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Words from the Wise
Join Words from the Wise with Gary Wise, a retired Navy Command Master Chief, for authentic leadership insights forged in real-world experience. Through engaging discussions and actionable strategies, Gary empowers you to master emotional intelligence, build resilient teams, and unlock your full potential. Tune in for practical advice on delegation, conflict management, and inspiring others, drawn from his over 28 years of service and ongoing leader mentorship headquartered now in Ocala, Florida.
Words from the Wise
Visualizing Success: My Journey from DC2 to Chief Petty Officer
How do you turn an unwanted assignment into your biggest career breakthrough? When I stepped aboard USS Ogden in the Persian Gulf at 2AM and heard "you are so effed" echo down the passageway, I had no idea this moment would fundamentally alter my Navy journey.
The DCPO shop I inherited was a disaster - unbearably hot, papers everywhere, sleeping sailors, and a maintenance program built on falsified documentation. But rather than maintaining the broken system, I saw opportunity. By cleaning out the shop, establishing new standards, and challenging the way things had "always been done," I transformed not just my workspace but the ship's entire damage control program.
What seemed like a punishment became my platform. After proposing a revolutionary approach to ship-wide maintenance that distributed responsibility to department heads, I earned the Executive Officer's trust and changed the organizational structure. This visibility and innovation helped propel me to becoming one of only seven sailors Navy-wide selected for DC1 that cycle.
The challenges continued—responding to an oil platform explosion in the Persian Gulf, conducting counter-piracy operations off Africa, and stepping up as acting LCPO when my Chief was medically evacuated. Each obstacle became another opportunity to demonstrate leadership.
My journey from DC2 to Chief in three years wasn't just about advancement—it was about discovering my true calling. While initially set on becoming a Limited Duty Officer, the process of becoming a Chief revealed where I truly belonged. This revelation led me to fight for assignment to Afloat Training Group instead of accepting recruiting duty, setting me on the path to eventually becoming a Command Master Chief.
Have you found that your toughest assignments often become your greatest opportunities? Share your experience of turning challenges into career breakthroughs.
What if I told you there are like a million ways that everything could have gone differently in my life, wouldn't you believe me? So I talked to people previously. In an earlier video I talked about, you know, my adoption story. I got to go back on that again because I don't think people really understand the chaos that that was, or how I came into this world. I think I talked about, you know, my childhood. I talked about why I eventually joined the Navy, but one period of time that I haven't yet spoken too much about is the period of time after I was on recruiting duty and up until I went to a float training group, san Diego, and up until I went to a float training group, san Diego. And so I want to speak about that a little bit today, because there was just so many important things that happened during that stage of my life Erica's life, our family's life as we tried to figure out just this journey we were on right, tried to figure out this whole Navy thing.
Gary Wise :So, just for context, right, I've been on recruiting duty since 2000. I had been there for 9-11. I had been there for Erica and I getting together, eventually getting married, and then it was time for me to get orders In those days. What you had to do was you had to contact the detailer, who was in Tennessee, and you had to let them know what you hope to get, and it was three things. It was typically going to be a location or a type of a duty station, right, or like a specific job. Rarely was it going to be all three.
Gary Wise :Now, mind you, my first ship was in Satsubo, japan. I had came in the Navy undesignated, just as a reminder for everybody, I'd been in the pit for the majority of my time on the first ship. So even though I was a damage control man which was again emergency responder, firefighter, all that other stuff I'd never really done the job. And then recruiting duty, and recruiting taught me to be the salesman, they taught me to be this marketing person. They taught me to be real personman. They taught me to be this marketing person. They taught me to be real, personable and be able to talk to anybody. But so they made me a better sailor in some aspects. But I had not gotten the chance to get better at being, let's say, a DC man, even though what I would say is recruiting really helped to get me out of my shell and when I get back to the fleet that's going to really be significant because I have to be a public speaker as a damage controlman. I don't have to be a public speaker as an engineer, but as a DC man. That's going to be crucial.
Gary Wise :So I called the detailer up and Erica and I had spoken about it and she was supportive of me wanting to go to the West Coast. I wanted to go to San Diego because my family is originally from Utah. My mom and my dad were taking care of my little sister at the time and her kids and I wanted to be closer to them and San Diego was the closest thing to that point. I had just recently decided that I was going to stay in the Navy. Like a lot of young people, I wasn't sure that the Navy was the military, was going to be a long-term thing, and I had just recently decided you know what? I'm marrying Erica. This is all I know. This is all I got. I'm a second-class petty officer, so I'm an E-5. I'm going to go all in on this Navy thing and we'll see how far we can take it. Highest pay grade wins was my thought process at the time.
Gary Wise :So I called the detailer up and I'm basically like, look, I'll take whatever you got in San Diego and could I get a C school? Could I get a school of some sort going to San Diego? Mind you, I'd never been to a school. I struck my my job. I had to. I worked my way up through the chop chain on my first ship. I did all the requirements and things that I had to do. I got my surface warfare pin and I took the test that I made rank and I got my rating. I got my job in the Navy. But I had never been to a formal school yet for damage control except for, like the basic shipboard firefighting stuff. And so I wanted to go to the chemical biological school and route to my first ship. And the detailer says first ship and the detailer says no. The detailer says no, you can't do that, but I'm, I will send you to the uss ogden in san diego.
Gary Wise :And it was another amphib and at first I wasn't sure I wanted another amphibious ship, another it's a blue green ship. We call it that because the united United States Marines ride these kinds of ships. That's the kind of ships that we bring the Marines on with blue-green Navy, the Gator Navy. I'm very proud to be a part of that Navy, by the way. But at this time in my career I'm not certain. I want to do another amphib. I'm thinking maybe I should do a destroyer or a cruiser, but I'm also worried because I think I get seasick and I'm kind of worried how it's going to ride. We'll get to that right. But the Ogden what's unique about that name is I was born in Ogden, utah. The USS Ogden is named for the same person that Ogden Utah was named for. So I said all right, god, that's a good connection, let's do it, bro.
Gary Wise :So I take the USS Ogden orders and I fly from. I get my orders, I check out of NRD Miami or Navy Recruiting District Miami. The plan is to leave my wife Erica in Florida because my ship is already deployed and they're already in the Persian Gulf, so I'm going to be flying to meet them. So I remember I fly to San Diego. Never been to San Diego before my best friend Troy at the time. I've got two best friends Well, really three, counting my boy John. I got John Lefty and I've got Troy. Troy at the time is living in San Diego and so Troy picks me up at the airport, takes me to his house and I'd be, and he is. You wouldn't think he was in the Navy. He was in ABH two at the time, but it was. His house was wild so I couldn't be there. Um ended up taking a couple of days off with him, got a place to stay on the base, flew eventually over to Norfolk and then from Norfolk I flew to Bahrain and then from Bahrain or the Middle East they got me to my ship. I'll never forget.
