The hazing, if that's what you'd call it, was pretty tame in those days, but there were certainly a few traditions. Once I was told by someone of higher rank, “Go drain the I-beam and bring me the bucket of water!” How the heck do you drain an I-beam? I started asking around only to realize it was a joke. It was no different than that “bucket of steam” trick I'd endured back at the power plant.
Hardy, har, har
. Very funny, guys. Everyone goes through that stuff. Every one of those guys went through it themselves. So in the end, as long as you don't take it too seriously, it's harmless. It's pretty funny actually. It wasn't the sort of hazing meant to knock guys out and make 'em quit. I never got that sense at all. In fact, the way everyone shared in it added to the sense of camaraderie and support I felt very quickly on that ship.
Before long I found my way back through the maze and reported to the master at arms for my duty: I joined the maintenance data collections office, where I would basically act as a glorified secretary. There's a master chief in that office and they control all the maintenance data, which means if there's maintenance being done anywhere on that ship, it was our job to record it. The navy needed to know how long it'd take a team to do certain jobs, such as how long it would take to pull a certain pump out of commission. I wrote it all down. The point, the way I understood it, was if they ever decided to decommission the ship, they would know approximately how many hours it would take to remove that pump and put a new one in; they could estimate the time and costs, and so on. It was not exactly rocket science but important work nonetheless. And that's what I did.
The USS
North Hampton
was dry-docked in Boston for a solid six months, and that allowed all of us to get a chance to know the city. After our daily duties were done, we were basically allowed to do whatever we wanted. For most guys that meant carousing and partying, but for myself and a few others, it meant a chance to go out and earn some extra money. I wound up finding work as a dishwasher and bus boy at the Harvard Alumni Club, where the who's who of that elite, Ivy League school came to mingle and dine with their peersâpeople like Ted Kennedy, the brother of President John F. Kennedy, and his more recently assassinated brother, Bobby Kennedy. I wound up serving guys like that, although I didn't really know too much about them, and didn't really care. The other wait staff would point someone out to me every once in a while and I'd say, “Oh, that's nice.” I guess if Joe DiMaggio had walked in, it would have been a different story, but the elite academics and politicians didn't float my boat.
I have to say, though, exploring Boston was wonderful. Having lived a life of school, home, practice, school, home, church, home . . . only to be followed by a life of work, home, work, home, church, work, and more workâall within two or three miles of my houseâit felt fantastic to walk around and see the sites in a new city. It's a small city and pretty easy to walk from Southie all the way to the Italian restaurants of the North End if you want. We even scored tickets to Red Sox games. I can't tell you what a thrill it was to see the Yankees play the Red Sox in Fenway Park. A dream come true! To sink my teeth into a Fenway Frank? It was awesome. Truly awesome.
The thing I quickly felt was that the world was so much bigger than I ever imagined. New possibilities started to open up for me more and more every day, mostly right inside my own head. I started to dream bigger. I started to think about what I might want to do with my life and where I might want to go. I had never really thought about living anywhere other than Joliet, and here I was living in Boston (for the time being). I could live anywhere, couldn't I? There seemed to be worlds of possibilities around every corner, possibilities that expanded far beyond my father's point of view, or my mother's point of view, or my peers' points of view back in Joliet. Even working at a place like the Harvard Club took down a certain wall I had imagined existed my whole life. It didn't feel strange to be in that elite company. It was just like anywhere else. I had a job to do. I did it. Didn't matter if that job was being performed for a Kennedy or Joe Schmo off the street; I did my job, and usually did it well, and that was all that mattered.
That might not seem like a big realization to some people. But to me? It was.
Just when I thought my worldview had expanded as far as it could, the USS
North Hampton
finished up its dry-dock and we all left town for a little shakedown cruise. Our destination? Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
This may sound ridiculous to you, but growing up in Illinois, I truly had no idea how much water there was in the world. Two-thirds of the earth is covered by the stuff! I also had no idea how my stomach would react to being out on that water, and it turns out my stomach didn't like it one bit. I got seasick the moment we pulled out of Charlestown, and that seasickness lasted the whole ride down to Cuba . . . and beyond.
