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A New Beginning: My Journey from Tampa to Newport


It's funny when I stop and look back to November 3, 1995. That date probably doesn't mean much to many people, but for me, it was a significant turning point in my life. I had already been sworn in as a new officer in the Navy, and my reporting date to officer indoctrination school in Newport, RI, was November 3, 1995.

About a week and a half before I was due to leave, I was still living in Tampa, FL, but the move to join the military was profound. Everything I was going through was a new experience. I was able to break my lease without any financial penalty because there was a provision allowing me to do so since I was entering military service. The military sent a packing crew to my apartment to pack up all my things. I still remember crashing on a couple of my fraternity brothers' couches for the night so I could get up in the morning to drive back to my hometown, Pine Bluff, Arkansas. For me, this was a brand new start.

Interestingly, I caught the flu before I was supposed to go to Newport, RI. So, I ended up driving back to Pine Bluff, AR, and basically crashing in bed for almost a week to recover before I had to get on the road. There’s another part of this story I often don't share: I didn’t tell anybody about this new move except for one person.

Leaving Tampa and returning to Pine Bluff was significant because I had spent my college and graduate


school years in Tampa. Tampa felt like home, but between graduating college in 1991 and finishing graduate school in 1995, I went through many rocky points. I made a lot of bad decisions and, from a personal, emotional, and psychological standpoint, I was a mess. I had no sense of purpose or direction. If it were not for a good friend who encouraged me to do something different, I'm not really sure what my path would have looked like.

After spending a week at home in Arkansas and feeling better, I was prepared to drive from Pine Bluff, AR, to Newport, RI. That drive, which I broke into three days, was more therapeutic than I had anticipated. I left on Wednesday and drove to Nashville, where I stayed with my cousins for the night. The next day, I drove from Nashville to upstate New York, where I stayed until Thursday night. On Friday morning, I drove all the way to Newport. During each leg of the drive, I spent a great deal of time enjoying the peace. For the first time, I wasn't dwelling on all the bad decisions I had made, missed opportunities, or my lack of direction. I was a young commissioned officer ready for the next phase of my life. I was going to be stationed in North Carolina, a place I'd never been, and trained for six weeks in Rhode Island, another new place. I was heading to places where nobody knew who I was or what I had been through. It was all a brand new adventure.

Looking back, that drive was probably the best thing I could have gone through. This was before cell phones and GPS. There was something surreal about listening to music on a tape cassette deck and having no way for anyone to reach out to break up my thoughts.

I had the opportunity to drive and breathe. Sometimes, in the midst of chaos—whether it's chaos we’re part of or chaos we've created—we need a significant break. That break can be a new job, a new location, or just a new environment to force you to take a hard look at your decisions and tell yourself it's time to change course. Getting commissioned was probably one of the best things that could have happened to me because it opened doors and helped me create relationships that would be profound decades later. There's nothing wrong with being part of the chaos, but sometimes it's OK to seek peace and quiet.

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