My brother-in-law, John Sager, has always been a mentor to me. When I planned to attend Penn State in 1968 it worked out for me to live with him and Barb as he was just enrolling in graduate work there. John was a veteran of the Army Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) when he was an undergrad at PSU. He had learned to fly there and become a helicopter pilot on active duty. After a tour of Vietnam and a stint as an instructor pilot he was just mustering out before heading back to school. The military draft was in full swing during those years. Very few guys wanted to serve in the military during wartime. The Vietnam war was one of the most unpopular ever. Add to that the fact that it didn’t seem the US was really “in it to win it”, and a service career wasn’t all that attractive. Even worse than volunteering to serve was being drafted. At least if you volunteered you had a few choices. It seemed like if you got drafted they just handed you a rifle and put you on a plane to Southeast Asia!
John talked with me candidly about ROTC, military service in general, and the draft. He had made the right call by going through ROTC and he counseled me that if I wanted to avoid carrying a rifle through the jungle I might want to follow in his footsteps. John was a master of research and he had found out that the Navy had just lowered their ROTC entrance standards to include those with vision correctable to 20/20. In the past you had to have uncorrected 20/20 eyesight to get in. John thought that the Navy might be the way to avoid jungle hikes. Shipboard duty certainly had its disadvantages but life there was a little more sheltered. (Also snipers rarely picked off any ensigns who were standing on a destroyer’s deck.)
I can’t remember exactly what steps I took to enroll prior to going to the Military Entrance Station in the Pittsburgh Federal Building for my physical but I sure can remember that physical like it was yesterday. I was there with all of the new draftees and it was identical to a stockyard. We were the cattle and the uniformed personnel were the drovers. They herded us from room to room in our underwear. We clutched in our hands the manila envelope that contained our paperwork. At each stop a medical corpsman would poke, prod, or inspect our skinny bodies and scribble something on one of the pages. After the eye test was completed the fellow in charge told me with a smirk, “You’re not qualified for ROTC – but you sure are eligible to be drafted!” With as much respectful fortitude as I could muster I informed him that the Naval ROTC eyesight standards had recently changed. To which he replied, “I haven’t heard nothin about no change”. I was panicked. I could just envision the powers that be whisking me right off to the war zone from Pittsburgh. It appeared as though if anyone in the building might know of this regulation change it would be the recruiters. They were on the fourth floor of the same building so I immediately headed that way after I got dressed (still carrying my envelope).
When I found the Navy recruiter and explained my plight he echoed the corpsman’s phrase about the change. I asked if he might investigate as the ROTC people at Penn State had been pretty adamant about it. He made some calls and came back in about 10 minutes with one of those quizzical looks a ninth grade graduate gets when they’ve just learned that the world is really round. He said, “Son of a gun. You’re right. I guess you qualify.” In the first 18 years of my life I had pulled off few, if any major coupes but this day felt like it was the greatest. I had fought the system and won (thanks albeit to John’s research). I was in. Little did I know that this was to be one of many, many battles with “the system”.
The week before classes started in the fall semester was set aside for freshmen. I traveled from home to State College on Sunday and was ready for a variety of activities that would tell me all about life at Penn State. On Monday, amidst a variety of sessions about scheduling, athletic facilities, how to get football tickets, etc. I stopped by the ROTC building to let the navy guys know that “I was in”. To my dismay that told me that I was a day late. The ROTC program had held their orientation session on Sunday and I had already missed that as well as the Monday morning drill. Nobody had said anything about coming up early and I had no clue what a “drill” might entail. The officer in charge told me to be there Tuesday at 0600 and to be wearing black pants, a white shirt, black tie, and “spit shined” plain-toed black shoes. They also gave me a belt and a bucket with instructions that the buckle should be polished. Luckily John had a spare black tie and knew what sort of shoes I needed and that afternoon we went to the shoe store and bought a pair. Too bad I didn’t wear his size as he had several pair he wasn’t using anymore. John also taught me how to spit shine brand new shoes and use Brasso to take the “quartermaster” off the new belt buckle. Quartermaster is military talk for the protective coating that comes on the new buckle. I couldn’t figure out this fascination the military had with polishing brand new stuff.
