A Grain of Salt

Underway

Published August 31, 2026

50 Stories for 50 Years — Post 29 After plebe summer, after a full academic year of being told exactly where to be and exactly what to do, and after climbing Herndon, the Navy hands you a ship and says, “Run it.” Not entirely. Not alone. But it felt close enough. A tension is worth naming before this story starts. Throughout the academic year, we trained alongside our male classmates: same classes, same formations, same…

Herndon

Published August 17, 2026

50 Stories for 50 Years | Post 28 I was chopping down the middle of the hallway. Chopping is the naval term for running, square corners, eyes forward. All plebes chopped whenever we were out of our rooms. It was one more thing that marked us as plebes, and there was only one way plebe year ended. Climb Herndon. Herndon is a 21-foot granite obelisk on the grounds of the Naval Academy. Like every monument…

Boston

Published August 10, 2026

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…

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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…

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LCDR

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…

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Those 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…

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