50 Stories for 50 Years | Post 27 When I was a midshipman at the Naval Academy, I came to know our floor janitor. Everyone called him Boston. That was all I knew of him, that one name. Casual greetings turned into real conversations over time. We were responsible for our own rooms, waxed floors, and properly stowed items. Boston kept the hallways and restrooms shipshape. He could have been invisible, the way janitorial and…
Leave a CommentA Grain of Salt Posts
OOD Trifecta
Published August 3, 2026
50 Stories for 50 Years | Post 26 The Officer of the Deck (OOD) is the one responsible for keeping order in Bancroft Hall on any given night. He patrols the passageways, checks on the midshipmen, and makes sure everyone’s where they’re supposed to be. Plebe year, winter, my roommate and I found out just how thorough one particular OOD could be. It was a regular Saturday night in the Hall. As plebes, we had…
1 CommentLCDR
Published July 27, 2026
50 Stories for 50 Years | Post 25 Not every instructor is well remembered, or was well-suited to instruction at the Naval Academy. This one wasn’t, and he’s stayed with me for reasons that have nothing to do with fondness. Every midshipman, regardless of major, was trained in the math and science required of a shipboard engineer. That’s why, even as a political science major, I took enough of those courses to earn a Bachelor…
1 CommentThose Who Saw Us
Published July 20, 2026
50 Stories for 50 Years | Post 24 In my earlier posts, I’ve written about some of the coaches and instructors I had at USNA. Let me round that out with a few more of the professors I remember, the civilian ones, the military ones, the ones who noticed there were women in the room and treated us with respect. I’ve blocked out every calculus and electrical instructor I ever had. Mercy, probably. More about…
Leave a CommentThe Barn
Published July 13, 2026
Not every company had women in those early years. That made rooming complicated in ways nobody had planned for. Civilian colleges let you vet a roommate before you move in. We got assigned three to a room, and if the conflict turned irreconcilable, the fix wasn’t a room change. It was a company change. That’s how much weight a roommate carried. They weren’t just the people you lived with. They were the ones you formed…
1 CommentThe Quarter-Pounder Incident
Published July 6, 2026
An 18-year-old man requires roughly 600-1,000 more calories per day than an 18-year-old woman of the same activity level. The Naval Academy had not yet done this math in the mid-1970s. USNA served the Brigade, some 4,400 midshipmen, family style, averaging 3,500 to 4,200 calories a day. It was built for men who sustained heavy academic, military, and physical loads. The nutrition science of the era wasn’t what it is now, and sports teams got…
Leave a Comment