Sign of the Times

Posted By lex, on March 9th, 2011

The Naval Academy is changing its core curriculum to include two courses on cyber security. These are the first major changes to the curriculum in ten years:

Higher Standards

Posted by lex, on December 16, 2010

Parents with students bound for our nation’s most prestigious military institutes of higher learning are bound to be alarmed at the news flooding the wires recently *:

A Carroll “Lex” LeFon Primer

Who was Carroll LeFon?

The best description of Lex that I’ve heard is “Imagine Hemingway flew fighters…and liked people.”

It was 25 years ago today…

By lex, on May 25th, 2007

That the sh!t hit the fleet *.

After torturing the plebes one last time on Herndon, we’d had a week’s worth of fin de siecle parties on and around the campus – the “N” dance for varsity athletes over at Hubbard Hall, where the crew team tormented themselves for most of the year, was a highlight – it was the only affair in the Yard that served champagne, as I recall. Tropical whites and tiki torches reflected the Severn River. With all of the beautiful young men and women, it had the feeling of a movie set from the 1940′s, the “before” picture setting the left bookend to an unknowable “after” – an “after” whose ghostly contours are now, after 25 years, growing daily more distinct.

Finally the preparations were complete it was time to mill around smartly outside as the underclasses marched to the stadium to bid us farewell with ever-descending degrees of sincerity; the second class with whom we had become fast friends, the youngsters who still eyed us with all the caution that one uses around a biting dog that wags its tail, the plebes with a cordial loathing. A rustling in the seats as we sat down, an interminable speech or two – brave new world, sea lines of communication, the defense of the republic from the Soviet Menace, etc. Then, finally, graduation and commissioning of the top 10% in order of class rank, the rest of us alphabetically (your correspondent was solidly in the top 90% of his class). Hats up (and down, it turns out). The fat gold bar of an ensign replacing the thin one of a first class midshipman.

The smiles and handshakes after, the promises to keep in touch, that we’d see each other in the fleet. Promises we sometimes kept, but the tendency of things is always towards disorder, towards chaos. There would in any case be new loyalties to supercede that sacred word “classmate” – a word that had gotten us all through a difficult four years. There would be roommates, wingmen, squadron mates, messmates, shipmates, service buddies, Marines, dogs and finally, sojers.

Today we head down to the university campus to see our replacements join the line, NROTC midshipmen from the local universities: SDSU, UCSD, USD and Point Loma Nazarene. Three young people that we have fed and entertained for the last three years will be commissioned, two will change uniforms entirely. Our young man will lead the color guard, having exchanged the two diagonal stripes of a midshipman second class on his shoulder boards with the single, thin, horizontal stripe of a first class midshipman .

The cycle continues.

* 08-08-2018 Link Gone; no replacement found (Was Lex Post Midshipmen from 06-21-2004– Ed.

Back To The Index 

 

Justice Delayed

By lex, on May 8th, 2010

Midshipman 3/C Curry is off the football squad ** at Navy:

Eureka

By lex, on January 30th, 2010

I woke up this morning with the answer to many questions in my head, foremost among them this: What on earth is Navy doing? I mean, after all, these are smart men atop the leadership ladder at Navy and in the Navy. Excellent competitors and achievers with brilliant political instincts.

How could they be so dumb?

Things Change

By lex, on August 4th, 2011

When I was a midshipman at the US Naval Academy, I was one of those 20% who opted to become “bull” majors, studying political science rather than math and science to my later regret. Other bull options were English, economics and history. The school’s intention was that each midshipman have a solid grounding in core technical studies, and it wasn’t until my senior year that I had more majors courses than otherwise. I don’t know how many other schools required their poly sci majors to take two semesters of electrical engineering to go with physics, differential equations, chemistry and thermodynamics.

Intro

By lex, on July 1st, 2011

Back at Navy, way back in the way back when, I had a teammate on the sabre team, a year senior to me. He was a lefty, whose defensive prowess – I carried many a stripe on my back and forearm the blazing speed of his ripostes – taught me a great deal about getting in and out quickly on attack.

Which lessons, by the way, were of immense and transferable value to the strike fighter pilot.

2:41:32

 

By lex, on May 25th, 2011

That’s how long it took the USNA class of 2011 to climb Herndon, the tradition of greasing the undeniably phallic obelisk having returned:

Sensible

 

By lex, on July 25th, 2009

The case of the pregnant midshipman that received a waiver to graduate and be commissioned has been clarified ** by a spokesman from the Trade School on the Severn: