I'm sitting in the front pew of the chapel on the U.S. Navy base in Millington, Tenn. Around me are a dozen family members along with 150 others in a variety of naval uniforms.
Seated on the stage before us are three females and two males, all but one clad in formal dress blues with ribbons. One sailor is my 37-year-old daughter, Anna, wearing a familiar smile and a chest filled with ribbons to symbolize 20 years of achievements during her steady rise from boot camp to chief petty officer.
Before the impressive ceremony began, she'd leaned close to whisper her love and gratitude. In that tender moment, she'd also slipped a photograph of us standing together at her June 1995 graduation from boot camp at the Great Lakes Naval Training Center in Illinois. Then, she was a 17-year-old mother whose life to that point had been filled with difficulties no young person should ever have to face. Yet, blessed with a spirit that would do Invictus proud, she'd endured and overcome, as many shipmates had dropped away during boot camp's tough training.
I placed the picture in my pocket, pausing to reflect just how quickly 20 years can zip past. She returned to the stage and took her seat as the two-hour retirement ceremony commenced.
When her time came for remarks, in typical Anna fashion, she spent much of her talk praising others from her military career and her family, rather than placing the focus on her own remarkable achievements. In her various assignments as she advanced up the enlisted ladder, Anna had twice been chosen as Sailor of the Quarter and of the Year at her duty stations and even been been selected as Sailor of the Region (Wing) for several Southern states.
I know. I'm naturally prejudiced. But unless you know Anna, you can't understand how genuinely magnetic her positive, loving and fun-loving spirit is to those around her. Yet at the same time, when it came to fulfilling her roles as a devoted sailor, nothing was more important than doing things right: The Navy way.
The early portion of Chief Anna's comments dealt with love of our nation and how fortunate she felt to have been born in the United States. "The way I am, I honestly don't think I could have survived in so many others' countries that don't offer the freedoms we have," she said. She spoke unapologetically of her devotion to and faith in God. She credited her creator with guiding her through so many tough times to retiring as a chief at age 37, going from a young mother driven by the seeming contradictions of fear and grit to rise from a seaman recruit with a GED to earning her bachelor's and master's degrees in the Navy with two wonderful children along the way.
I sat listening with a swelling sense of pride and honor to know this beautiful, bright, fun and confident woman was part of this world because of me. It was made obvious during the ceremony how many sailors' lives she'd affected positively during her military career. In fact, she summoned one enlisted sailor to the front to present him her chief's anchors and look him squarely in the eye and remind him what high expectations she had of him to one day wear those anchors as proudly as she had.
She praised her children, her brother Brandon, her parents and her mid-80s aunt and uncle, Ken and Bobbie Masterson, for his service in the Navy during World War II and their 67 years of marriage. She'd even lit a candle at the lectern to honor her deceased grandmothers.
When the moment arrived for recitation of the traditional Navy sendoff, "The Watch," Anna rose, left the stage to pace before the crowd and expressively recited the passages from memory just as she had previously done for so many other former shipmates at their retirements. It might have been the first time a sailor has recited their own watch to relieve them of a career of active duty. But, as I may have mentioned up front, Anna honestly is a unique person and sailor.
Tears welled as I understood this was one of life's rite-of-passage memories, like those when she and her brother were born. Five sailors then stood at the front and reverently passed a folded American flag between them to a chief who'd been in boot camp with Anna. He then turned to her as she lifted her right hand in salute then lowered it just as slowly to receive this flag that had flown in January over the World Trade Center site. She then turned and handed the flag lovingly to her mother before retrieving a second one to lay in my lap.
As the event closed with a formal family procession down the aisle, she motioned me to her left side.
I reached in my pocket and momentarily held the photo of us on graduation day over my heart where only she could see it. She smiled through teary eyes. And then, as with all our lives, that lengthy chapter in her own was published.
Today, a new day and life somewhere in the private world begins for Anna K. Masterson. I can guarantee you she'll not only land squarely on her feet, but be a magnetically positive force among the lives around her.
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Mike Masterson's column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Email him at mikemasterson10@hotmail.com.
Editorial on 04/14/2015