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September 1999 Greetings Great '98! Here we are at another month, and more updates from the fleet. From Eric Anderson: Dave Danelo is going to a Close Combat Instructor school before heading out to 29 Palms to take command of his infantry platoon. As all would expect, Dave is quite excited about this school and is even more excited about getting out to the desert and his "men." As soon as he joins his unit they are slated to go up to Bridgeport, CA to the Mountain Warfare School. Stay out of the way of that Marine! Paul Shoning is still plugging away at the academics at Stanford. He said the EE stuff is starting to get old so he's taking some business school courses as well as logging some time in the weight room to stay ready for dive school. Tim Fiest is now happily married and doing whatever it is that Marine artillery types do. Several guys, including Steve Le, Dave Danelo, Scott Grossman and Nat Stusse made it over to Oklahoma for Tim's wedding and said it was a great time. For some reason their behavior was far better at Tim's wedding than mine. Hmmm... Bill Delmar is in P-cola working on finishing up primary. He's keeping himself busy with some studying, swing dancing and church softball. Ask him about going to guns on the Florida countryside. Chad Seagren just finished up some sort of Marine Corps aviation maintenance and supply school in Georgia which in his words was "wickedly easy" and is getting ready to head west to his unit. I'm sure there will be some Georgia peaches with broken hearts. Nat Stusse is spending his summer teaching Midshipmen as a NTT instructor. Needless to say the man is bored, but I've heard he's keeping himself pretty busy building furniture for his place. How can you tell a Stusse original? Look for raw 2x4's. Brian VerPlanck is managing a restaurant in Los Angeles and finishing up his degree at UC Irvine. He got engaged this last winter with his wedding set for June 2000. He's planning on moving out to Virginia this summer to be closer to his fiancee as well as to find a job in D.C. I am graduating from Stanford next week with my master's in aerospace engineering and my wife and I are heading down to P-cola to start flight school in July. It is funny how different 16 units at Stanford is compared to 16 at the Academy. Okay, it isn't funny, it just hurts. Rednecks and all, I'm quite ready to get down to flight school. Thanks for all that great info Eric. Jeff Sowa will be getting married to Miss Angela Stewart of British Columbia. They met on Jeff's YP cruise, so if any Plebes are reading this, YP's might not be such a bad deal after all. The wedding is 30 October. Best wishes. Rob Radak and Jason Buckley wrote me from Corpus Christi: Flying is going well and we both hope to select sometime over the summer Also down here is Tobey Bartee who has become VT-27's whipping boy. You just can't help to join in though when he forgot his checklists in the ready room on his first flight and attempted to do them from memory. BZs to Jared Asman who organized a watch rotation for Star Wars tickets and especially to Katie Evans and Sandy McBeth who ended up standing in line at 3:00 a.m. during a torrential downpour. Despite the occasional severe storm scare, the weather has broken for the summer and now the cockpit is a brisk 120 degrees. Grades on flights are becoming increasing dependent on how quickly checklists in the plane can be done until the air conditioning come on! Jay Young is in at Duke University and told me that ENS Greg Paradis (lOth Company) has just recently been engaged to Jennifer Cobb. He is currently in Pensacola attending flight school. The wedding has been planned for 16 October 1999 in Pensacola, and he is excited for the big day. Best of luck. Ed Yealdhall is doing well and writes from Coronado: I graduated BUD/S with Class 222 on 23 April with Larry Yatch and Jay Hull. I am reporting to Team 4 in Little Creek, VA. Jay and Larry and on Team 3 in Coronado, CA. If everything goes well, John Cremins, Mike Wisecup, Jason Lavarias, and Brooks Hollan will graduate 25 June. Brian Drechsler (Beef) and J.D. Donaldson are entering third phase. Russ Tate is classing back up in a few days with class 226. I'm sure the guys that are done are loving life now. Good luck to the rest of you. Todd Sawhill writes from Vance AFB: Here are the drops out of Vance thus far... Aaron Shoemaker, Brian Bradford, Bill Davey, Mike Edwards: P-3's. Doug Ramsey and Jared Jacobs: E2-C's, and Jeremy Markin: Jets. The rest of us are trying really hard to get assigned to more than a kite with a short string attached, and so far we are doing ok. Everything at Vance is just like they said it would be...nothing to do but study, but that is about all you have time to do