Gary Wise :So I get to the ship. It's easily one, two o'clock in the morning, shipboard time. Now, mind you, I have not been on a ship since June of 2000. Now it's October of 2003 and it's two o'clock in the morning, damn near. I've been traveling all night. I have I've only had one ship so far in my career and I've got two sea bags right. I've got two sea bags, which is pretty much always what I carried when I traveled. I would take two sea bags and a garment bag right, and the garment bag was what I would carry on the airplane.
Gary Wise :So I remember I'm walking on board the ship and I'm following the messenger and they're taking me down to DC Central, which is the damage control central, which is where there's watch standards awake 24 hours a day and they can help me get me squared away because it's two o'clock in the morning and I'm the new DC2. And as we go to this P-Way, I stand in a long hallway on the ship and there's this guy behind this door and it's a door that has half of it's open, half of it's closed, and I can hear this guy say hey, are you him? Are you the new DC2? And I was just like yeah. He was like you are so effed, you are so effed. And he's like yelling that at me from down the P-way and I'm thinking to myself like what is that? Okay, hi, I'm Gary, right, dc2, wise, nice to meet you. So I meet the DC2. He was a good guy, right, but he had been waiting for me. Let's just put it like that. He'd been waiting for me.
Gary Wise :And I will tell you in life, typically, when people find out a new person is coming to the team before they even really know about you, they're going to start their preconceived ideas as to what they're going to do about you or what they're going to do with you, and I've seen this throughout my life, ever since that portion and I've seen this throughout my life, ever since that portion. It's what I really because remember when I came back to this ship. Now I'm actually thinking like, okay, I'm going to make this Navy thing work. I was good at it when I hated it. How is it going to be now that I decided to apply myself to it fully? So here's this guy telling me I'm effed. But what he don't know is I've already told myself like I'm so glad they're on deployment. I cannot wait to work 24 hours a day, seven days a week for the next four or five months to get everything I got to get done, done, to learn my job. So by the time I get back to San Diego and I get my wife to San Diego, now I can be focused on my family and the ship. Right, I was excited to have four to five months on deployment. And yes, it's after 9-11. Yes, it's 2003. And yes, there's a lot going on. But I'm there for it, I'm super into it. Right, let's go. And so when him tell me I'm so effed, I'm just thinking let's see how it goes. They get me squared away that night.
Gary Wise :The next day I wake up and everyone's pretty much gone. Everyone's on Liberty right, which means they're all out in Bahrain, or I actually think we were in Jebel Ali I don't remember if it was Bahrain or spell, I get it confused uh, but they were on liberty and I just hung out around the ship and I worked to learn where the different shops were at. They had we had a damage control shop, which is where we do all the firefighting gear, uh, maintenance right. So the self-contained breathing apparatuses, the aqueous film forming pumps. We had hplf stations it's the firefighting agent. We used to fight a lot of our fuel fires, anything that's on the flight deck. That's where they did like the CO2 flooding maintenance out of the Aquaeus. We had deep fat fryers in the galley to get maintenance out of there, and then, of course, all the repair locker gear. So this is a big part of our job.
Gary Wise :That's one shop. The shop right across from that is the is the machinery shop. So it's the mr shop and that's where they have like lathes and all kinds of really cool machining equipment and that's where they would. We would just they would fix all kinds of random things. They would make all kinds of cool parts. The mrs are phenomenal technicians. They can make almost anything.
Gary Wise :We had the whole technician shop, which is the HT shop or the welding shop, and that's where they did all the sewage, all the brazing, all the welding, all the pipe fitting. We owned, as the damage control men, as the repair division, we're all one shop, right? The HTs, the MRs and the DC men. We owned all the ship's sewage system. We owned all the fire main, all the firefighting water. We owned pretty much every pipe on the ship's sewage system. We owned all the fire main, all the firefighting water. We owned pretty much every pipe on the ship, right, let's just be honest.
Gary Wise :And then we had one more shop, which is called the DCPO shop or the ERR9 shop, and that was the only shop without any sort of air conditioning. I mean, the first time I ever went down there, I walked in and it was just. I mean, the first time I ever went down there, I walked in and it was just trashed and probably about 107 degrees. It was super hot down there. It wasn't meant to be a shop, it was supposed to be a storeroom that they had converted into a shop. But it was. Knowing what I now know about the Navy, this was supposed to be a storeroom, right, it was not meant to be a shop that people actually worked in or like there was. There was no air conditioning didn't work, there was no air, it was not good. But anyway, I digress.
Gary Wise :So after the first couple of days I didn't meet the chief, right. I didn't meet the officer. Of course everyone's on Liberty, so I'll let that go. I did meet the dc1 so I met the lpo who was leaving uh in the next four or five months or at the end of the deployment. He was leaving um but he was excited to meet me and get me on board and I remember the ship got underway and I did like my basic in doc, my basic welcome to the ship training, because there were several of us that came and met the ship on that day in that port visit uh, after I did all of that, did my welcome aboard, stuff, started working up in the dc shop and that was my goal. My goal was to work up in that dc shop because I had done the dcpo or I had done the portable damage control maintenance in the other shop, that where it's hot and it's kind of trashed. I've done that before in my past shift when I worked as a collateral duty. I wanted to be in that other shop, which is more current, where I could learn more about my job, and that's where all the other DC men were Down in.
Gary Wise :That DCPO shop is where everyone that was essentially sent TAD to the division work. Tad is people are temporarily assigned duty, and I think I told you on a previous video but you don't usually get the people they want you to have. You usually get people that are not very good. Let's just be honest, we don't give them our best people. I will tell you, I own it too. When I was having to give TADs, if you were a strong performer, I was keeping you. If you weren't the best, you were probably getting the opportunity to go work somewhere else. That's how it would go right.
Gary Wise :And so I really was working the angle with the DC-1 to stay up in that other shop, that upstairs shop, and part of that was because the dc2 that had greeted me that night was currently the work center supervisor for that dcpo shop or that, that portable damage control gear shop. I really didn't want that shop. I really didn't want to have to take over after him. I really didn't want to have to deal with that energy or whatever was going on down there. Uh, and after not even two or three days, the dc1 was like I'm gonna keep you up here with me, because he recognized very quickly that I was going to be a hard worker, I'm a critical thinker, and that I was locked in and I'd only been in the Navy at this time just right, about six years, right.
Gary Wise :The other DC-2 that was down there in the DCPO shop had already been in the Navy 12 years, so twice as long as I'd been in the Navy. He had been in the Navy and DC-1, I believe, had been in the Navy about 17 years, so he had some seniority on him as well. Then there was probably, I'd say, seven to eight other sailors in the DC shop that were up there. But after about four or five days I finally meet the chief and the chief basically says hey, man, look, look, I know that you don't want to go down to that DCPO shop, but I need you to go down there. He is, he's, he's done, he's cooked, he's, he can't manage it anymore. It's a it's a hard problem to have, because your job is you have to manage all the portable damage control gear, maintenance for the ship. So all the extinguishers, all the battle lanterns, all the valves, all the valves. It's just, it's not supposed to be that way.
Gary Wise :I'll be very honest with you all the United States Navy this is one of the most challenging programs the Surface Navy has to this day. The Surface Navy I can go on any ship, doesn't matter the class Doesn't matter, destroyer, cruiser, any ship doesn't matter, the class doesn't matter, destroyer, cruiser, gator, doesn't matter. I learned this throughout my career. I go on any ship. You show me a damage control training team brief. You show me a zone inspection and you show me a DCPO training and I'll tell you that culture of that ship. Those are all I need. Those three things, those three indicators are all I would need to make an assessment of that ship. Because for the surface maybe I know how complicated it is to do those three things well, right, and on this ship, their model of how they're trying to manage this program is just fundamentally broken and I don't know this now at that point starting it off. I've learned this throughout my career and it's through this next period of time that I'm on that ship.
Gary Wise :But I can tell that when I walk in the shop I go down there to tell him that I'm taking over and he can leave, and the shop is just destroyed. I mean, I don't blame them. It's a hundred and freaking 10 degrees down there. It's not the pit. It's not like we're in the boiler room, right? This is supposed to be your shop. Sailors are asleep all over the deck, papers trashed everywhere, parts everywhere, Just the place is a mess and my strategies is I've learned how to take over new shops because I've done this a lot in my career since then.
Gary Wise :Number one I get the relief I have the person tell me what they've got to tell me and then I say thank you, because I'm going to check it all again anyway. So just tell me what you got to tell me. No harm, no foul. You get out. I'll verify it. The good news was he wasn't going far. He was just going to the other, to the other shop. He still had a year left on board this ship, uh, so he wasn't going far. Hindsight, 2020, he probably wishes I hadn't relieved him, but it also was one of the biggest breaks of my career.
Gary Wise :At the time, I was thinking this was a huge setback. I was thinking, oh, here I am Once again. I didn't get a school. Right Now I'm getting put back in the DCPO shop to work with a bunch of people that don't even want to be in the Navy and I'm doing the same old maintenance that nobody wants to do and whatever. But you know what I'm optimistic, I'm going to make it work.
Gary Wise :Step one my first thing I always do. Number one is we field day the shop. So I tell everybody we're emptying the shop out, we're throwing everything away that looks like trash or crap and we're cleaning this whole shop and we're getting it all squared away. By the end of that first day I probably already fired four or five sailors I only had about 10, but as they started giving me attitude, I just started sending them away. What were you from? I don't want you to go back where you came from, and I would keep the four or five that actually were not giving me a problem. They weren't arguing with me because of course I'm disrupting the pattern. Right, I'm the new second class petty officer and what? We're going to clean the shop. Yeah, I'm not working down there, that's all. My shop's going to look like we were painting.
Gary Wise :I had. I redid the whole shop in like four days and the ones that stayed helped me All right days and the ones that stayed helped me All right. And I got rid of those other four or five because they just were turkeys and they were all older than me in the Navy. I'm a six year second class patty officer. Most of them are like 10, 11 years in the Navy. But hey, you know what, you don't got to work with me, you don't got to like me. Good luck, figure it out Away, we go. Luck, figure it out away, we go.
Gary Wise :After that first week or two, I remember I'm starting to get my hands around working the computer system, using the email. I'm learning how to schedule the maintenance and figuring out how to do certain things. And I remember we're doing a force revision. And a force revision is where, essentially, you get a whole bunch of new maintenance for the next period of time and what you have to do is implement that into your systems, validating that everything is still good and current and accurate, and then you'd have to get it approved by, typically, your chief, your devil, and the 3mc who is the maintenance chief for the ship. Oh, and there was equipment validations that we had to do. We had to do equipment validations weekly, which means they have all the equipment on the ship and the computer system for the ship to write jobs or whatever. It is right. And our job was to go out every week and validate whether the configuration of the ship was the same as the computer system. This is in our navy, right? It's just a freaking, it's, it's a frankenstein system. It really is.
Gary Wise :But of course, ships like the ogden have been around for a long, long time, like pre-vietnam time. She's decom now. But in order for you to write good jobs, you had to have good equipment information. And I remember I'm working on this forest revision, so I'm learning how to do 3M. And I'm talking to the 3MC, the senior chief, and he's like why don't you go get the other DC2 and have them help you? And I was like no, no, no, no, I just need to do this myself. I'd already fired a bunch of his buddies, I didn't need any problems there. And I'm like you know, I just I can learn this. I need to learn this If you can help me. Thank you, I appreciate your time. And then he says oh, by the way, I need you to give me some equipment validations. So what's that? He said well, I gave them all to the other DC too. I said what do they look like? He said they're a bunch of papers. Well, I'm pretty sure I threw them away. I didn't tell him that, but I'm pretty sure they were all over the deck of the shop and I'm pretty sure we just chucked it all because I didn't think anything was valuable that was being used as matting on the floor of the deck. Right, I chucked it. So he says go get the DC-2.
Gary Wise :I remember I go out to the flight deck because the DC-2 that I had relieved is on the flight deck. They're hydrostatically testing the fire hoses for the upstairs DC shop. And I went out there and I was like, hey, man, the 3MC wants to see us. He was so angry. He was like what'd you say? What'd you tell him? What'd you do? I was like, look man, I don't know, I'm just trying to figure out how to do this job. He's asking me about a corporate validations. I don't have any corporate validations and I don't have any papers or anything like he's talking about. Well, they were in the shop. I was like, brother, there was just a bunch of papers that were all over the ground that we were all walking on. Is that them. Yeah, that was them, they're gone. I threw them away. Okay, I'll go tell him. I will go tell him that part. You don't got to go with me to go tell him that part.
Gary Wise :And so I go back to the senior chief and I'm like senior chief, I threw those papers away. I said I took over the shop. They were all over the deck. I didn't think they were important. They're gone. So I, I don't know what to tell you. Whatever I got to do next to figure this out, let me know. But they're gone.
Gary Wise :And the senior chief was like where's the other DC-2? And I said he's on the flight deck. He's doing something. But this is my fault, I did it, he didn't. He doesn't know anything about it. He's like no, no, no, you're good. He goes out and goes to find the other D's too, and I'm sure he levels him a little bit.
Gary Wise :Later on that day I get a phone call. I go back up to his office. He gives me a binder full of brand-new, crispy equipment validations. It says don't throw these in the trash, can? I said I won't. And this is me beginning this tour on board. I've literally been there not even two weeks weeks and it is what it is right.
