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Does anybody have any advice on getting from midway airport to graduation. Im hoping i don't need to rent a car or take a taxi.

Thanks for all the info!  It's been a long process with my son and a seed that was planted a few years ago sprouted without me knowing.  We were watching TV a few weeks ago and he just looked over and said "I think I am going to join the Navy."  He was surprised when I agreed and asked how I could help.  He is a sophomore in college and is starting to see that a college degree doesn't necessarily prepare you for life or guarantee a future income

He's a very smart kid (94 on the ASVAB) but is kind of like a vehicle with a powerful engine and the wrong transmission, he just can't get going.  My hope is that the Navy will rebuild him and set him on a course that will tap his true potential.

With his score, they have offered him pretty much whatever he wanted to do and were pushing the nuke program on him.  Unfortunately, it doesn't mesh with his natural bent.  He has decided that intel is where he wants to be and offers him the long-term opportunities he is looking for in life.  We will see what he actually signs up for very soon. He is going to MEPS on Monday for processing and then in to the DEP till probably January.  His recruiter has been very helpful at each step.

I am looking forward to the guidance of those that have come before me on Navy Dads as well as contributing to those who have yet to come.  This site has been invaluable so far as we research the process he is getting ready to go through and try and avoid any pitfalls along the way.  (not to mention preparing our spirit for our boy's journey.)

Thanks again and I look forward to getting to know y'all more through the process.

Son Cody drove to San Diego and is at Coronado.  He is in SERE training and will be dropped in the mountains Friday for his 7 day survival. 

Well folks let me touch on one thing real quick, I am sitting here at Navy Lodge that's right I said Navy Lodge and that feels so easy to say.

This odyssey began right at 3months ago, I never would have dreamed this could be but yet here we are. He is so different from that teenage boy that left my house in mid April and its not the way he talks, or the manner in which he carries himself, its not even the self confidence he just oozes now, but something deeper much much deeper. Something in his eyes, something that he hasn't even seemed to find yet. I find it a bit uneasy that something hiding behind those blue eyes.

He has been pushed to his absolute limit only to discover new ones, and set those a little farther out a bit more out of reach just to ensure that he keeps on moving. I wondered as I watch him walk down the mall today, at first he was head high shoulders back strollin proud as they say,. but it has been a long three months for this young man, an extended period colored by the most difficult things he has ever endured. Due to the extended period added onto the original 8 he now has to wait. Wait until a slot opens up at A school, wait until the wheels turn finding him the training position he should have been graduating from in just a couple of weeks.

The more time we are together the clearer things become, he has become dependent on that direction; needing that person or persons telling him go here do that or come here do this. I watch both he and his fellow sailors while all bright eyed at noon by 5 or so almost looking lost almost looking as if at any moment someone will show up and coral them all up and send them back to what ever it was that they should be doing. These bright and energetic young men and women have endured a life changing experience, most for the better, some not quite so sure, but all changed.

I see Mothers with questioning faces, friends and siblings while ecstatic at noon looking puzzled by seven. This is played out in many different locations and the faces show so many emotions from happy elated to confused and dismayed now, do not misunderstand by any length of the imagination just merely an observation an accounting if you will. I will never and would never detract from what the Navy has given to my son or for that matter any ones child and having lived myself through Army basic I understand all to well.

The second day of our visit; the day after the big PIR date and it shows a little more, the thing they all strive for is to "get out of this place" never even considering the ones that don't get right on that plane or bus or whichever mode of transportation whisks them away to that whatever awaits. I see these "holdovers"(as they are called) walking away from cars and vans and SUV's or whatever their loved ones have made the trek in and they don't step quite as lively, heads while still high are just not quite as high as noon yesterday, steps not quite as lively. They appear on the walk back one after the other all dressed alike, all look as if they are dreading that night; that night they are still here. The morning to follow no longer a recruit but not the escape they had hoped for. Most of these Sailors are still here because of something that happened something that changed their dates, changed their plans, changed their lives. These men and women have a greater understanding of self sacrifice a greater understanding of those unimaginable limits and a feeling of something while it is visible in the eyes of each one but if you never take the time to look you will never see. Now all of these will go on to serve that greater good being part of incredible adventures, days on end on the sea and they will someday look back with great fondness for these days but for today just a day maybe two it can seem so dark.

That is where we come in those ones that made that trek just to lay eyes or hands on the young sailor waiting for them standing there giving praise not the empty kind but the ones that really matter the little ones that most forget but we will not, we will be right there, waiting, praising even the most minute thing. Holding on to that motivation for them just as long as they need it, just as long as it takes.

The way I understand it, my son has 4 more days to pass his "run" or he'll be separated from service. General discharge. The last day should be a week from tomorrow. Between now and then, he said he'll receive motivational chats from the bottom of the chain to the Commander of the RTC. Through letters and calls, this whole experience has drawn us close together....more so than ever. He doesn't know it, but over the next week he'll receive more mail than he'll have time to read. But maybe SOMETHING will stick and move him the last 30 seconds. I told him "30 seconds to NUKE". Praying and hoping he makes it. He has so much to look forward to.

