Ch. 9. NROTC at Florida A&M University, 1985-1987

1985-1987. Navy Memories IV: FAMU NROTC

It was a long drive from Seattle to Newport, Rhode Island and back to Greensboro, NC. Had a good time with old friends. Then south to Tallahassee by way of Jacksonville to visit with aging relatives. Arriving in Tallahassee I checked into a very seedy motel (lots of them in Tallahassee), bought a newspaper, went to the classified ads section and began my apartment search. I found something in the right price range that first day, made the call, met with my prospective landlord the next morning, and inked the deal. Moved in that evening and went shopping for little things for the house. Within two weeks my stuff arrived from Bremerton, right in time for the start of classes in late August.

I signed up for 23 hours my first semester. A heavy load but I had a plan. Finish in two years, return to the fleet for the four years I would owe, then resign my commission and get my life back on track. The Navy paid my E6 salary, as if on shore duty, but tuition and fees were on my own dime. Lucky for me the NROTC provided all textbooks and after the first semester I qualified for tuition scholarships from the University each semester I maintained a 3.8 average. Minimizing the partying life and really buckling down to studying was an integral part of my plan. I hung out with an Economics classmate between classes, She called me “the Navy man.” That lasted for a whole semester.

Reggie Coles was the brother I’d never had. We met at Naval Science Institute and arrived at FAMU around the same time. Both previously enlisted, we had some things in common. Reggie had been a hospital corpsman. He helped me overcome my fear of the water and get my swimming qualifications done. For that he deserves special and honorable mention. And we both had similar somewhat right-of-center politics. 

Reggie would always say, “slow down Ray, and smell the flowers. These are the best years of your life.” And for better or for worse, and I am willing to consider both sides, I was not interested in smelling no flowers. I had study groups in all my economics and business classes, and granted, some of those study sessions ended in overnights, but I remained focused on steering clear of trouble and getting top grades.

There were some side benefits to my NROTC participation. As the ECP (Enlisted Commissioning Program) in the NROTC we were required to wear our khaki officer candidate uniforms to all classes, so clothing and wardrobe costs were minimal. The NROTC had lots of community involvement, like supervising the Special Olympics, JR ROTC trainings, etc. When a Tallahassee native was killed on the USS Stark, we attended the funeral and performed honor guard and 21-gun salute services. And of course, we Coke hawked, selling drinks in racks in the stands at FAMU and Florida State football games, for which the NROTC Unit received a tidy profit to sustain our operations. 

Some of the guys in the ROTC were also in fraternities. The only fraternity that ever really appealed to me was Groove Phi Groove when I was at A&T, and there was not a chapter at FAMU. Later I would think about doing the graduate chapter thing in DC. It wasn’t a big enough thing for me to get worked up about and I wasn’t at all insecure about my identity, which I concluded was why people found those things attractive enough to interrupt your life over.

How did I leave out football games? We didn’t have Coke-hawk duty every week. Sometimes we just enjoyed the games. And while FAMU football was hit or miss, the Marching 100 never failed to score! President Humphrey would take to the field after the halftime band performance and recite the poem by FAMU’s fifth president, Dr. George Gore, also known as Rattler charge. I was delighted to find one of his performances on YouTube:

“When the dark clouds gather on the horizon
And thunder and lightning pierce the sky:
When faith is but a glint in the eyes of
The fallen Rattler, and hope, a lost friend –
When the sinews in the chest grow weary,
And the muscles in the legs grow tired,
From those hard charging linebackers –
You must always remember: the Rattler
will strike, and strike, and strike again.”
-FAMU Rattler Charge    

I dated a woman from the Army ROTC. Very compatible, I gave her a key to my apartment, and drove her to Alabama to meet her grandparents. But by semester’s end I had developed a low tolerance for her wish to meet with ROTC guys at the house. All collegial but I didn’t like it. It was my boundary. She graduated and moved on. At the end of the semester I sublet the apartment to a classmate in advance of my move to Washington, DC for a summer internship. 

Here’s an almost lost memory. I spent an entire Saturday at the Smithsonian Natural History Museum, which became my all-time favorite. But we had a very special tour guide.

A group of black people gathered outside the museum. I joined them. A tour guide emerged from the group and we entered. I had stumbled upon an Afro-centric tour where every exhibit was explained in terms African people and the African diaspora. Quite an enlightening experience. Is it still being conducted? I don’t know, but I imagine the new NMAAHC drains away all such innovations.

But that summer I had my Waterloo. I met a woman while on a summer internship in Washington, DC who changed the course of the rest of my life. Now, before you go imagining something tawdry and lascivious and maybe even promiscuous, it was none of that, or, it never went that far, but I would never be the same man again. It began with little emails exchanged at work. Emails at work were a new thing in the mid 80’s, full of promise and potential. Marie used email to share with me samples of poems she wrote, mostly sonnets. I hadn’t written a sonnet since my mother’s death, so there was that reawakening. I tried writing sonnets back to her but fell flat on my face. I was not good at it. But I didn’t stop trying to write. The summer ended, I completed my internship and wrote a paper for which I would get academic credit in the fall. We parted ways and I returned to Tallahassee. But it would not be the end of our poetry interludes.