Gary Wise :You're finding, you're turning over the skeletons in someone else's closet and you're figuring out what's wrong, what's right, what's broken, what's not going good. And I'm figuring things out. I get called up by the chief. He calls me up to DC Central. I never see the chief. I'll be morning. We have quarters. We don't see the chief. The divo's there. The divo is a DC central. I never see the chief. I'll be morning. We have quarters. We don't see the chief. The divo's there.
Gary Wise :The divo is a DCA. He is an. He is an LDO. He's an ensign at the time, I believe. Now he's a Navy retired. Oh, five commander LDO, he was a. He was also a chief petty officer, dc type in his past life and then he had converted to LDO. I didn't even know what LDO was at this time. And LDO just so for those of you listening to me is a limited duty officer, which means you had to have been prior enlisted before you converted to the officer program.
Gary Wise :And the chief? I never see him and the word on the deck plates is that he and the DIVO, the DCA, are not getting along. Now, mind you, we have a separate division officer as well, who is a line officer, who is coming out of the Naval Academy or ROTC something like that, who is junior to the NSIN LDO, who was a former chief petty officer, right? So this is pretty common in the Navy where these two gentlemen are not really seeing eye to eye, right? So the chief, his flex, is to not be around.
Gary Wise :That's what chiefs used to do when I was younger. If they weren't getting along with, like the warrant officer or the LDO or somebody, they would just hide away, they would disappear, they would do whatever they were going to do and the chief's claim to fame was number one. Looking back on it now that I know a lot more things. He was a top-ranked Chief, so the DCA had nothing for him, right? Chief was already up there. Uh, he was a qualified EO, which meant that he was standing watch in the pit on probably 6 and 12 rotation, which means 6 hours on 12 hours. So he had that claim to fame. The other word I understood was Chief was a little bit salty because he had applied for LDO and this other guy had gotten LDO and Chief had not. So there's that salt in the wound where they had both formerly just been Chiefs competing for promotion to the Wardroom and the one guy got it, the other guy did it. The chief ends up getting it, just so, you guys know the moral. He ends up making senior chief and then converting over to the officer program. So, god bless, good luck, right, whatever.
Gary Wise :But this is the drama that's going on in this division. At the time, again, nobody's managing the DC2. Who's just down there in the DCPO shop. Fire people, right? Nobody. I think I told you on a previous story.
Gary Wise :So when I fired the people, the chief calls me up and says hey, I heard you fired so-and-so and so-and-so. I said I did. He said well, just so you know you're not going to get any replacements. Now, mind you, this is my chief telling me. He didn't tell me I couldn't do it because I'd already done it. I'd already done it, right, no, take backs. And it had been weeks since I'd done it. But he said I'm not going to get you anybody else to cover for them or to backfill that. That's on you. Ok, fine, no problem, I don't care me and the other four or five guys that were still down there with me, we're doing it. As a matter of fact, what I said was the only thing I do need is I don't have anybody from our division that's working for me. So can I get somebody from our division, from the dc, from hts or mrs, to work with me as part of our team, because I need to be the management of this whole organization. I can't also be the maintenance person, and he got me a body for that, so I got a dc3 or a third class petty officer to come down there work for me there. So that worked out. Uh, by, arguably by by about three months into this, it starts to become visible to the crew, to the ship, that I'm running a much better shop than had previously been ran. We're getting the maintenance done, I'm not causing problems.
Gary Wise :But then a couple of things happened. Number one it comes to light that the PMS or the maintenance was not being done on the ventilation properly, because I was trying to figure out how to do it and nobody could explain to me how to do it. But it all been getting signed off for the last year or two. See the problem. I'm trying to figure out how to do it. Nobody can show me how to do it or even explain to me how to do it, but the people have been signing off for it. There was the filter cleaning, which is monthly, which is simple, that's nothing. But there was a lot more to it than that. What they had been doing was essentially just moving the checks to the right or to the left or deleting them and saying they didn't apply anymore. And when I figured all that out and I went to the 3MC, the senior chief, that caused a big problem. And that was a big problem for the chief, for the DCA, for the department head, for the previous DC2, because, okay, part of our installed firefighting damage control response capabilities is to be able to manipulate ventilation appropriately through configurations. You're telling me that we have not been doing the maintenance on this stuff. So what if we can't do it? Yeah, it's a good question, I don't know. Can someone help me figure it out that that was my thought process. So this is red flag, like all the play number one.
Gary Wise :Number two is I do this spot check with the XO. We do a bunch of spot checks down on this shop. It's just all kinds of spot checks, and what I learned very early was it was just a song and a dance, right, right, the khaki or the chief or the officer that was doing the spot check was just trying to get their spot check done. My guy was just trying to get the spot check done and not get in trouble. So I would just facilitate the simplest, fastest, easiest thing for everybody and everybody was happy. That's what I learned Now, knowing what I know now.
Gary Wise :That's not how it's supposed to go. It's supposed to be they get selected by the person doing the spot check and then the person has to prepare. But that's not how it goes really. Just being honest, they need to doge that damn program in the United States Navy. Gary Watt said it. I hate it, god. I hate that program. The maintenance program in the Navy is a mess but it's the show that we, you know. They say in 3M or in maintenance program in the Navy they say it's not what you can show, it's what you can prove Right.
Gary Wise :That's what I'm doing as a young second class petty officer. I am just managing these weekly spot checks to keep my people to feel like they're not in trouble. Trying to keep up with all these maintenance checks that we've got to get done, trying to figure out how to handle the things that I can't do because I don't want to just sign them off, because I don't feel like that's the right answer. The guy tells me the old DC2 just says reschedule them. That doesn't seem like the right answer and my gut's telling me that I just need to raise the questions until somebody can give me the right answer. Well, the answers that I'm finding out is nobody knows the right answer.
Gary Wise :Okay, through all of this, we do a spot check with the XO and the XO comes down there and he finds out that I've only got half the maintenance people I'm supposed to have in my shop. There's an instruction for this shop which says how many people I'm supposed to have. I have half that. He says why, dc2, do you only have half that? I say, sir, it's because I sent the other half back because they're not good workers, they don't care to try and I'm getting the job done with these five or six people. We're fine. He says, no, that's not fine. You need to have all the people. You need to be doing it right.
Gary Wise :All these other concerns are coming up and I tell him I said, sir, I don't believe it's the best way to run this shop this way. This organizational structure, I think, is wrong. And he says, well, how would you do it? I said, well, my last ship, you know, uss last ship. I explained to him how they ran it, which was essentially there was a coordination cell that worked where I was working at, and then they would coordinate with all the other surrounding parts of the ship to take care of their spaces for readiness to go to sea in all aspects.
