Navy Officer Development School (ODS) Class 21070 Graduation

Transcript

Ladies and gentlemen, the ceremony will begin momentarily. Good morning. Ladies and gentlemen, I am Lieutenant Commander Derek Randall on behalf of the commanding officer for Officer training Command Newport Welcome to the graduation ceremony for Officer Development School Class 2 1070 consisting of 115 officers. Military guest in uniform This will be a covered ceremony. The order for this morning’s events are as follows momentarily. Captain Mark Heisenberg, Commanding Officer, Officer Training Command Newport and Captain Gordon Blethen Medical Service Corps, Commanding Officer, Navy Medicine Readiness and Training Command. New England will arrive the guests and the class will rise for the arrival of the official party and remain standing for the playing of the national anthem and invocation. Captain Blanton and Captain Heisenberg will address the graduating class following their remarks. Captain Hey Zinberg will distribute the class awards. Following the awards presentation, the graduates will symbolize the completion of their training by returning their company got on to their class Chief Petty officers. Following the awards ceremony, the class will reaffirm the oath of office. The class will remain standing for the playing of the service songs and the final dismissal Please rise for the arrival of the official party and remain standing for the national anthem and invocation. Officer training Command, Newport arriving Navy Medicine readiness and training Command. New England arriving. Ladies and gentlemen, our national anthem. Ladies and gentlemen, chaplain bucks will now offer the invocation. Let us pray eternal father. We come before you thankful for this day that we can gather together to celebrate with each of these officers. On this momentous occasion for five weeks, they drank from the fountain of instruction passed along by their dedicated class officers and our DCs. They spent long hours drilling, doing physical exercise and learning about what it means to be a naval officer. They spent time building friendships that for some will last a lifetime, may they take all of this knowledge and experiences out to the fleet, positively impacting those they will serve. We recognize the sacrifice and dedication they’ve given and choosing to serve our country. A new adventure awaits as they leave here to work in their respective fields of service to the men and women in the fleet. Be with each of them and the challenges of a pcs move wherever their orders take them. I pray, Oh God, that their lives be guided by your light in our attributes and navy values of integrity, accountability, honor, courage and commitment. Keep each of them and their families and their loving care and protection throughout the coming days and forever all men. Ladies and gentlemen, please be seated. Ladies and gentlemen, Captain Mark Heisenberg, Commanding Officer, Officer Training, Command, Newport Officer training, Command staff, family and friends joining us today, both in person and virtually. And Shipmates of Officer Development School. Class 2 1070. Good morning. It is an absolute honor and joy for me to have this opportunity to participate. Today’s ceremony that will start the navy careers of the officers seated here Today. My staff and I will bear witness as class 21,070 renews a solemn promise to our nation, reaffirming their oath to support and defend the constitution of the United States as professional naval officers for the families joining us. I want to both thank you and commend you for the performances of your sons and daughters, husbands and wives, brothers and sisters. Your love support and personal standards have produced the quality individuals seated here, ones who not only chose vocations that help their fellow human beings, but who chose the path of service to their fellow citizens. I can think of no finer group to go forth into the fleet than the officer seated here today. They could not have gotten to this point without the careful guidance and support a family on behalf of the Navy and a grateful nation. Please accept my most sincere thank you and well to the class. I am proud of you and all that you have accomplished while here as you depart here for your schools and duty stations remember that you’re both carries to paraphrase joseph Conrad’s discussion of command at sea far more obligations than privileges. You are about to be placed in a position to lead and mentor what are truly one of our most valuable national product. The enlisted men and women of our Navy, Those that volunteer to serve our precious national resource. So you must always treat them as such. You must view well and faithfully discharging your duties as a sacred responsibility. Much as your outstanding class team here has felt their obligation to you. The foundations we have laid here at ODS are solid. It is now up to you to build upon this. As you enter the Naval Service For Class 21,070. I am very impressed with the effort you have expanded over the last several weeks. I want to thank you for all that you have done and we will do in the service of this great nation of ours. It is my pleasure and distinct honor to welcome you to the wardrobe as professional naval officers in the world’s finest Navy. It is my pleasure this morning to introduce Captain Gordon Brighten the commanding Officer of Naval Medical Readiness and Training Center, New England. Initially starting his military career by enlisting in the U. S. Air Force. Captain Blyton has served his country on active duty for 32 years, earning a commission as a medical Service corps officer in the U. S. Navy. Captain Blyton has served on a number