If you've never experienced seasickness, imagine you have a stomach flu and you just can't shake it. For days on end. You don't have a fever, but you might as well because your head hurts, and you can't see straight, and the continuous rocking and rocking and rolling of the boat just makes it worse and worse, like you've got a case of the spins after drinking too much, except the room really
is
spinning, the horizon gets lost, you can't get your bearings, and you hurl and hurl and hurl 'til there's nothing but thick, clear liquid and the taste of bile in your mouth, 'cause you just can't swallow any food.
It's enough to make you question whether or not you're going to make it. It's enough to make some men think of jumping overboard and ending it right there. But you know why I never got to that point? You know why I made it through? Because the guy next to me was just as sick
. If he can do it, I can. He's sick; I'm sick. He's not giving up; I'm not giving up
. That's what I learned out on the water with the navy. That's what's wonderful about the military.
I don't even know who this guy is, but he's sicker than a dog and he's just as sick as me, maybe sicker, 'cause he's lying in his puke and I'm not. Poor guy, he's not giving up. Still fighting. That's the spirit I like. I need to be like that too. Never give up. We can do this
.
When I talk about camaraderie, that's what I'm talking about. We were all in it together. All two thousand or so of us on the 664-foot vessel were a team. Every one of us, together. Never did that shine brighter than when we had to do a refueling and every single person on that boat chipped in. First-class, second-class, yeomanâdidn't matter. You could wind up pulling a line while your superior officer pulled that same line right beside you.
That impressed me.
I found myself wishing that school had been that way. I found myself thinking that every sports team needed to be that way. Every company. Every workplace. I found myself dreaming of how great the world would be if everyone's boss came down off their high horse to tow the line with his workers now and then. How great would America be if it modeled itself after this sort of military brotherhood?
The lush, green, windswept, sandy shores of Cuba were unlike anything I had ever seen on this earth. The shimmering, crystal-blue water looked like something out of a movie. It all happened so fast; it was hard to imagine this was my life. That this was, in fact, my chosen destination. I had taken the steps that had led me to this place. I had chosen to do this. Me. I made this happen.
For most of the guys on the ship, Guantanamo Bay was a gateway to ecstasy: the fun, the booze, everything lay ahead just beyond that gate, a ride on the cattle truck into town. But for me? Guantanamo Bay was ecstasy. I went out with the guys a couple of times, but for the most part, when I wasn't working, I stayed right there, enjoying the shore, taking runs around the base, and lifting weights. I was getting in shape. Training. For what? I wasn't sure. But something. I felt like I was preparing for something, for whatever came next. I didn't know what it would be. I didn't have a plan. Just a feeling.
From Guantanamo we came back to Portsmouth, Virginia, where the navy decided to decommission the ship. Everything was going to nuclear power at the time, and while the ship was decommissioned they had to keep a skeleton crew on board. Because of my position in maintenance data collection, I was forced to be part of that skeleton crew while the bulk of my shipmates were reassigned. Because they kept us around so long, they told us, “When we finish this decommissioning, you can have your dream cruise. You can go anywhere you want. So pick out where you want to go.” That was our reward!
I knew what I wanted. With that feeling that life was opening up to me, I wanted to see the world, so I chose a Mediterranean cruise. Maybe I should have been a little more careful about the way I worded it, though, because while they gave me the chance to see the world, they put me on a tiny little destroyer escort: the USS
Robert L. Wilson
(DD-847), to be exact. “You'll see the world now, sailor!”
It was a purposeful move on the part of the navy. The guy who made up the orders said, “If I put you on an aircraft carrier, you'd get lost. You belong on a destroyer.” He knew my personality. Because it was small, with only three hundred shipmates, he knew I'd have a better shot at developing relationships and experiencing the camaraderie and teamwork I loved.