Gary Wise :Because if you read the United States Navy Standards Organizational Readiness Manual, the SORM, it says the department head owns their spaces in all respects. For readiness, that's to include material readiness, that's to include battle lanterns, emergency escape, breathing devices, portable fire extinguishers, red lights, white lights. I mean all of that piping, flooding, pipe labeling and stenciling and pipe handles. The whole thing is that department head's job, not some freaking dc2's job in the background. And I get passionate about this because for the rest of my career for you know, 20 more years after this period of time I've been an advocate for this, because I understand damage control is in all hands, responsibility, and I understand that this is the first line of defense. And oh, by the way, ownership of the ship is everyone's job. But the department heads are responsible for portions of the boat.
Gary Wise :And when I was the command master chief, I would damn sure make sure that they own their spaces. It wouldn't be just all some DC2s all in some shop somewhere. And so the XO says, all right, dc2, give me a different instruction or a different way to do this and I'll take a look at it. So, roger, that Went up and I remember I went up and I told the DCA again, who was in Edson, who was a former DC chief, and I told the chief the DCA and the chief were in the same. They were both in DC Central because DC Central also was their offices. They had desks in there, right? So I go tell them. I said, hey, I just did a spot check with the XO. I figured I should tell both of you before you hear it some other way check with the XO. I figured I should tell both of you before you hear it. Some other way.
Gary Wise :I pitched the idea that we put the DCPO ownership and all of the other parent divisions, parent departments, and then I will coordinate all of the books and all the check assignments and all of the gear and all the parts, but they will coordinate the execution of the maintenance. The chief was pissed. The DCA loved the idea. So again, just showed you what I was dealing with, right? The chief was not happy about that, but the DCA he was like, oh my God, dc-2, what did he say? He said to write the instruction. And DCA said can you do it? And I said yeah, I think so, and you know what I had done. They said, can you do it? And I said yeah, I think so, and you know what I had done.
Gary Wise :I had already networked with other ships in our ARC or our amphibious readiness group. I had already connected with other DCPO work center supervisors on the other ships via email. Again, this is me back in 2003, but I'm already learning the importance of networking because I learned very quickly that I'm not doing it any different than they're doing it. We can all have similar ways to explain things and to share information. So when I emailed them and said, hey, how are you managing this problem, I got their instructions and oh, by the way, one of the ships was already doing it the way that I wanted to do it. It wasn't rocket science man, I was just taking. I could take his instruction, update it for our ship, make the departments match, make the numbers match and run it up the chop chain.
Gary Wise :Looking back on it, I think I didn't know better, but I was pleading stupidity. I had walked in right after the XO Bam Put it right on his desk. Sir Dr Osdorff, dc-2y how's this for instruction? It should have gone through the DCA, through my devo, through my department. It should have done all that. But here's what I now know.
Gary Wise :The XO is the 3M officer for the ship. His job is to make sure the maintenance is being done for the whole boat. Okay, the DCPO program is one of the most important programs when it comes to maintenance on surface ships. If that program fails, the 3M program is probably going to fail. So that XO had a really vested interest in my finding a way to be successful.
Gary Wise :At this time I have no clue about all that Now. I know all that with all my other experience. But at this time I'm just trying to figure out a way to shift this problem, because I just can't do all this maintenance with these four to five guys and I cannot keep just dealing with the people. They're going to give me. That doesn't make sense to me, right? I give it to him, he reads through it, my man gets it done, gets it signed out.
Gary Wise :And I wrote in this instruction that the DCPO for every department and division was going to be the LPO of that division. So I will never forget when this starts to happen. We mustered all divisional LPOs on the Mestex it was, I think it was me and the CMC actually and we told them all that they all now essentially worked with me. Oh man, that was a great day. Talk about a game changer, talk about just an innovative shift. But I'll also tell you, everything turned around that day for that shift because all those first class petty officers, all those first class petty officers again I was not on the damage control training team, I was running, I felt, like the zone inspection program because of my job as the DCPO guy, even though that was the senior chief. And now all these first classes had a connection because of this DCPO program and my pitch to them was to make the ship better, to help them get their people back and they could manage what they were going to do Monday through Friday. I was just going to give them the assignments and that was it.
Gary Wise :So I get all of this done before we get back home off that five month employment, and that employment was it was kind of vanilla compared to my next deployment. I'm not going to lie to you. Like the Marines were off the ship in Iraq, they were deployed, so I'm sure they were going through hell, but we, the Ogden, we didn't do anything too chaotic. That deployment right it gets. It gets crazier later on and during another time we returned to San Diego with, with our Marines and I will tell you we brought back less Marines that went. Unfortunately, I've seen, I've seen us lose people every time during those years, during my 03 deployment and during the 06, 07 deployment. It was just, it's just a tough time.
Gary Wise :We got back home in 04. I went and got Erica. We got back home in 04. I went and got Erica. We drove cross country and I'm still DC2 wise and it's right about this time that I'm recognizing that I think I wanted to go officer Right.
Gary Wise :I'm seeing this DCA. I'm seeing how he's carrying himself. I'm seeing how he's making things happen. I'm appreciating the value he's bringing Him and the chief and that pettiness. I'm appreciating the value he's bringing him and the chief and that pettiness. I'm not really feeling that and I'm I'm pretty much decided that I want to become an officer and I remember I got my eval that March of 04 and I got a very good evaluation.
Gary Wise :Um, it was for me. I again, I didn't know that as an E5, I was going to get ranked in the department or whatever. I had no awareness to those things. But I got a really good evaluation. And so I'm looking at my career and thinking, hey, you know what I was thinking about? Converting to Navy career counselor and getting out of damage control, getting out of engineering. But now, hey, it's going pretty good, I'm doing pretty good. Maybe I'll try to go LDO and look into that right.
Gary Wise :Again, I'm trying to get to the highest pay grade. Well, I've got a problem. I need to make first class petty officer first. How do you do that? Well, get good evals. Hey, I just got a good eval. Next up, I've got to take a test, right, right, they offer the test twice a year. Well, I'm studying every watch I'm studying. I'm studying as much as possible by the advice of my study guides. I'm invested in my am I studying for this advancement exam because I know that I've got to pass this test and I've got to do good on this test. I'm competing with all the other E5s in the Navy in my job for this advancement.
Gary Wise :Um, I remember during that next year life was actually really good. It was just go to work, I had Erica and I had a had a condo. Uh, we bought a condo, which was worst financial decision of my life. I'm telling you guys that story another time. That was a tough one, but we learned the hard way I ended up. I remember coming home one day and Oprah was on television. I don't watch Oprah, but Oprah was on. Erica was at work at the time. She worked at Pacific Trust Bank and I'm watching Oprah.