Boy is it dark and cold at Penn State at 0600 in late September! I showed up for drill on Tuesday morning outfitted as best as possible with minimum instructions and without the benefit of Sunday’s orientation session. Evidently that is when they told you that the knot in your black tie should be a “fore-in-hand” and not a double Windsor (which is all I knew how to tie). As the upperclassmen midshipmen officers came down the line I could hear them criticizing other freshmen’s tie knots. When the head guy got in my face and asked, “What kind of knot is that in your tie?”, I answered, “Fore-in-hand, sir!” He replied, “Looks like a double Windsor to me.” And went on down the line. Another guy came behind him and asked me (at the top of his lungs) who’s going to win the football game this Saturday? Ordinarily this would not be a tough question but I knew that the Nittany Lions were to play the Naval Academy that weekend. I thought that in some perverted way they expected me to answer that Navy would win (this was the Naval ROTC after all). However, I said softly, “Penn State, sir?” “LOUDER!”, he yelled. “PENN STATE, SIR,” I yelled. As he walked off down the line I heard him mutter, “Damn right Penn State’s going to win.” And they did. As a matter of fact Penn State did not lose a single game until most of the way through my junior year.
I was put in with a small group of others who were new that morning. After the initial inspection where they criticized our ties, our shoes, our belt buckles, our haircuts and our lineage, they handed us rifles. RIFLES?! This was supposed to be the Navy for Pete’s sake. Navy guys didn’t carry rifles. Their ships had 16-inch guns, why would they need rifles? I guess they figured that if marching around with a rifle on your shoulder built disciplined recruits for the Army and Marines it was good enough for the Navy too. We spent the rest of the morning learning what you did with the rifle when the leader said stuff like “order arms”, or “present arms”. We also learned how to do the left face, right face, and about face stuff. I was starting to seriously doubt John’s advice about ROTC being a good alternative to the draft. I thought it just might be better to take my chances.
Then things brightened after lunch. An upperclassmen came around and asked if anybody played a musical instrument. My ears perked up but I didn’t volunteer until I heard more. John had also warned me about volunteering before you knew what it might get you into. It seemed that the Naval ROTC had its own band and that every week when all the other slobs were out doing the order arms stuff with their rifles, the band members practiced playing Anchors Aweigh and Sousa marches on their instruments. Heck there wasn’t even any synchronized marching to spell words out on the field like in high school. Everybody stayed together in a tight formation. You also got to wear a green rope around the shoulder of your uniform. That was enough for me. My hand shot in the air. A couple other guys saw the light as well. We learned that this upperclassman was called the “Band Commander”. He had us immediately come with him to check out instruments and music. It was the last time I touched a rifle in my ROTC career. God is GOOD!!
The rest of orientation week went much better. I still had to get up early each morning with my “uniform” on (including a fore-in-hand knot in my tie) but us “band guys” hung around and sort of jammed with our horns since the rest of the band wouldn’t show up for another week or so. On Friday we picked up our “real” uniforms. No more white shirts. The navy uniforms were by far the most attractive of all of the ROTC units. Drill uniform was black slacks and a dark blue wool CPO shirt with black tie and white “captains-type” hat. (This hat was worn with all the uniforms.) Dress uniform was same slacks with white shirt and black double-breasted, six-button blazer. Top coat (necessary in the central PA winters) almost reached the ground. It was heavy wool and also double-breasted. Formal uniform was the white “ice cream salesman” suit. The easiest way to describe it is that it is what Tom Cruise wore in the Top Gun graduation scene. It was a good thing these uniforms looked sharp because it could really get embarrassing wearing them around campus during the anti-war protests of the late ‘60s. Every Wednesday was drill day when the band practiced and all the other guys marched around with rifles on their shoulders. Since I lived off-campus I had to wear my uniform to all my classes that day. Penn State was a pretty conservative school in those days so there wasn’t a lot of harassment but you could feel the hatred from the hippie bunch as you walked by in uniform.
Drill on Wednesday wasn’t the only ROTC activity. We attended classes twice a week in subjects like Naval History, Seamanship, Navigation, Naval Warfare, etc. John had suggested that I take some extra credits at Slippery Rock University during the summers when I was home since my Navy classes didn’t count toward my Forestry degree. That was great advice that eventually allowed me to graduate a term early. My grades were pretty good the first term of my freshman year but the second term I failed chemistry which meant I had to attend Navy study halls at night. That was a good thing because there were upperclassmen there to help you out if you needed it. I never wanted to go back there again so I studied hard and got a B in chemistry the next term. I never had to go back. My freshman year was pretty much one to forget. It wasn’t all that fun nor very successful.