The whole thing sounded amazing to me: we would be escorting the USS
Enterprise
(CVN-65) across the North Atlantic into the heart of the Mediterranean.
Imagine that! Me, Danny Ruettiger, one of the Rudys from Joliet, going to Europe!
The thought of it seemed too good to be true, but next thing I knew, I was throwing my duffle bag onto my bunk in the belly of the little cork of a boat. I say “cork” because that's exactly how it floated on the water. Like a cork. Bobbing and dipping and tipping on every single wave. I didn't even know the meaning of seasickness before I wound up on the
Robert L. Wilson
. I was sick as a dog! The whole trip across the North Atlantic I was cursing myself for not telling the navy I'd rather stay ashore and build them a new boat!
Why oh why did I put myself onto this tiny motion-sickness machine?
It didn't make matters easier when we hit stormy seas on a night when I was on duty, alternating between watch on deck and coming into the bridge to take a turn steering the ship. With such a small crew, we all took turns doing everything. If I had felt better, I would have found that duty pretty exciting. How many people get the opportunity to steer a vessel of that size in their whole life? But I was puking too much for it to matter.
I was reporting directly to a young lieutenant that night as I stood at the helm. I liked this particular lieutenant a lot. He seemed like a real down-to-earth guy, and he was a great leader. He treated his men well, even as he pushed us to get what he wanted and what the ship needed. I was so sick, I wasn't exactly doing a great job of keeping that ship on course, but I did my best to follow his orders: “Sailor, come right ten degrees rudder.”
“Sir, come right ten degrees rudder, sir!” I'd respond.
“Correct,” he'd say, so I'd pull off ten degrees rudder. It's all very systematic. If I wasn't puking between orders, perhaps the ship wouldn't have zigzagged through the open sea quite as much. But I did my best nonetheless, and in between following orders and puking, I noticed something I had never noticed before on that young lieutenant's hand.
“Sir, you have
ND
on your ring. What does that stand for, sir?”
“Notre Dame University,” he said.
Wow!
I had never seen a Notre Dame ring before. I had never stood next to a Notre Dame man in my life. Despite what I had noticed about the bulk of the student body when I snuck onto campus during that retreat day in my senior year of high school, I still had this vision of Notre Dame graduates being larger than life. Yet here I was taking orders from one, right now!
“Wow, you went to Notre Dame, sir?”
“Yeah,” he said. “Just steer the ship, sailor.”
“Yes, sir,” I replied, but I just couldn't stop myself.
“Sir,” I said, “do you think someday I could go to Notre Dame?”
“Sailor,” he said to me, “absolutely. Absolutely you can. Now stay on this course!”
Maybe he was just trying to appease me. Maybe he just wanted me to shut up and steer the ship! But I didn't take it that way. Not at all. For the first time in my entire life, he planted a little seed in my brain that the untouchable “not for me” world of Notre Dame might not be so untouchable after all.
“Absolutely,” he had said.
He could have said, “Not in a million years, sailor!” He could have said, “Heck no! Not the way you're steering!” or ignored me completely and just kept firing off orders. But he didn't. He gave me that little encouraging word: “âAbsolutely.'”
It's hard to get something that's the polar opposite of what you've been told your entire life out of your head. “Notre Dame isn't for kids like you . . . You're not college-bound . . . You don't have the grades . . . You don't have the money . . . Notre Dame's for the best of the best. The elite!” It suddenly occurred to me that none of the people who put those thoughts in my head had actually gone to Notre Dame. Most of them had probably never stepped foot on the campus or had any real idea what the admission requirements were. It's funnyâand a little disturbing, actuallyâhow easy it is for us to believe the stuff we hear, whether it's the truth or not.
As I stood there on the bridge setting a rough and rocky course for Europe, I found it astounding that a brand-new question was rattling around my seasick head: Could I maybe, someday, go to Notre Dame? Followed by an unexpected answer:
Absolutely
.