Gary Wise :And on this television show there's the authors of this book called the secret, right? So this is my first exposure to the theology or the ideology of the secret, and their thought process was essentially everything in the universe gives off a vibration. That this is what they were saying and I'm listening to it as I'm making my lunch. Everything in the world gives off a vibration. Everything in the world correlates to the vibration that you're sending out, or it resonates or responds to the vibration you're sending out. Then the universe, essentially through the law of attraction, is going to bring things towards you that base off your vibration. That's what I'm hearing. I don't know if it's true or not. I'm listening to it. I think it's interesting, but I just I'm not sure. So I think you know what they said in this conversation that you should think about meditating or you should think about visualizing. So I said, okay, I'm going to start meditating or visualizing, making first class petty officer and then making LDO. Right, this is what I'm going to do.
Gary Wise :And I used to PT every morning. I would get up and go into the ship every morning bright and early, be on the treadmill running Did that for the majority of my career and I would go in. I'd be on this treadmill just running and I could feel you know the excitement of the captain saying my name Congratulations, gary Wise, you're promoted to DC-1. I could feel the enthusiasm from Erica when I called her up and told her hey, I made rank, or I got a promotion, or we're going to get more money because we're broke. Me and Erica were struggling financially back then. We're not making a lot of money living in San Diego, southern California. Oh my God, we were just living on Visa credit. It was tough, and so when I was looking at making that rank, it was like, oh my God, not. Is it only just a next step up in the food chain, but it's a significant pay raise, right, and just, I remember I did this for a long time, I'd say about six, seven months of going in, running, visualizing I'm going to make LDO.
Gary Wise :I'm going to make LDO. I got to make DC one. I'm going to put it out there. I'm working on all these ideas, right, I'm constantly thinking about it and I'm working to make LDO. I'm going to make LDO. I got to make DC-1. I'm going to put in LDO. I'm working on all these ideas, right, I'm constantly thinking about it and I'm working my butt off and I come in one day, I never forget.
Gary Wise :I come to the ship and there's this EN-2 who is a buddy of mine Clark, I think, was his last name and Clark is on the Mestex and the quotas had just come out that day for advancement. And he said hey, wise, did you see how many DC1s they're making? Now DC1 is the next rank. Right, I'm a DC2. Right now I'm trying to make DC1. I took it one test already. I didn't make it, so now I'm trying to make it on the next test. And he's hey, you see how many dc ones are making? And I'm like, no man, how many? He said seven. That's like nothing. Just so you know. That's like the last time I've been like in the 20s. So now they're making seven. I'm like 70. Oh my god, man, I'm never making dc. This is what I'm thinking.
Gary Wise :And it was later on that morning the captain said my name and I made DC one. And I made DC one when only seven people made it in the entire freaking Navy. Your boy, your guy, was one of them. I mean, I got the 97th percentile on that rating exam. God was freaking with me, man. It was just EN2, didn't make it, but I made DC1 that time. And I remember I made DC1, and not only did I make it, but I was actually getting. I don't know how it worked out, but I think I made it in June, right, so I took the March exam, made it in June and I was taking, I was getting my first dc1 evaluation in November.
Gary Wise :Okay, why this matters to the story? Because evaluations in the Navy significantly affect your promotion ability for the next promotion, because, well, at least they used to. I don't know how it is now, but back when I was in the Navy, the weight of the recommendation significantly weighed onto your promotion ability going up to the next rank and I remember. So I got a new chief and my new chief also didn't like the DCA. But I liked the new chief because his style was much more involved. He liked to hang out in the shop, which I now know is not always a good thing. Right, chief, be visible in the shop, but you don't need to be hanging out in the shop. You're not one of the boys right. Go down there, do your thing and then get back to the mess. You need to be in the in the shop. You're not one of the boys right, go down there, do your thing and get back to the mess. You need to be in the mess. That's just my advice as a chief petty officer. I don't mean you should be sleeping in the mess, I don't mean you should be hiding in the mess. I just mean you should be as relevant in the mess as you are in your shop. That's my, that's my advice. Right, be relevant in both areas, okay. And uh, this new chief gets there and now there's multiple first classes.
Gary Wise :Right when I made dc1, uh, we got a new dc1 that came to the ship. Actually, we got two more. So at this time there's four dc1s. There is the dc2 that I had originally relieved. Now he's a DC-1. I make DC-1, and these other two guys report to the ship as DC-1. I'll never forget the day I walk off the flight deck from getting promoted to being a first-class petty officer. I got pulled into the machine shop and my chief says hey, you're the new LPO. Why am I the new LPO? Just, I don't know how that works. There's three other guys that are senior to me.
Gary Wise :Well, the dc1 that had just got to the ship that was supposed to become the new lpo had just got hit with what was called an individual augmentation set of orders to get them to guantanamo Bay. Because this is the war on terror, time frame, right, this is right around 2004-5 time frame. And DC-1 had just come from brig duty, right. So because he'd been to brig duty, his name was on the short list and he had got flied for a 12-month IA to Guantanamo Bay. And of course everybody's just like what the heck does that mean? And he only had like a week and he was leaving.
Gary Wise :And because he was leaving, the chief wanted me to be the LPO over the other two guys. Because he wanted, he just felt like I had the more potential than they had, which he's not wrong, right, but I'm sure that was a tough pill for them to swallow. So I walked off the flight deck. Oh, and, by the way, you're going to be the lpo, gary, and still you got to run a year or nine the dcpo shop nobody else can have. You've got to still manage that and be the lpo. Okay, I'll figure it out right. This is an opportunity. Oh, by the way, there's also an HT1, and there's a new MR1, but I'm the LPO because I'm the got it Check.
Gary Wise :At the time I wasn't sure. Looking back on it, huge opportunity, right, and I made it work. So DC1 leaves, unfortunately, and goes to his IA. To this day I still feel bad for him because that sucks right. And the captain says hey, I promised DC-1, you're going to go on this IA when you come back. We're getting ready to go on deployment. You're not going to go, I'll make sure. Of course captain's going to change command between those two points. So I said I'd come back to haunt him later. But I'm the new lpo for the shop, got it, we get through that next year running things strong.
Gary Wise :I remember the chief tells me that I'm not going to make chief for at least four or five years. That's what he tells me. And I said well, you know how does it work. You know, I, I don't know how does how does it work? And he says we gotta wait, you got to wait your turn, you got to wait your turn. I said, okay, I don't know, I don't know any better.
Gary Wise :I've just made DC one and my section leader at the time was a Boats of Mates senior chief. Matter of fact, I got to reach out to Boats because I think I need to get him on a podcast. He is a phenomenal human being, changed my life. Ian, if you're ever watching these podcasts, I gotta get you on there, bro, this dude's freaking amazing. He retired from the Navy at 20 years as a master chief, went on to become a pastor. He is just a phenomenal human being. I want to talk with him. See what he remembers.