At the beginning of my sophomore year the Navy band held a competition for Band Adjutant. This was sort of an executive officer to the Band Commander. You carried a staff and marched at the head of the band, keeping the beat with the staff and signaling when to turn by blowing a whistle and motioning the staff left or right. There was another signal for when to stop. One of my friends suggested I try out and I figured, what the heck. I wasn’t that good a baritone player anyway. To my amazement I was selected for the job. This made band even more fun. The neatest part was that I helped the Band Commander perform inspections of uniforms, haircuts, etc. My hair got longer and longer until the Commander turned to me during an inspection and noted, “Tommy, you could use a haircut yourself.”
I had a couple good friends in the band but because I lived off campus I never got together with them in the evenings. I only saw them at ROTC activities such as drills, parades, and of course the dances. Each year there was a Navy Ball and a Military Ball. These were big deals where your girl friend came up to school and you sort of had another shot at doing the prom right. The Military Ball was for all the ROTC units and it was held in the winter. That meant wearing the black uniform. The Navy Ball was held in the spring which meant wearing the white dress uniform. I have to admit it felt like a big deal to get all dressed up and go to the ball. We also saw some great entertainment (including the Vogues and the 5th Dimension).
On December 2, 1969 (midway through my sophomore year) the Selective Service Commission held its first draft lottery. This was the way they would determine in what order those born in 1950 (me) would be drafted in the future. I can remember I was in the student union with a bunch of non-ROTC guys who were avidly watching the lottery on TV. If you drew a number much higher than 175 or so you were pretty safe from the draft and could go about planning your future after college. I recall guys cursing when they drew numbers like 57 or 76. Somebody asked my when my birthday was so they could determine my draft number. I said, “Who cares, I don’t have to worry about the draft, I’m in ROTC.” They pestered me until I told them my birth date and somebody yelled out, “Man, you’re number 301, there’s no way you’ll ever get drafted!” I reiterated that I didn’t care. I’m not sure when I began to think seriously that I could now drop out of ROTC and do what most guys did after graduation – get married, look for a job, get on with life. On one hand the Navy meant I would have a job after graduation but on the other hand that job would likely keep my away from my wife for the first three years of our marriage.
I thought about it long and hard and took the remainder of my sophomore year and the whole summer to make my decision. When I went back to school the next fall I would have to take the oath of office and I would actually be in the Navy. They would start to pay some of my school expenses but not all that many of them. I recall meeting with the Professor of Military Science (the head Navy guy on campus) and telling him that I would not be continuing in the program. He was really ticked and asked me why. I told him the truth and also reminded him that the only thing the Navy had ever invested in me was my uniforms which I was about to give back.
There have been many times over the last 40 years when I’ve wondered how different my life would have been if I hadn’t dropped out of ROTC. I’ve always felt bad that I didn’t serve my country in the military but let others do the fighting for me. However, I know that God has blessed my life every step of the way and I wouldn’t trade it for anything. The two years of ROTC were a great experience and I think I’m a better leader for it.
John talked with me candidly about ROTC, military service in general, and the draft. He had made the right call by going through ROTC and he counseled me that if I wanted to avoid carrying a rifle through the jungle I might want to follow in his footsteps. John was a master of research and he had found out that the Navy had just lowered their ROTC entrance standards to include those with vision correctable to 20/20. In the past you had to have uncorrected 20/20 eyesight to get in. John thought that the Navy might be the way to avoid jungle hikes. Shipboard duty certainly had its disadvantages but life there was a little more sheltered. (Also snipers rarely picked off any ensigns who were standing on a destroyer’s deck.)
I can’t remember exactly what steps I took to enroll prior to going to the Military Entrance Station in the Pittsburgh Federal Building for my physical but I sure can remember that physical like it was yesterday. I was there with all of the new draftees and it was identical to a stockyard. We were the cattle and the uniformed personnel were the drovers. They herded us from room to room in our underwear. We clutched in our hands the manila envelope that contained our paperwork. At each stop a medical corpsman would poke, prod, or inspect our skinny bodies and scribble something on one of the pages. After the eye test was completed the fellow in charge told me with a smirk, “You’re not qualified for ROTC – but you sure are eligible to be drafted!” With as much respectful fortitude as I could muster I informed him that the Naval ROTC eyesight standards had recently changed. To which he replied, “I haven’t heard nothin about no change”. I was panicked. I could just envision the powers that be whisking me right off to the war zone from Pittsburgh. It appeared as though if anyone in the building might know of this regulation change it would be the recruiters. They were on the fourth floor of the same building so I immediately headed that way after I got dressed (still carrying my envelope).