of staff, both at home and abroad, and has earned numerous awards for his service. His leadership is absolutely essential to the continued success of the world’s greatest Navy. And we are truly fortunate to have him here with us today. To share some thoughts with OSS Class 21,070. Ladies and gentlemen, please join me in welcoming our guest of honor today, Captain Gordon Blake. Okay. Mhm Yes. When you get to be my age, you have to wear readers. Even if you’ve had corrective eye surgery you still get to wear. So thank you first of all, Captain Hey Zinberg for inviting me to be here today. Family, friends and graduate. It’s been many years since I’ve sat in those chairs that you’re setting in. But let me just tell you. Kay Hall hasn’t changed in the last 24 years. Um It looks just exactly the same today when I was first asked if I would come and speak today, I was very humbled and honored. But then I asked myself why, why would someone asked me to speak today? Is it because this was an unexpected opportunity for an in-person graduation and I was the easy candidate because I’m across base. Yeah, maybe. So. Um is it because you know, he’s been in total time of active duty for over 34 years and we think he might have something that’s worthwhile sharing with the students and those that are graduating maybe. So is it because my wife says my beautiful bride says he’ll talk to anyone. So just put him in front of a mic and be careful though because you never know what’s going to come out of his mouth, no matter it’s okay. I am still honored, humbled and very blessed to be here with you today And as I was told I get about 47 minutes. So I ask you to put your tray tables and seat backs in the most upright position because this might be a bumpy ride. Um, no, really, I don’t get 47 minutes. I get a few minutes of your time today. And for some of you it will only be a few minutes of your whole lifetime. Most of you I’ll probably never come into contact with again in your careers. But hopefully today I’ll be able to share something with you that you’ll be able to resonate with and put in your toolbox for the future. So I only get these few minutes. So what do I talk to you about? I don’t need to tell you how to relax because you’ve spent a lifetime so far in schools dealing with teachers test and now some military indoctrination and training and development. So you don’t need to hear about those things. So what do you I talk to you about see, I want to let you know you may think you have made it and you’re finally there. But you have, so you’re just at the beginning of your career as a naval officer, as a sailor in the United States Navy, in the most powerful navy in the world, A navy that finds itself squarely in the middle of the great power competition. A navy that is in its most dramatic change that we’ve seen in many decades. A navy that is preparing for a battle with the near pier competition. A battle that we have not been prepared for in the past. See although we’ve been in conflict for over 20 years and we continue to see the benefits of what our navy can do regardless of where it’s at, at sea or shore in an operational austere area in the desert. We have not been prepared for the next battle. What we’ve experienced over those last 20 plus years did not prepare us for the battle against COVID. which many of you have experienced and realized that sometimes that impacts our daily life. But it hasn’t also prepared us for the near pier. Great battle that we might have it see in the future. See when we find ourselves in that near pier competition, we probably won’t control the airspace. We probably won’t have where some of you are going to go find your next duty station, a trauma facility to take care of wounded within minutes of the injury location. And we won’t have the ability to have what we refer to as that golden hour, That small time after a major injury where we get them to care. And if they get to care during that time, we have a 98% survival rate. It will be a competition in a battle that will give us different types of injuries and complexities that we have not seen in the past. And so we invite you to this team, we welcome you to this team. But I will tell you what we’ve experienced in Afghanistan and Iraq and the success that we will have in the future will not look the same. So I thought about it and I realized I need to share thoughts and advice with you that might help you when you find yourself in that difficult situation. Some advice that you might be able to stow away and remember when life really beat you down because it’s going to happen in my time in the military. I can’t count the number of times where I felt beat down, where I’ve made a mistake where I’ve had a misstep. So what do I tell you? Because many of you are going to leave here and you’re going to report to your next duty station and you’re going to automatically be put in a position of leadership. You’re going to be given a title, maybe it’ll be department head or division officer or program manager. And so now you’re a leader. I tell you that title does not make you a leo it was interesting to me as I listened to Captain Heisenberg talk and him talk about leadership and where you’re going to find yourself in the very near future. And then I thought about what I was going to talk to you about and it’s about leadership, it’s about character. So see being a leader, it’s not about you, it’s about everybody else that’s around the truth of life is that you are a culmination of all of what you have experienced and then trained. So being a leader, it’s about those people that you have the opportunity to influence and to help them understand. So I wanted to tell you a little story. Many