It was supposed to be just a summer fling. We talked about it. We promised each other we would just walk away when the time came to leave DC and head back, me to Tallahassee, and she, to her university life in Washington and ultimately, to Palo Alto.  But what happened? Too many lunches together. Too many conversations. Too many after work walks through Lafayette Park and Dupont Circle. Too many times gently kissing each other good night. Too long a subway ride to Tacoma Park to the boarding house where I was staying. Too many sleepless nights wondering where it all might be headed between us. And then the poetry. And bringing it to work the next morning to send to each other by email. I didn’t want to fall in love. But I fell. She was stronger, always was, and kept to the plan. So it goes. I didn’t know it at the time, but I would remain deeply in love with Marie until we saw each other again, four years later, and even beyond.

I was actually a bit crestfallen if not heartbroken upon my return that fall but I buried myself in my coursework, venturing over to the business school to take a course that was known as a GPA buster, Corporate Finance. At the foundation of the course, I discovered tons of microeconomic theory, my forte at the time, and very likely the element that most business majors lacked familiarity with and that made the course so difficult for them. Implicit in all that was a longstanding split between the business school, highly recognized and regarded, and the economics program, pushed out in a crazy power struggle between deans and professors, and eventually buried in the College of Arts and Sciences, nestled with history and political science. Ultimately, the business students paid the price, having to take the finance course over and over again until they got a sympathy pass. 

Everybody in my study group got A’s, even the one or two who were taking the course for a second time and hoping for a C. We worked every problem at the end of each chapter, not just the assigned ones. And we found similar problem sets in related textbooks.  

It turned out that a good reputation in the business school was lucrative in a manner of speaking – I attracted perhaps unwanted attention. At the end I was recruited for the MBA program and offered a scholarship, but staying one more year was not a part of my plan. Maybe it should have been and the NROTC commanding officer told me a provision could be made to delay my return to the fleet to complete the MBA since I was finishing way ahead of my allotted time. But I was intent on sticking to MY plan.

One more story before it falls through the memory cracks. One Saturday afternoon, while I was home working through finance problem sets, I received a phone call from a classmate from my technical writing class. I know, technical writing sounds almost remedial, but it was actually an interesting class where we learned “technical” composition, writing for business, engineering, etc. It was actually one of the more useful writing courses I ever took.

Following the conversation I went back to my studying. But the conversation stayed with me, kept circling inside my head. I thought about what I had been told, about the significance of sharing that information with me. I wondered had I responded appropriately and with the proper amount of care and concern. I mean, we are all pastors and shepherds to one another in this life and the disposition of our fellow man is often in our hands. In life, people have entrusted me with information, very personal information and there is the need and the intention to share human experiences with another human. I have tried to keep that in mind over the years and I hope I have been successful and my efforts have been pleasing in the eyes of God.

**************************

Some poems from the period:

“When the dark clouds gather on the horizon
And thunder and lightning pierce the sky:
When faith is but a glint in the eyes of
The fallen Rattler, and hope, a lost friend –
When the sinews in the chest grow weary,
And the muscles in the legs grow tired,
From those hard charging linebackers –
You must always remember:
the Rattler will strike, and strike, and strike again.”  
–FAMU Rattler Charge

Elegy for Rhia Walton

(Rhia died way too soon. I miss her, I miss our conversations, the letters we exchanged. I deeply regret not having expressed to her, while she was alive, how much she meant to me. There is an old Portuguese saying which translates “Death has no remediation.”)

Each time I pass through Richmond I feel
your presence more strongly than I ever did
when you were here with us,
Sharing with us our laughter and our fears.

Your departure was so sudden, so unexpected,
So tragic. We miss you terribly and
We’ve exhausted all attempts to fill the vacuum
That your withdrawal has created
In our hearts and in our conversations.

My love for you was a helpless infant
That, orphaned, must now fend for itself.
From time to time I feel the conspicuous
absence of some quality in life.
I know what is missing is you.

May 1986

Poem for Margaret Rose

When I visited Brazil I rented a bicycle
and rode out,
away from the city,
into the countryside,
trying to escape the tourist traps,
the nightclubs,
the crowded beaches,
the shops.
What I discovered convinced me
I had found paradise.

When I invited you to lunch
after calculus class,
your response
(Why do you want to have lunch with me?)
surprised and thrilled me.
I sought your company because you seemed
so pleasant, so unique, so different,
so attractive, yet so unassuming,
and I was so swept away by your charm.

And like the forests and jungles outside Rio,
what I discovered convinced me
I had found paradise.
Your friendship,
your kindness,
your trust are paradise:
all one; all the same.

Why should I draw a boundary
around paradise?

Tallahassee, May 1986

Poem for KC

fascinated by her voice
calling me by the nickname
she invented when our friendship was new.

fascinated by her beauty
and the mysterious charm by which
she keeps me willingly
under her perfect spell.

fascinated by her independence
as she charts her own course
and steers her ship,
forthwith, to its destination.

fascinated by her love,
so elusive, yet so deliberate
and so express, and by the hope
that someday she’ll share that love
with me.

Haiku for CEH

I start and stop and
stop and start staccato-like,
through this night of night.

The songs I sing and
play and live reflects the love
your soul shares with mine.

In my loneliness
I call your name/ask for you
and you re-appear

and surround me with
your hope and strength and joy and
all the love you are.