The Magnificient Ship: USS Enterprise

Call me a romantic.     
       I felt I was in rarified air. Around me were the faces of men that had seen a thousand things. In their eyes was the history of fifty-one years and the stuff of legend. They looked wistfully and recalled their youth, past glory and grief, all carried quietly, stoically in the massive ship before them. 

      It is a deep knowing for many of us that served aboard ships at sea, something our closest family and friends can't possibly understand. A connection, a bonding with steel, wind, oil and those you were with. I was humbled by their presence and the history in their eyes. 

     So it was with me as I walked the length of her. One of my earliest memories is a momentary vision of my father in his dress blues and white hat smiling and waving as he walked away from the car with his duffel bag on his shoulder and the massive gray hulk of the Enterprise behind him. That scene became a part of me and the ship he was walking toward became an inspiration to me.
     When I was a little older, we would spend hours pouring over his cruise books and photographs of the Enterprise and I would listen enraptured as he told me of his adventures. Growing up on a farm in Southeastern North Carolina made his stories my Iliad and Dad my Odysseus. It was he that first introduced me to the names Skyhawk, Vigilante, Corsair, Skyraider, Crusader and Phantom. He also ensured that Enterprise would be the standard by which all other carriers were measured; at least for me. Indeed, even as I sat there with the Lincoln and Truman behind me, I couldn't help but think I was looking at the superior vessel.
     











       It was the romance of the sea, of adventure, of being a part of the defense of this nation that led me to join the Navy. Along with my father's stories, it was that romance of being in the Navy, that Navy where the Enterprise was, that called me.
     While I never served aboard her, I did land on her once before I left my naval service. It was a parts run to an HS squadron on board. When we landed I hopped out onto the deck I had memorized from my childhood and remembered for a glorious moment and relished it. Don't get me wrong, life at sea on board a warship is no historical, lovely experience. I've never been more tired, dirty, sweaty, frozen and frustrated as I've been out there. But for that moment I was in love with the Navy.
      As I was leaving my naval service, my last commanding officer told me that I was doing what he and every other member of the Navy would have to do sooner or later. He also asked me why I was leaving to which I responded, because I love it and I don't want to hate it. 
       My father passed away a few years ago so it seemed fitting that because he was there at the first, I should be there at the end. That happened a lot that day, sons in place of fathers. 
       I recalled what my CO had said to me as I looked at the ship before me and the young faces of today's Navy, I thought, it's your time to leave, just as it was mine. Time to not be what you were and turn into something else. 
      But what you were was greatness, power, America, the product of a visionary and a country that does great things. And on a farm in Trenton, North Carolina, you were the adventure of a little boy and his dad.
Long live the name.