of you probably can recognize this name, but it’s about President Dwight D Isaac and it may not make sense to you what this story has to resonate at the moment. But I hope as we go through the rest of my talk, you understand what I’m referring to here. So President Eisenhower when he was 10 years old, wanted to go trick or treating. He wanted to go out with his brothers to go trick or treating and his parents told him, no, you’re not old enough to go trick or treating yet. And so you have to stay home with us. That he was mad. He was very, so mad that he let his fits of rage take him outside to an apple tree where he commenced to punching that apple tree until his hands were bloody and bark was falling off the tree. That’s a lot of anger. Later, as most dads probably would do, his dad went out to him and brought him back in and said, okay, it’s time to come in, it’s time to get ready for bed. It’s time to calm down. So as little ike’s laying in his bed. His mom goes and sits in the chair next to his bed and she talks to him about his behavior and the way he responded and she tells him that this type of behavior won’t suit you well in life. This type of behavior and the way you responded to what life gave you will only drag you down. Well, I would like to believe that little I got up the next morning and he never had an opportunity to be frustrated again. He was never one of those Children that we saw laying in the floors of a store, kicking and screaming and the parents looking at him and saying, I just don’t know what so moms and dads, if one of your child’s did that when they were young, don’t point them out, we’re just gonna hope that they learned from that as well. See what we don’t get as an opportunity to determine how somebody engages up, but we always get an opportunity to choose how we will respond to them. It’s a little like as he continued to grow and he found himself in high school and he found that this repeated behavior of aggression and response in an appropriate way was not working well for him. And so he made a decision at that point when he was a teenager to say from hence forward, I will always greet everybody with a smile. I will always ask them how they’re doing and I will actually truly care about what they have to say And if you look back at pictures and I’m sure many of you will go google this later today to see if you can find a picture of like when he is frowned. So when he was the supreme allied commander when we were in battle, he said that when I go to talk to the troops put night before we go to battle, if I go to them with a grumpy brownie hard approach, what is the likelihood that they’re going to want to help me tomorrow when we go to battle? But if I go to them every time and I let them know that I’m glad to see them and I am absolutely interested in them as a person in an individual and that they know I care for them and that and all else I have their back, they’re going to more willingly want to go and help me accomplish the mission. So leadership is about being the best you can all the time and realizing like I said, you don’t get to choose how someone comes to you. You also don’t get to choose to have a bad day that impacts the mission and your team, you have to be the best all the time. You have to queue what is the right response to others. You need to understand that the way you respond to those that you were put in charge to lead and given the blessing to lead. Well look at you and how you behave. They will consider that to be acceptable and they will respond like what you need to know. That temperament is a reflection of your character. As alexander. Hamilton said temperament is a key component to success. It’s your attitude towards what faces you dated towards activities, your response to any situation that didn’t go your way. Whether that be positive or negative, it’s the attributes or features that make you, what distinguishes you as an individual and set you apart as a person. It’s the aggregate of distinctive qualities that define you now, which one of them is a naval officer, a sailor in the most powerful navy in the world. It’s about the real value of education, not what you were taught in. The knowledge gained from books by itself, but everything that you have experienced in your life. It’s about the simple awareness, awareness of what’s real and essential, those things that are hidden in plain sight, right in front of you every day all the time that we have to keep remembering and reminding ourselves that this is called our self-awareness and how we know what those trigger points are, which may institute an opportunity for us to behave or to respond in a manner that is not. And acceptance to helping us support the mission. It’s called your emotional intelligence. Leadership is about being able to help a team to accomplish more than they ever thought they could. It’s about getting others to understand their purpose, their direction and motivation towards an activity or our mission and its success. It’s how do we work with them to support them in a way that enables us to be overall successful in the mission and our national security. And it’s remember, it’s not about how you fell down if you make a mistake because I promise you you will. And if you ever want to sit down and talk about mistakes, we would need much longer than today. But I’d be happy to have a couple of pots of coffee and share with you about mine. It’s not about the failure of the skinny when you fell down. It’s about how you recover, it’s about how you get up. It’s about how you move forward after that mistake. See this guy, you many of you may recognize his name, Reggie Jackson. What you may not know is that he has the