When I found the Navy recruiter and explained my plight he echoed the corpsman’s phrase about the change. I asked if he might investigate as the ROTC people at Penn State had been pretty adamant about it. He made some calls and came back in about 10 minutes with one of those quizzical looks a ninth grade graduate gets when they’ve just learned that the world is really round. He said, “Son of a gun. You’re right. I guess you qualify.” In the first 18 years of my life I had pulled off few, if any major coupes but this day felt like it was the greatest. I had fought the system and won (thanks albeit to John’s research). I was in. Little did I know that this was to be one of many, many battles with “the system”.
The week before classes started in the fall semester was set aside for freshmen. I traveled from home to State College on Sunday and was ready for a variety of activities that would tell me all about life at Penn State. On Monday, amidst a variety of sessions about scheduling, athletic facilities, how to get football tickets, etc. I stopped by the ROTC building to let the navy guys know that “I was in”. To my dismay that told me that I was a day late. The ROTC program had held their orientation session on Sunday and I had already missed that as well as the Monday morning drill. Nobody had said anything about coming up early and I had no clue what a “drill” might entail. The officer in charge told me to be there Tuesday at 0600 and to be wearing black pants, a white shirt, black tie, and “spit shined” plain-toed black shoes. They also gave me a belt and a bucket with instructions that the buckle should be polished. Luckily John had a spare black tie and knew what sort of shoes I needed and that afternoon we went to the shoe store and bought a pair. Too bad I didn’t wear his size as he had several pair he wasn’t using anymore. John also taught me how to spit shine brand new shoes and use Brasso to take the “quartermaster” off the new belt buckle. Quartermaster is military talk for the protective coating that comes on the new buckle. I couldn’t figure out this fascination the military had with polishing brand new stuff.
Boy is it dark and cold at Penn State at 0600 in late September! I showed up for drill on Tuesday morning outfitted as best as possible with minimum instructions and without the benefit of Sunday’s orientation session. Evidently that is when they told you that the knot in your black tie should be a “fore-in-hand” and not a double Windsor (which is all I knew how to tie). As the upperclassmen midshipmen officers came down the line I could hear them criticizing other freshmen’s tie knots. When the head guy got in my face and asked, “What kind of knot is that in your tie?”, I answered, “Fore-in-hand, sir!” He replied, “Looks like a double Windsor to me.” And went on down the line. Another guy came behind him and asked me (at the top of his lungs) who’s going to win the football game this Saturday? Ordinarily this would not be a tough question but I knew that the Nittany Lions were to play the Naval Academy that weekend. I thought that in some perverted way they expected me to answer that Navy would win (this was the Naval ROTC after all). However, I said softly, “Penn State, sir?” “LOUDER!”, he yelled. “PENN STATE, SIR,” I yelled. As he walked off down the line I heard him mutter, “Damn right Penn State’s going to win.” And they did. As a matter of fact Penn State did not lose a single game until most of the way through my junior year.
I was put in with a small group of others who were new that morning. After the initial inspection where they criticized our ties, our shoes, our belt buckles, our haircuts and our lineage, they handed us rifles. RIFLES?! This was supposed to be the Navy for Pete’s sake. Navy guys didn’t carry rifles. Their ships had 16-inch guns, why would they need rifles? I guess they figured that if marching around with a rifle on your shoulder built disciplined recruits for the Army and Marines it was good enough for the Navy too. We spent the rest of the morning learning what you did with the rifle when the leader said stuff like “order arms”, or “present arms”. We also learned how to do the left face, right face, and about face stuff. I was starting to seriously doubt John’s advice about ROTC being a good alternative to the draft. I thought it just might be better to take my chances.
Then things brightened after lunch. An upperclassmen came around and asked if anybody played a musical instrument. My ears perked up but I didn’t volunteer until I heard more. John had also warned me about volunteering before you knew what it might get you into. It seemed that the Naval ROTC had its own band and that every week when all the other slobs were out doing the order arms stuff with their rifles, the band members practiced playing Anchors Aweigh and Sousa marches on their instruments. Heck there wasn’t even any synchronized marching to spell words out on the field like in high school. Everybody stayed together in a tight formation. You also got to wear a green rope around the shoulder of your uniform. That was enough for me. My hand shot in the air. A couple other guys saw the light as well. We learned that this upperclassman was called the “Band Commander”. He had us immediately come with him to check out instruments and music. It was the last time I touched a rifle in my ROTC career. God is GOOD!!
