and Armed Forces Day, 2021
Jeff Nelligan • May 14, 2021
Last week, my three sons were together in person for the first time in two-and-a-half years. It wasn’t because of Covid. The eldest two are Naval Officers whose deployments to the Far East, Atlantic, and Middle East were extensive and kept them away from seeing each other and the youngest brother, a third-year Cadet at West Point with his own military responsibilities.
This kind of long-term separation is the norm for military families – spouses, kids, and parents. 59 percent
of deployed service members are married and 49 percent have children. These situations are difficult, even in an electronically connected age. Moreover, as I know from personal experience, there’s the ever-present anxiety - family members will always glance warily at a ringing phone, which are kept on day and night.
This family sacrifice is just one element for the celebration of Armed Forces Day, May 15. Inaugurated in 1950, the recognition stemmed from the unification of the Armed Forces under the Department of Defense and the replacement of separate Army, Navy, Marine Corps and Air Force Days. President Harry S Truman (himself a World War I Army veteran) led the effort to establish a single holiday
for citizens to recognize our military service members.
Unfortunately, the military experience has never been more removed from American life than today. Thirteen million men and women were in uniform in 1945; 3.5 million in 1968 during the Vietnam War, two million in 1991 at beginning of the Gulf War, 1.4 million in 2010
during the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts and 1.3 million today. That number represents less than one-half of one percent of the total U.S. population; the approximate 18 million
military veterans alive today represent less than six percent of the U.S. population.
A stated theme of Armed Forces Day was to serve an "educational program for civilians" on what military service brings to American life. By any measure, that service is a huge plus for the civic experience. More so than any institution in America, the services are racially
and geographically
diverse. Indeed, the U.S. Army Reserve and Army Guard platoons in which I served as an enlisted soldier were majority-minority. In my sons’ units, minorities are overrepresented as a percentage of their overall population in the nation.
Second, from day one, the military serves as an ongoing educational and vetting process, from basic training to occupational schools to units where this knowledge is used and constantly refined. Along the way, the military demands certain behaviors – personal responsibility, dependability, camaraderie and always looking out for the welfare of the team. These qualities were the theme of endless exhortations from my drill sergeants and every officer I ever met.
The results of this training certainly benefit America. The Pew Research Foundation finds that a majority of Americans look up to those who served
in the military; service members and vets are seen as more disciplined and patriotic than their non-military peers. Other studies
reveal that military service is linked with political engagement such as voting and that this connection is strongest for minorities. There is also a close relationship between military service and volunteering
and that for veterans, the transition
to adulthood, including economic independence from parents, is more stable and orderly for military personnel than for their civilian cohort.
Of course, the military isn’t for everyone. In fact, seven out of ten young men and women today are ineligible
to join the military because of poor health, physical fitness and educational shortcomings and law enforcement and disciplinary records. The 30 percent who do qualify? They’re not only attractive to military recruiters but particularly now to employers desperate
for trustworthy, reliable employees.
My three sons – two young millennials and the one Generation Z - grew up hearing about their grandfathers’ naval experiences in World War II and Korea and their Uncle’s service as a Marine infantry platoon commander in Desert Storm. My service tales about typing up duty rosters and changing the oil on Humvees were less prosaic.
The chief motivation for their career paths came from the camaraderie and discipline they cultivated in playing on athletic teams from childhood through college, sometimes serving as captains. At seven-years-old and seventeen, the drill was the same - every kid was held accountable and follow-through was expected. It took grinding determination to acquire skills and self-control to handle adversity. The team was all and you were expected to get along with everyone, even if you didn’t like them.
The middle son is a U.S. Naval Academy graduate now assigned to the USS Daniel Inouye; my youngest son, in typical competitive brotherly fashion, demurred from following his older sibling’s college selection and aims to be an Infantry Officer. The eldest son attended a New England college to play sports; the team ideal persisted and he was in Officer Candidate School not long after his final lacrosse game; he’s now with the USS Carl Vinson Carrier Strike Group. The two eldest will be in the seas their grandfathers once patrolled.
Collectively, the two eldest at 25 and 24 years of age lead dozens of enlisted men and women, work with complex equipment (some of it lethal) worth hundreds of millions of dollars and have been in tight situations that are absolutely unfathomable to their non-military peers. This is hardly boasting; these kinds of endeavors are performed by tens of thousands of military men and women every day.
On this Armed Forces Day we acknowledge our service members and families in the U.S. and in the 160 nations
in which they are deployed. In addition to being the nation’s most admired
organization, the military at its core teaches and enhances invaluable personal and civic qualities. No other institution in American life today can make that claim; that’s what Americans should learn from and reflect upon today.
ABOUT THE BOOK
Every Dad in America wants to raise a resilient kid.
Four Lessons from My Three Sons charts the course.
Written by a good-natured but unyielding father, this slim volume describes how his off-beat and yet powerful forms of encouragement helped his sons obtain the assurance, strength and integrity needed to achieve personal success and satisfaction. This book isn't 300 pages of pop child psychology or a fatherhood "journey" filled with jargon and equivocation. It's tough and hard and fast. It’s about how three boys made their way to the U.S. Naval Academy, Williams, and West Point – and beyond.
"The day of days,,,"
Prepare your kid for the path, not the path for the kid.
"Don't ever be like that jackass."
Leave it to the eminent psychologist Ron “Jaws” Jaworski, B.A., Youngstown State, 1973, to define the essence of a confident worldview: “Facemask up!” It was his signature comment when talking about a pro quarterback leaving the pocket and instead of keeping his eyes up field to find the open receiver, was looking down at his feet as he ran. It’s a plain tale in a cluttered age and the meaning is simple: Be alert. Pay attention. Take in your surroundings. Examine and understand the landscape in front of you. Here’s one for the modern-age kid: Get your eyes off the glowing rectangle and absorb the world. The more one absorbs the world, the more confident one becomes. Because I have spent many years as an operative in the political realm, I’ve become skilled at helping principals navigate through individuals - five, fifty, five hundred - and I was keen on situational awareness. “SA” as the boys and I called it means eyes and ears focused; it’s about getting a feel for the dynamics of the people whom you are around, and the places in which you find yourself. I wanted them to have active minds that eschewed taking anything at face value, minds that really tried to understand the behavior and temperaments of their peers and the converse, total strangers. I wanted them to know how to handle themselves in the real world, in routine and unfamiliar circumstances. Here’s how the instruction began: When they were young – the eldest only nine-years old, the four of us were in a crowded department store where I had gone to buy a blazer. Standing here amidst the press of people, looking for a salesman, I told them in a whisper, which got their immediate attention, “Guys, I want you to watch this closely.” I carefully walked by several salespeople in the men’s clothing area, glancing back at the boys each time, then circled back past the fourth to a third guy. I got the answer and I help needed from him and came back to the boys. “OK boys, tell me what you saw.” They talked over each other about my walking around and passing by different clerks and then the middle kid spoke for all. “Why did you go to that guy? He wasn’t even next to the jackets.” “Here’s why, and pay attention. Everywhere you go, in every situation, you gotta look at people and figure them out fast.” Blank stares. I doggedly continued: “If you need some-thing, like I needed this blazer, you need to decide who is the best person to help you. I looked at the four sales guys – their clothes, the way they were standing, if they looked nice and smart, if they were smiling. Then I made my decision and chose that one man because I thought he would help me the most. Gents, you gotta read the crowd.” There was a faint glimmer of understanding, but there was a ways to go. How did I drive it home? Simple. I made them do it. Not long after, we were in the corridors of a big indoor mall. I took three $5 bills out of my wallet and handed one to each kid. “Here’s the deal. I want each of you to go into one of the stores along here and get change for the fiver. This isn’t a race. You have to go alone and then come back tell me about what you did.” Of course, I had their total attention. This was action on their part and they were excited. Yeah, I kept an eye on them, the youngest being five. Each one took off, navigating through shoppers, going into various stores, two striking out and coming back out and into other stores. They were overjoyed, to share their stories when they got back. We did this change-the-five deal often. There were other stunts. I’d have the 9-year-old go into a convenience store with cash – and some of these were rough-and-tumble places - to get beef jerky and Doritos. I’d pull into the parking lot of a carry-out restaurant and instruct the 8-year-old take our order, memorize it, and then go into the place and get it and pay for it. At airports, I put the eldest, then later the middle kid, in charge of getting boarding passes, either from a kiosk or handling everything with an agent while the rest of us stood by. At ages 11 and 10. All three sons soon became accustomed to this independence. They’d become totally engaged in these “tests” and after they’d be thrilled, as only young boys can be, to talk about their treks. By making it a game, I immediately won the boys’ participation. Fast forward: The eldest at age 15 is at big train station in New Jersey, confused about schedules and noise and surging people. He gets himself calmed down and starts looking around him and sees a kid carrying an orange duffle bag emblazoned with “McDonogh School Athletics.” My son has played against this school and thus feels comfortable in introducing himself to the kid and asking advice. It turns out the guy knows all about schedules and points s my son to the right train. The middle kid, not quite eight-years-old, is at a bowling alley and an arcade machine eats his money. He doesn’t lose his cool, loiters around, waits for the same thing to happen to an older kid and then discovers, by watching the older kid, who the attendant is in charge of fiddling with the machine and refunding the money. Virtually everywhere we went, from the most pedestrian places to the most exciting, we’d play the game. What do you see? Who is doing what? Who is hot and who is not? “Take in all the folks around you, measure them. Which one would you trust? Who is sketchy?” You need to impress upon your son these opportunities in the arena all around us. The youngest son, six-years old, is at a kids’ party at a big shopping mall, with a pair of hopelessly disorganized parents who drift away with a group of youngsters, leaving my boy and two other kids in the midst of a huge food court. You’re a Dad - you can only imagine the initial panic the kids felt when they realized they were alone. But aha, Nelligan Junior knows what to do. He recalls what I told him and his brothers once when we were in the surging crowds at a local college football stadium. “You guys are small so if you get lost somewhere in a bunch of people, look for that guy with a stripe running down their pants. That’s a policeman or a soldier and they’ll help out.” At the mall, my kid tells that to the two other kids and they stand for a few minutes, intently staring at passing legs.They see a mall security officer, who eventually links them up with the irresponsible parents. Self-assurance just doesn’t happen, it’s gained through encounters of all kinds. Whether it’s a group of four or a mob of several hundred, get them reading the crowd. Here’s a challenge to parents: Undertake one of the examples noted above – gently push your kid into a situation where he or she has to be alert and think on their feet in this everyday world around us all. You’ll be giving your child an inestimable lesson on the independence that creates a resilient kid.
"For goodness sake, I don't want the heel. "
"Yeah, it's the end of the world."
Prepare your kid for the path, not the path for your kid.
"Just get the ball to Louie!"
"I'll be waiting outside."
"If you're five minutes early, you're late!"