anyway. Oh, and to all of you guys from Dirty Thirty back before we got disbanded, LCDR Bucheister is here (at Tinker AFB), and yes, if he could fry a JO for something, I am pretty sure he would. A**-Man-don't go e-6's! Y'all take care, and if you get the notion, swing by Enid, America for a frosty beverage, door's always open. Jeannette Gaudry gave me a ton of info about our'98 Marines: Ty Phipps, Tom Cleaver, and Dan Martin graduate from Communications school in Quantico on 20 August. Melissa Dunlap is an Air Intel officer attending school in Virginia Beach, VA. Chris Person and Becca Cline graduated from Aviation Maintenance Officer school in Pensacola in May. Becca is stationed in Beaufort, SC. Doug Gainer and James Bailey are finishing up Logistics Officer school in Camp Lejeune, NC. Jenn Marino is in primary flight school at Vance AFB, OK. All of the pilots and NFOs from our TBS Company are in Pensacola now: Dustin Byrum, Brad Hipp, Brian Swanson, Emmett Collazo, Owen Nucci, Greg Summa, Mike Acosta, Nate Marvel, Matt Capodanno, Brad Fitzpatrick, Matt Palmisciano, Amy Kellstrand, and Jeannette Gaudry. The IOC (infantry officer's course) graduated on 21 May in Quantico: Dave Danelo (going to 29 Palms, CA), Funmi Adeyemi (Camp Lejeune), C.B. Johnson (also Camp Lejeune), Adam Collier and Matt Collins, James Dorlon, Sean Dynan, Jake Harriman, Donny Faul, John Chau, Brendan Higgins (all West Coast), and Chris Haynie (2/ 2 in Camp Lejeune). As for other interesting occurrences, Chris Haynie and Jeannette Gaudry got married in New Orleans on 28 May 1999, and a bunch of USNA guys showed up along with friends from TBS And finally, Holly Hoxsie got married to Steve Bidwell on 20 March. Wow! Lots of stuff going on with the Marines, thanks! (and I like the email address: ihtpf.net) Ken Douglas graduated From Columbia University in New York with his M.S. this past May. He just classed up with NPS Class 9905 in June. His section leader is LT Matt Kawas '95. Remember him? Again, it's a small world. Ken recently got engaged to Miss Heather Lee Bruce of Miami, FL and is planning a September 2000 wedding. Good luck! Eugene Bolton dropped me note and said he was watching the Tonight Show with Jay Leno on 28 June, and one of his wedding headlines was the Cover-Hickey wedding. And yup, in the picture of the newlyweds was our Classmate Dave Hickey, decked out in his chokers. I wish I would have seen it. And for the last letter in this issue, my old Peruvian roommate writes from his fleet. From Horacio Delgado: Hello Great '98, I hope everybody is doing well. I wanted to send a few lines greeting you all from Peru. At the moment I am stationed on a frigate until January when I should start my Peruvian "SWOS" which is a year and a half long. After graduation I went on a six month deployment to the Med. onboard DEYO (DD 989) as an Exchange Officer. I was able to participate in a lot of exercises and some more serious stuff such as NATO's presence in Kosovo and SFOR in Croatia. You all know how everything ended in Kosovo, and even though when we were there back in October '98 we didn't get to act, it is interesting to know that we were there just waiting for the orders. Besides that, a lot of port visits made that deployment very pleasant. ENS Milton "Mono" Mendieta, our Classmate from Ecuador was also embarked as an exchange officer, but onboard ARLEIGH BURKE (DDG-51). I am proud to say that we were the first in the Class to get our OOD qualifications and that Milton was the first guy in '98 to get his Surface Warfare pin on his way back to Norfolk on December 98 Not too easy to do considering that he didn't go to SWOS. BZ Mono. I've been in Peru since December and I was glad to receive REUBEN JAMES (FFG-57). I was happy to meet Mo Efimba '97 onboard. If any of you is going to participate on UNITAS please let me know, since you will be stopping by here Feel free to write me: ghislan@hotmail.com. Thanks Horacio, and as you always used to make the Plebes yell: Viva El Peru! Now, to bring it back to good ol' Charleston, SC, my class of submariners in now well into the prototype training program. Shift work is rather interesting. I never had to pull an all-nighter at USNA, but here I did, and it really sucked. Brian Hogan and Ed Hanley are on crew with me, along with Erick "EZ" Edwards and Tim Schubert who are in the class ahead of me. We all manage to get by, Chuck Spencely has already graduated and will be heading out to NEVADA (SSBN-733) in Bangor, WA after SOBC in Groton, CT. Erick has been pumping some serious iron, and is planning on having a lifting contest with Ryan Erdman once they meet up again in Groton. In NPS Ryan's neck was bigger than EZ's thigh. Seriously. Keep up the good work Great '98, and keep those emails coming my way. Fair winds...-DSF.