Gary Wise :But I, I went to him and said hey, senior chief, I just found out on my eval. I got an eval November 1st, my very first ever paid first class eval and I'm the number one, first class, on the ship. I'm the sailor of the year and I get all these accolades right. And I'm like, how do I write this eval to best support all of these things that I got going on? And he was like, well, go get all your paperwork, go get all your stuff and let's work on it. We worked on my eval to best support all those things. And you know what I found out later after, because I ended up making chief here very shortly after all this. And I find out later he was one of my strongest advocates in all the ranking boards because from the time him being my section leader uh he was he was stronger to support me than my own department even was, because in engineering, unfortunately, they don't always support the damage controlman first up. Typically they're more supportive of, like, the propulsion rates, the electricians, the mechanics, the engine man, the whatever it is, and I get it culturally, but I will tell you that the damage control man, we've got an impact for the whole command, not just one department, and that's where I was really gaining a lot of ground. But of course, I find all that out later. Uh, so I get to all these evaluations, I get all those great accolades, we go.
Gary Wise :The end of the 12 months is up, the dc1 comes back from his ia to find out he's got to go on deployment with us. I mean, what a soup sandwich. I felt so bad for this guy. Nobody's stopping that from happening. Knowing what I know now, that would have never happened to my guy. I promise you that I would have stashed him somewhere, tdy, and taken care of his family, but nope, dc-1 going on the deployment. So he comes back from a 12-month IA. He goes on deployment.
Gary Wise :We go to the Persian Gulf. This time it's 06. We drop all the Marines off. We go to Kayat and Abat, which are the oil platforms that Iraq is using to transfer the oil from the country out to the tankers that are then filling them up to make money for the country of Iraq. I don't know what they're doing with the money, but I just know that we had Americans on these oil platforms guarding them, guarding them, and our job was to be there to help. Number one presence, right in case some bad guys thought about trying to do something to stop the oil from flowing. Uh, to support the military american military that was on these platforms, with hot showers, with hot food, with trips to the ship store, and then, of course, we were training the Iraqi Navy.
Gary Wise :Okay, so we did that, for I mean, I got an Iraqi campaign medal for this period of time because we were so close to Iraq, we were within that area and we did the certain amount of days that we got recognized for being involved in that Iraqi campaign. I mean, I was there. If you Google it, chaos blows up one day, right, we're doing zone inspection, I'm on the ship and meet me and the XO are on the bow of the ship and it just blows sky high. Some boom, right. And I remember we did the rescue and assistance team. We're out there with firefighting teams trying to help put the fire out, but we're not putting that fire out. That's an oil rig fire. You gotta shut the oil off, man. But part of that response a lot of us got recognized for that part getting people out of the water that had been gotten blown up and then jumped off that oil platform. It was a busy day, right, it was a very busy day. Uh, probably deserving of its own story. I'm just not, it's just too deep right now, but very, very busy day.
Gary Wise :Uh, coming back, oh, another part of this deployment we got taken off of ira, Iraq, and we got sent to go deal with the pirates off the Khorne of Africa. So, as you watch the news and you watch about these pirates and the Houthis and all this other stuff, I will tell you that back in 2006, uss Ogden, in cooperation with other entities, right, was doing things to the point where we weren't even supposed to talk about it. We weren't. I mean, we would go months without any email, any communication with our families because of the things that we were doing in support of the global war on terror, helping to combat extremism and terrorism in the Horn of Africa. It was very, very interesting stuff. It was quite the deployment and it was coming back off that deployment that I got promoted to chief by the officer Huge deal, right, I took the test for LDO purposes.
Gary Wise :Only, I wasn't up for chief. Right, when I took the test, I took it for LDO. Remember, I had that eval, the great eval, and I was talking with the senior chief and I was like, I'm going to take the test for LDO purposes my first year as a first class. I'm paid, I'm not up for chief. What are you going to do? Well, after the board results came back, we're on this deployment and they said oh, you're eligible for LDO. I'm putting my LDO package together. Okay, got it. And the master chief, the command master chief, comes up to me and says hey, wise, why don't you want to be a Navy chief? I said master chief, not up for chief, so I'll put in for LDO. And if I don't get LDO, then next year I'll put in for LDO and for chief. That's my thought process. Do you want to be a chief or not, wise? I'm a mass chief. I don't get the question.
Gary Wise :And by this point my wife was the ombudsman for the command. Erica had volunteered to fill that gap for this deployment. Again, I'm running the DCPO shop. I'm the LPO for the repair division. I'm running the damage control training team at this point. Oh, and halfway through this deployment, after the chaos explosion, my chief gets pulled off the ship because he's got diabetes, right. So now, guess what? I'm the acting LCPO of the freaking time, right, I'm the acting chief now. And it's just an interesting opportunity, right. And what I'm going through with all. I just keep feeling like, oh, my god, this is too much. And I just keep.
Gary Wise :I remember the day the chief left, I got all the division together and I basically said look, uh, chief's gone. I'm gonna be the chief. He had just taken all the power cords from all the TVs and all the shops, so I gave all the power cords back. I said, all right, you got all the TVs back. But here's the rules you can only watch movies in the DC shop, you can only play video games in the machine shop, you can only watch sports in the HT shop. And nobody ever goes to the DCPO shop, which is my office, right. So, whatever it's hotter than 10 degrees down there, no one's going down there, right? I'm the only one that's sick enough to want to be down there. Nobody else wants to go down there.
Gary Wise :And that was how I set it up. And so I told him. I said you know, this is our opportunity to do it the way we've always wanted to do it, because one of you by this time I'd been on the ship for a little over almost three years and we were all very close friends and we'd all become shipmates, and that was a pretty cool opportunity, and so we made a lot of good things happen at that point in time. Um, this is the same deployment which, if you watch previous video, uh, we were off the coast of australia when we lost half the mess next during the unwrap, right. I have to tag that video in the in the description, right, that was. That's another good sea story.
Gary Wise :Uh, and coming back off of this tour, or coming back off this deployment, we're getting ready to decommission the ship. I find out I make chief. I mean matter of fact. I make chief. Another one of the d of fact. I make chief. Another one of the DC-1s in my division makes chief, the one that went on the IA for 12 months. He picked up chief and the HT-1 picked up chief. So three of us in one division make chief and actually seven of us on that ship makes chief. So it's a pretty big deal. We had, uh, and we're the last chief's initiation for that crew because, again, or for that ship, because they were going to decom the ship or decommission the ship before, uh, the next year, right. So we got to be the last chief selectees for that ship and I remember I had requested to go to recruit to rdc duty when I was a dc1.