Tim

On the day this young man was born July 4th 1994 I stood at the foot of his mothers bed holding him and as I did I looked at my lovely wife and said "this is going to be a hell of a ride" and I must say it has been at least that

This is the entry that I have been waiting to write for quite sometime now and it has finally come around. My wife's phone rang Friday and when she saw the number she "damn near wrecked" as she pulled off the road to answer her phone, as she said hello she heard his voice say "you are no longer speaking to a SR I am now officially a Navy Sailor". At that point he began to regale her with his night long experience of Battle Stations, and how hard it had been but he had made it through. All the things he had accomplished and how when it was all over they had been capped, they were recruits no more. She said she had heard a confidence in his voice as never before, and I wish I had been the one to get that call but I guess it is like when they pan the sideline on any college field on Saturday and the players say "Hi Mom" 

I had made the statement before that my sadness wasn't for the accomplishments and growth he has experienced but for the loss of that little boy with the skinned knee or the runny nose, all the way back to him standing there arms outstretched hands opening and closing wanting "me" to hold him.

On the Tuesday after the 4th I had received a letter from him and within this envelope was a piece of paper that has become more precious than any gold could ever be you see written upon this paper was a letter from this same young man this boy who was now without a doubt a man he told me stories in this letter from so many years ago things he remembered from his youth stuff I was should no one but me remembered now here is this young man recounting them to me. I had been what he had thought of on his birthday see his birthday is the 4th of July and mine is the 5th so we have always had that connection and at the same time it has never for either one of us been the ideal time for a birthday, we live in WV so the 4th has always been around here "miners vacation" all the kids gone with their families to the beach or some other place so he never had the big blow out parties because his friends were gone. Now his first birthday away from home finds him in Boot at Great Lakes and with that he thought of me. He called me a hero, and a role model and said some of the things he had made it through were because of the example I had set for him and that had been motivation for him, that one will make you get a little teary eyed to say the least.

As you have read along with this young man's start to an adventure that will unfold over the next chapter of his life and what an adventure it will be in new lands and cultures seeing first hand the things he had read about in the books he so loves, I will from time to time write about the life he has made for himself the direction he takes it and it takes him. This is one of those things you want and wish for for your children and god knows Jarad has never done it the easy way that's for sure but this one is his, his to hold his head high and his shoulders squared and walk proud like a Navy man. Oh I have forgotten one thing in all this rant He is going to get his PIR this Friday he gets to be a part of this with a different Division so now we get to make last second arrangements to be there, just when I thought it was different here we go again, wish me luck its gonna be a hell of a ride.   

Hello everyone. My son has xhecked in with the POs at the airporr and called. He spoke to his morher and she was a bit shaken with his tone. As a marine I tried to explain it is the initial shock of military life. Looking forward to watching my son drill at The PIR. Thanks for welcoming me into the group

Turn by Natalie June Reilly

You think you know what it means to love your country, until your firstborn son comes to you with the news that he’s joined the U.S. Navy. The sheer pride on his face is enough to comfort you — his mother — because you know he’s no longer a little boy. He is a young man struggling to find his feet in this world.

Admiration doesn’t even begin to scratch the surface of what you feel for him and for his decision. However, in the back of your mind, haunting images of wartime cut in and suddenly you’re staring the most real kind of sacrifice in the face, wondering if you ever really loved your country that much.

My son, Billy, left for boot camp a few weeks ago. I, alongside his dad, grandmother and younger brother, witnessed him raise his right hand and swear an oath to protect his country — at all costs. It was one of the most profound moments of my life. I didn’t know it at the time, but nearly 21 years ago I gave birth to a U.S. sailor, one of the good guys. What’s not to be proud about that?

As a mother, I suddenly became acutely aware of other men and women in uniform. I am compelled to hug them, hold them close so that they might never forget how much they are loved and appreciated, if for no other reason than to think that someone might do the same for my son while he is out of arm’s reach. I imagine it wouldn’t hurt to do the same for their mothers, as I’m sure they deserve it as much, if not more. For theirs is a sacrifice hard to put into mere words.

Within just a few days of my son enlisting, I learned of one such mother’s sacrifice. Her son’s name was Chief Petty Officer Christian Michael Pike. He was a sailor from Peoria, a handsome young man who died from wounds he suffered in Afghanistan, while upholding the same oath that I watched my son and a group of other young men and women take just days before. This devastating news hit too close to home.

You think you know what it means to love your son, or even your daughter for that matter, until you watch him or her walk out of the safe comfort of your home and into the waiting arms of our U.S. military and all that entails.

And you think you know what faith is, but until you see your child walk through your front door and back into your waiting arms, you really don’t. God bless our troops and God bless their mothers, every last one.