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I have to admit, I spent most of my time in the Navy insulated from serving with women at sea. Ashore, they were still “GURLS” (General UnRestricted Line officerS), I didn’t look upon them as even Staff Corps types, since we took Supply Officers and docters to sea with us.
As the “economies” of the mid-90s were settling in, my command, the Combat Systems Mobile Training Team was directed to figure out the merge of ourselves and the Fleet Training Unit that essentially did the same thing we did. It made sense and it wasn’t too much of putting round pegs in square holes.
Off we went, us not the top leadership types, to draw and erase on the dry erase board, until we cobbled together the new organization, which would fulfill the missions of the two units.
At CSMTT, we had a few female sailors, both Yeomen, so they handled admin tasks. FTU, on the other hand, hand a number of females, to include, as I recall, two officers…one listed as the XO, the other in charge of the computer stuff.
LCDR Kathy Hobbs was a “mustang” and the XO. Looked good on her GURL record, being the #1 and all, but we had 5 O-5s as department heads, and a 6th as the Assistant OIC. The discussion went to how to put Kathy in a billet title that wouldn’t appear like she got some demotion. We finally decided, in the Combat Systems Training Group organization to put her into the XO job, recognizing she would be the one to handle the macro and micro administration, which, for the massive travelling we did, not small task, yet we would also know, she wasn’t our “Second in Command” in any sense.
The merge happened, the FTU personnel moved into our building and we shuffled about, grudgingly, but because it was the order of the day, we smiled somehow.
I will also admit, I was tersely polite to Kathy when I had to talk to her, but much of my time was spent on the the road/aboard ship, so the interaction didn’t occur often.
Then one day, OSCM(SW) Dave Roddy came to me to tell me he had been out having a cigarette, and LCDR Hobbs had, during her transit between buildings, commented “So this is how my tax dollars are spent!” Dave was, a little miffed. Dave was one of those E-9s you had to tell to go home, and sometimes drag off the ship we were working so we could catch our lift back to home plate. The taxpayer way underpaid Dave Roddy in any case, but Kathy didn’t know that.
Maybe a week of so later, as a few of us were “brainstorming” (no, really, we did it all the time!) in LT Russ Wyckoff’s office (he had a couch his wife told him to get rid of), three of us on the sofa, feet on the edge of Russ’ navy issue metal office desk, were greeted by LCDR Hobbs stopping n the door and saying (you guessed it): “So this is how my tax dollars are being spent!”
I, moving only my head to look her direction said: “LCDR Hobbs, you’re new here. It might be good if you went out on a CSA (Combat Systems Assessment) with us sometime, so you could see what we do. It would help you a lot when you have to answer the questions on the phone when we’re on the road.”
Yes, I was baiting her. The response, without her missing a beat,,,,that will come next Wednesday! Come back then for another installment in this series…