The rest of orientation week went much better. I still had to get up early each morning with my “uniform” on (including a fore-in-hand knot in my tie) but us “band guys” hung around and sort of jammed with our horns since the rest of the band wouldn’t show up for another week or so. On Friday we picked up our “real” uniforms. No more white shirts. The navy uniforms were by far the most attractive of all of the ROTC units. Drill uniform was black slacks and a dark blue wool CPO shirt with black tie and white “captains-type” hat. (This hat was worn with all the uniforms.) Dress uniform was same slacks with white shirt and black double-breasted, six-button blazer. Top coat (necessary in the central PA winters) almost reached the ground. It was heavy wool and also double-breasted. Formal uniform was the white “ice cream salesman” suit. The easiest way to describe it is that it is what Tom Cruise wore in the Top Gun graduation scene. It was a good thing these uniforms looked sharp because it could really get embarrassing wearing them around campus during the anti-war protests of the late ‘60s. Every Wednesday was drill day when the band practiced and all the other guys marched around with rifles on their shoulders. Since I lived off-campus I had to wear my uniform to all my classes that day. Penn State was a pretty conservative school in those days so there wasn’t a lot of harassment but you could feel the hatred from the hippie bunch as you walked by in uniform.
Drill on Wednesday wasn’t the only ROTC activity. We attended classes twice a week in subjects like Naval History, Seamanship, Navigation, Naval Warfare, etc. John had suggested that I take some extra credits at Slippery Rock University during the summers when I was home since my Navy classes didn’t count toward my Forestry degree. That was great advice that eventually allowed me to graduate a term early. My grades were pretty good the first term of my freshman year but the second term I failed chemistry which meant I had to attend Navy study halls at night. That was a good thing because there were upperclassmen there to help you out if you needed it. I never wanted to go back there again so I studied hard and got a B in chemistry the next term. I never had to go back. My freshman year was pretty much one to forget. It wasn’t all that fun nor very successful.
At the beginning of my sophomore year the Navy band held a competition for Band Adjutant. This was sort of an executive officer to the Band Commander. You carried a staff and marched at the head of the band, keeping the beat with the staff and signaling when to turn by blowing a whistle and motioning the staff left or right. There was another signal for when to stop. One of my friends suggested I try out and I figured, what the heck. I wasn’t that good a baritone player anyway. To my amazement I was selected for the job. This made band even more fun. The neatest part was that I helped the Band Commander perform inspections of uniforms, haircuts, etc. My hair got longer and longer until the Commander turned to me during an inspection and noted, “Tommy, you could use a haircut yourself.”
I had a couple good friends in the band but because I lived off campus I never got together with them in the evenings. I only saw them at ROTC activities such as drills, parades, and of course the dances. Each year there was a Navy Ball and a Military Ball. These were big deals where your girl friend came up to school and you sort of had another shot at doing the prom right. The Military Ball was for all the ROTC units and it was held in the winter. That meant wearing the black uniform. The Navy Ball was held in the spring which meant wearing the white dress uniform. I have to admit it felt like a big deal to get all dressed up and go to the ball. We also saw some great entertainment (including the Vogues and the 5th Dimension).
On December 2, 1969 (midway through my sophomore year) the Selective Service Commission held its first draft lottery. This was the way they would determine in what order those born in 1950 (me) would be drafted in the future. I can remember I was in the student union with a bunch of non-ROTC guys who were avidly watching the lottery on TV. If you drew a number much higher than 175 or so you were pretty safe from the draft and could go about planning your future after college. I recall guys cursing when they drew numbers like 57 or 76. Somebody asked my when my birthday was so they could determine my draft number. I said, “Who cares, I don’t have to worry about the draft, I’m in ROTC.” They pestered me until I told them my birth date and somebody yelled out, “Man, you’re number 301, there’s no way you’ll ever get drafted!” I reiterated that I didn’t care. I’m not sure when I began to think seriously that I could now drop out of ROTC and do what most guys did after graduation – get married, look for a job, get on with life. On one hand the Navy meant I would have a job after graduation but on the other hand that job would likely keep my away from my wife for the first three years of our marriage.
I thought about it long and hard and took the remainder of my sophomore year and the whole summer to make my decision. When I went back to school the next fall I would have to take the oath of office and I would actually be in the Navy. They would start to pay some of my school expenses but not all that many of them. I recall meeting with the Professor of Military Science (the head Navy guy on campus) and telling him that I would not be continuing in the program. He was really ticked and asked me why. I told him the truth and also reminded him that the only thing the Navy had ever invested in me was my uniforms which I was about to give back.
There have been many times over the last 40 years when I’ve wondered how different my life would have been if I hadn’t dropped out of ROTC. I’ve always felt bad that I didn’t serve my country in the military but let others do the fighting for me. However, I know that God has blessed my life every step of the way and I wouldn’t trade it for anything. The two years of ROTC were a great experience and I think I’m a better leader for it.
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