USNA Class of 1998 |
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Shipmate Class Notes |
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June 2000Hello great '98! I hope everyone is doing great wherever they are. This article is full of good news, but as is too often true, I have some sober news as well. From Ed Yealdhall's mother: Ed Yealdhall, father of V. Edward Yealdhall, passed away on 2 March 2000. Our family extends love and gratitude to the officers and men of NavSpecWar Unit Four and the officer and men of Seal Team Four, as well as all the other families of Classmates and graduates of the Naval Academy who have consoled us by their expressions of love. The family of Ed Yealdhall (Mary, Edward, Mark, Marie, and Marcus)Our sincerest condolences to Ed and his family. Thank you to all of our Classmates who offered their support. And now to shift to the good news from the fleet. From Kaitan Gupta: Just some news from the Greyhawks of VAW-120 a.k.a. The Mighty E-2C RAG. Tara Golden, Brandon Warren, and Derrick Dudash became the first '98ers to earn their Hawkeye wings in February. They will all be staying in Norfolk. Paul Krumholz will be next followed by Matt Dodge, Nick Ferratella, Ben Duelly, then finally myself, then Nicki Maunder, and Jerry Schafer. Ben and Nick are particularly enjoying it here, although I think Nick enjoys any place that isn't the Academy. Andy Newsome is also here waiting to go to Crypto school in Pensacola. In other news, April Goldsby is now April McBride (finally). Scott McBride and April got married last month in Fairfax. April is starting the P-3 RAG at NAS Jacksonville and Scott is on a frigate out of Mayport.Thanks, Kaitan. Good to hear from you. From Tony Bancroft: On 2 March, Dustin Byrum and I selected jets Meridian. Jarret Stricker selected jets Kingsville. Seth Michaud and Brian Swanson selected helos. Other '98 Marines that already selected are: Steve McClune, Tyler Head, Doug Seich, Sean Williams, Bill Harvey, Greig Gehman and John Curtis went jets Meridian. Dererk Cousore, Bart O'Brien, Al Kagen, Ryan Shadle, Brett Allison and Jen Marino went helos.Wow, lots of '98ers in the air, kind of cool, and kind of scary too! From Jake Schmitter: Greetings and salutations from Pensacola. Somehow I finally managed to finish flight training down here and I'll be off shortly to NAS Whidbey Island to fly Prowlers. A ton of our Classmates were also honored with their Wings of Gold: Ryan Ahler, Lew "Burp" Callaway, Brad "MeSo" Horning, Sara Stires, Brian Taylor, Tony "the Body" Toma and Pete Weston. I'm sad to be leaving my roomies, Aaron Beattie and Dan Linbloom, but it's about time that I pulled chocks for the West Coast. Lastly, I'm finally settling down and am getting married on 11 November. Look me up in Whidbey if any of y'all get a chance.Best of luck on the wedding, Jake. I wonder if half of our Class is married yet? If we aren't there yet, we must be getting close. From Don Hudson: This is Don Hudson here with the skinny on myself and Chris Scheidler. We recently got ourselves graduated from the communications and informations systems officers course in, you guessed it, the crossroads of the corps, Quantico. This qualifies us as the last of the '98 Marines to leave Quantico. Our destinations for the "mythical fleet" we've heard so much about for the last year and a half are: Don "ebay" Hudson--Okinawa and for Chris "Dude, it's not that bad" Scheidler--Hawaii. Tell all our shippies if they should see any of us out there, try not to ask about Iceland...we're still bitter. Oohrah!Thanks, Don, and I'll be sure to save the Iceland story for another time. And now to hear from two of our Foreign Nationals: From Navin Gopal (gopes98@Hotmail.com): I've been in the Royal Malaysian Navy for 18 months now and life's been pretty good on the whole. I'll be starting on my second appointment on 23 March at the Ministry Of Defense--A job I'm really looking forward to. My last appointment was a real drag. I was a dignified baby-sitter for about 1,000 trainees in the RMN Technical Training School. The job could be summed up in two words--busy and easy. Anyway, bye bye Sahara, green pastures here I come.Good to hear from you from so far away. From Arif Cirtlik (acirtlik@hotmail.com): I always wanted to get in touch with you as to be aware of the things going on there and also let you guys know how I am doing over here, however, that just could not happen due to various reasons. But I received pretty much every single issue of Shipmate and heard of the news related to our great Class. Relating to the latest news, please pass on my best wishes and congratulations to Shawn Gee upon his marriage. Well, before I give you a little info about how I am doing here and my future plans, I first would like to confess to you that I owe a lot to that great institution. If I am still here and bearing the strain and pushing forward to pursue