record for the most strikeouts in baseball history. But we don’t talk about those very much. We talk about the home run because it’s not about him striking out. It’s about what he did after that. See you guys also may know this guy named old Thomas Edison And that’s how he had 1000 failed experiences before he had a successful but we don’t talk about those. We talk about the invention of the light bulb. So it was how he moved forward after each one of those failed experiment that defines so every mistake you make, How you recover from it is one step closer to 67. So the advice that I give you today is for those hard times. Those times where you find yourself in a situation or a struggle and that you hopefully we’ll be able to remember something about leadership and that it’s not about you and it’s not about the mistake that you made. And remember when those that work for you make a mistake, what can we learn from it? How do we move forward and how do we recover to try to ensure that we don’t make that mistake again? I’m so blessed and honored to be here with you today. I welcome you to the wardroom as well and if you ever want an old dogs advice, I actually am the only Gordon Lighten in the whole Department of defense. So I’m not hard to find to reach out to me realized that you need a mentor that is senior to you. You need a comrade. It is next to you and you should look for a mentor that is junior to you so that you can understand how what you do and say is perceived by others because that will impact your ability to lead. Thank you again bless you and I hope you have safe travels to your next duty station. Think thank you Captain Heisenberg Captain Biden at the conclusion of each ODS class. Several students are recognized by their fellow classmates as well as the Otc and staff for outstanding achievement. During their five-week course of instruction, Henson Devin Samara, Front and center. The honor student award is presented to the officer who best demonstrates an overall excellence in the areas of academics, physical fitness and military bearing consistently setting the example for his peers, his or her peers throughout the many challenges faced it. Also training Command Newport. The honor student award goes to Ensign Devon Samara. Yeah, Lieutenant Austin molly Front and center. The Alfred award is given to the officer who achieves the highest military grade derived from personnel inspections, room inspections and general military bearing. The award is named after the continental slope of war. The Alfred, commissioned in 17 75 The Alfred served as a flagship of native Rhode islander commodore Essick Hopkins serving as a role model of Navy pride and professionalism, maintaining the highest standards and providing inspiration to all. The Alfred award goes to Lieutenant Austin molly Mhm. Lieutenant junior grade Matthew Z. Jack. Front and center. The Captain George Townsend smith leadership award is presented to the officer who personifies the highest standards of personal example, good leadership practices and more responsibility. Officers were nominated by their peers and selected by the officer training Command. Newport Staff. The Captain George Townsend smith leadership award goes to Lieutenant junior grade. Matthew Z. Jack. Yeah, Okay, Hinton. Sydney. Egan Front and center the E. D. Award named for lieutenant Thomas et United States Navy recognizes the highest achievement in academic and military performance. Lieutenant Thomas et who immigrated from Scotland and settled in Rhode island. Was awarded the Navy Cross and the Medal of Honor for his courageous efforts as a diver During the salvage of submarines. S. S. Four and S. S. 51 off the coast of Massachusetts. He was a member of the southeastern New England chapter of the retired Officers Association at the time of his death in 1974. In recognition of this accomplishment. In addition to the Certificate of Achievement, the Military Officers Association of America has awarded a three-year membership to the Lieutenant Eddie award winner Jenson Sydney Egan. Yeah. For the past five weeks the company got on has been a symbol of spirit, dedication, teamwork and unity identity. To symbolize the fact that these officers seated before you have completed their training, they will return their God on to their class. Chief Petty officers. Senior chief aviation electrician’s mate, Hubbert Bradley. And chief aviation electronics technician chat able. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Oh yeah. Okay. Nothing. Mhm. No. Okay title. Okay. Title. I know. Thanks. Oh. Mhm. Yeah, mm hmm. Mhm. Mhm. Yeah. Yeah. Mhm intendant Sindelar will now deliver the reaffirmation of the oath of office with all military personnel in uniform, please come to the position of attention. All right right, yeah. Yeah. Ladies and gentlemen, the commanding officer of Officer Training Command Newport would like to present to you your newly reaffirmed Naval officers. Ladies and gentlemen, please rise for the playing of the service songs and the final dismissal. Officer Development School Class 2 1070. Upon graduation from Also Development school, you are ordered to detach and report to your duty stations where you will assume your duties and responsibilities by order of Mark Heisenberg. Captain United States, Navy Commanding Officer Officer Training Command Newport, Class 2 1070 dismissed. Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes our ceremony on behalf of the commanding officer. Also Training Command Newport, thank you for attending Today’s graduation. Please stay safe and stay healthy. As ODS Class 21070 takes the class photo. We ask. All guests remain behind the blue courted line. Thank you. It might just