Gary Wise :I was requested to go to be a recruit division commander there. I was sailor of the year, number one ep, whatever that means to certain people, aj squared away, I'd already been a navy recruiter. I'd already been an undesignated fireman maintenance man. I've now been a workshop supernopio. So now I want to go be a boot camp drill instructor because I think I'm building the best resume to be the best all-around sailor. Oh, by the way, I'm applying for LDO, but you never know. So I'm acting like that's not going to happen. I remember I got denied to go to RDC because I had a tattoo on my forearm. They denied me to go there to be at RDC. Now you can have full sleeves in the Navy, no problem.
Gary Wise :But in 2005, when I was trying to get orders off of Ogden, I got denied and they were going to send me to Navy Recruiting District, san Diego and I was not happy. I was super upset about that because I'm like look man, I just got off of a very successful sea tour. I do not need to go back to freaking recruiting duty. And the detail is like no, no, you're not going to be a recruiter, you're just going to work on the staff and recruiting. No, that's worse, because in recruiting duty, when you're on the staff of the headquarters, you're you're really nobody, right. It's all about the recruiters, it's all about the production guys right, dc1 wise did not want to go work on the recruiting staff. After this successful sea tour I was like send me to another ship, bro, I will go to another ship. Right now it's like, no, no, you got to go to shore duty, you're going to San Diego. Oh my god, bro.
Gary Wise :I remember thinking, oh, my career is over like this is just going to be a waste of my time. I'm going to go from this great seat tour to well, I make chief, I make chief and look, part of it was, you know, the whole tattoo thing, because I had orders to go be rdc. I had the orders to go be rdc but then I failed the screening because of the tattoos, and I remember my captain wanted to fight it. But I changed my mind about fighting it because I'd bought a house in San Diego and the housing market was about to burst with the bubble and I just I couldn't sell it. I didn't know what to do, so I had to stay in San Diego longer, and so that was the whole point. Right, I was trying to get something in San Diego. The guy thought he was taking care of me, sending me to shore duty in san diego, but I'm wanting something that's going to keep me competitive and operational and all the above right. Um, so I make chief man. All right, god, so I make chief.
Gary Wise :I call the detailer up and I said, hey, I need to get out of those recruiting orders and now that I'm a chief I need to go to a ship and go be a LCPO at sea. And going through my initiation process I really bought into the Navy's chief's mess Initiation for me. I remember coming up as a teenager. I was a part of street groups, street crews of people. I was initiated into my first organization at 12 years old. Right, I got into another one at 15. Like, I'm into these ideas that once I'm initiated into something I'm going to be a. I'm going to push that line right.
Gary Wise :And so now I'm a Navy chief and I want to go to the deck plates of a USS somebody and have that opportunity that I've been improving on on board Ogden. And he says, no, can't do that. He says, but I can send you to a float training group to San Diego. And I said, well, I got to get schools. I've never been to any schools to be a DC chief before I'm a chief and I've never been to CBR school. I've never been to senior enlisted damage control school. Can I get a school? And he's like you've never been to school. Well, how are you? All this ATFP stuff? Well, I had gone to force protection school as a part of the Ogden's crew. I'd gotten involved with the force protection school as a part of the Ogden's crew. I'd gotten involved with the force protection training team when I was on the Ogden.
Gary Wise :So he says, well, I'm going to send you to ATG to fill a force protection quota. And I'm just like, oh my God, no, I do not need to go to a float training group San Diego and be doing freaking master at arms work or be a force protection guy. I'm a damage control control man. I need to be doing damage control stuff. And he says, well, you need to talk to them, but you're going to a float training group san diego and you're leaving like in three months. So I'm just like, oh my gosh. So another guy, I got to get on my podcast.
Gary Wise :Senior chief brian nelson. Brian, I'm calling you up shortly, bro. So I walked, I went over to a float training group San Diego and I went to the damage control shop for senior chief Brian Nelson was at the DC senior chief and arguably one of the most powerful people I feel like I've ever met in my career. I put it to you just like that. I mean, brian had the juice and I tell you that because I went up there and I said Senior Chief, my name is Gary Wise, coming up, you're off USS Ogden, I'm a DC Chief, I am a Chief Damage Controlman and they're trying to send me to Force Protection ATG and I do not want to go there.
Gary Wise :I want to come work for you, I want to become a part of your float training group, damage control, mobility defense shop and I will do whatever it takes to come here. And Brian, brian looks at me and he was like, are you serious? Like, are you serious? Cause I mean, it's actually a better deal to go to the force protection shop. I'll be honest with you all, but I was all in on becoming a master chief.
Gary Wise :I wanted to become a command master chief at that point and I knew I had to make DC senior chief and DC master chief and I just felt like being in force protection wasn't going to make me be a better damage controller. I just felt like being in force protection wasn't going to make me be a better damage controller. I had to go to the damage control shop of ATG where I would get the chance to go on all these different ships and see all these different chiefs and see all these different ways to do things and figure out better ways to do my craft. And he says you know what's awesome? Or he, he, how I remember it was brian says I've got a new dc chief coming who's coming from seer school and he does not want to be in the damage control shops, he wants to be in force protection. So if you are willing to come here, then I will have him go there and you can come here. And I said, yeah, let's do that, let's make that work. And that's exactly what Brian did. There was another chief. They went and sent him over to force protection DC chief took me into ATG and man, that's going to be the next video. That's going to be. I'm going toall. That's going to be.
Gary Wise :I'm going to talk to you about my time in a float training group, san Diego. Uh, if you watch this video, if you listen to my sea stories and I know I left a lot out there's so much stuff that really happens during those years. I'll give it to you guys at different times or in different moments, or different questions and answers, or whatever it is. Uh, but I did want to give you some of the wavetops because during that part of my career so many different things happened that I didn't project to see coming. So, for example, when I made chief, I just wanted to make LDO. What I was sending out to the universe, what I was focusing, what I was visualizing on, was promotion, getting a new uniform, picking up the next rank, and what I will tell you is I got all of that by making chief.
Gary Wise :It wasn't about making LDO and I never, ever, ever applied to go LDO. I found out going through the chief's initiation. That's really what I wanted. I really wanted to become a command master chief and eventually be doing what I'm doing right now, like that was ultimately the vision. But I learned that throughout that whole journey, that shift took me from being a young second class petty officer with a young wife who we were broke thinking like I just need to make this work, to coming off of ogden as a dc chief and getting ready to go down to a float training group, san diego, to assess ships. And oh, by the way, I'm still pretty green. Right, I'm still pretty green. I jumped me. I just got through with initiation and getting my anchors on and here it is, six months later. I'm now going to atg. Uh, looking forward to telling that story in the future. Thank you all very much for your time. I appreciate you, thank you and I will let you all go. I'm going to sign off now. Hope you all enjoyed the story. Bye.