my career goals, that is due to the mental and moral strength that I developed over there. Without being aware of it, I graduated with a lot of high qualities that make me different around here. I am now onboard a Meko-Class frigate, TCG Yildirim, as an electronics officer, which is a pretty demanding job for an Ensign; however, as you know, an Annapolis graduate likes the challenge. Everything has been great so far. I am still motivated and dedicated to reach my career goals. I am planning on applying to a graduate school. Possible ones include MIT, Stanford, Berkeley, Columbia or Michigan in the field of operations research. I will start the process in May aiming to be enrolled by spring 2001. That would be the earliest based on the procedure set by our HQ. You can't guess how much I want this deal. It would be great to be back in Annapolis and recall the memories. Well, Dave, sorry if this took so long, I just kept on writing. At this time I am temporarily in port, however, in a few weeks I will go on a deployment again. Please pass on my sincere greetings to anyone who still remembers me. Thanks again for your time and looking forward to seeing you soon.Thanks Arif. I hope Grad school works out for you, and maybe you'll be in the States for our five year Reunion.  Not quite Salty Sailors, but soon to be. Submarine Officer Basic Course graduates. L to R: Mike Breen, Brian Hogan, Carlos Jativa, Rob Ore, Sinclair Ahn, Jesse Balboa, Steve Blazejewski, Justin Anderson, Ed Hanley, Dave Forman, Dale Matheny, Brian Nowitzki, Dave Leather, Ian Schillinger, and Sam McGowan gather for one last photo (after 15 months of training) before heading our seperate ways out to the fleet. From Jody Smotherman: I got my wings in September at Whiting, and moved out to North Island for the CH-46 FRS en route to Guam. Soon to follow in the phrog community: Meghan Forehand and Paula Langille will be going to Guam and Jeremy Vellon will be going to Norfolk. I am sure there will be even more in the very near future, since I was starting to see more and more '98ers floating around the HTs. I have seen John Cremins around, but he deployed to Bahrain last month, so he will be gone for a while. That is all I have for right now, but there will be more next month since I will send pictures from my wedding on 18 March.There you go with another wedding! Congratulations Jody.  ENS Mike Morgan and ENS Matt Lopes of VINCENNES (CG-49) onboard BLUE RIDGE (LCC-19). "We cook, and then we chill" From Dave Durkin: Things are going well in Philadelphia. I will finish up my master's degree in chemistry at Drexel University in September. The detailer said that I could expect to start API in mid-September. I'm really looking forward to coming back to being in the Navy. At grad school, I think I have had to wear the uniform five times in two years! It was a big change from Annapolis. Anyway, I don't have news about others from our Class because no one really passes through Philly that much. I'm getting married to my "friend" Sarah (who was in the recent Shipmate picture) in July. Since May '98, I've been in touch with Steve McClune, Doug Burfield, Bryan Shipp, and Nat Stusse. They're all still working their way through flight school and doing really well.Congrats on grad school, Dave, and you have my sympathies on not being able to wear your uniform for two years, it must have been rough...
Well '98, that's all for the email letters for this month. Bethany Schultz is now married to Karl Schmidt '97. She is currently in San Diego at the Regional Bachelor Housing Office. Here in Norfolk, I am completely surrounded by the military, and I would have to make an effort not to run into Classmates. The day after I got here I saw Andrew McNiven and Tara Golden in IHOP. Andrew said he was closing on a house with Joe Femenia. Andy Newsome lives just down the road, and his wife, Paula, is going to write a book about what it's like to be married to an Academy Grad. She would appreciate all kinds of input from whoever can contribute. You can call 757-587-6568, email p_newsome@hotmail.com or write to 9238 Philip Ave, Norfolk, VA 23503. I ran into Dale Matheny, once again, this time at a stoplight. And he is rooming with Ian Schillinger, who took some of the JO courses with me, along with Terry Vanecek. James Jones and Justin Anderson are doing well. A few words from my roomie: "'98, we are still number one! All others are number two--or lower. By the way, Class of 2000, congrats on letting the "LOG Magazine" die again. I want my five bucks back. Rivers Delivers!" We are all tearing it up on L. Mendel. Our engineer is LCDR Dale Minich (for those of you in 15th company.) Rivers Delivers! Be sure to check out our Web page: www.usna98.org We're going to use this page to organize our five year Reunion. Best of luck to all you guys, keep up the good work. Fair Winds, DSF | |||||||
| Last Updated: October 18, 2000 |
