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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
Fighting From Where You Stand
From the hills of Kentucky to the depths of nuclear submarines to commanding Naval Base Guam during an unprecedented global crisis, Captain Jeffrey Grimes' journey through naval leadership offers profound wisdom for anyone navigating challenging environments.
The conversation opens with Grimes' unlikely path to military service, where joining JROTC in his junior year of high school changed his trajectory forever. With refreshing candor, he shares how the Naval Academy Preparatory School and Annapolis shaped his understanding of discipline, teamwork, and the foundations of leadership.
What truly distinguishes this discussion is Grimes' articulation of submarine service philosophy—the necessity of self-reliance and readiness to "fight from where you stand." He reveals the career-defining advice from an early mentor: "If your standards are higher than your bosses, you work for yourself." This entrepreneurial mindset within structured military environments became his north star through increasingly complex leadership roles.
The heart of the conversation explores Grimes' command of Naval Base Guam during the COVID-19 crisis when the USS Theodore Roosevelt arrived with infected sailors. His team's extraordinary efforts to house, feed, and care for 2,400 sailors virtually overnight exemplifies crisis leadership at its finest—leveraging limited resources, maintaining confidence amidst uncertainty, and prioritizing both mission success and human wellbeing.
This isn't just another military career reflection; it's a masterclass in leading through ambiguity, building resilient teams, and maintaining ethical standards when stakes couldn't be higher. Whether you're leading a small team or a major organization, Grimes' experiences offer invaluable perspective on accountability, mission focus, and the true meaning of service leadership.
Subscribe to Words from the Wise for more conversations with leaders whose experiences illuminate the path forward for today's challenges in business, public service, and beyond.
No, I was born for this. I was born for this.
Gary Wise :I was born for this, I believe. I believe we can Hello everyone and welcome back to Words from the Wise. My name is Gary Wise. I am the founder for Wise Leadership Solutions and the host of this podcast. Today we have a guest that I'm super excited about. We served together in the armed forces in the United States of America. This is a beautiful island called Guam. Right, we fought from Guam, we're fighting from fighting for Guam, and today I've got a captain, retired Navy Captain, mr Jeffrey Grimes. Hey, hapa Dei, hapa Dei. So Hapa Dei is like for those of you who don't know, hapa Dei is like the Aloha, almost for the Polynesian Islands, not Polynesian the Mike, how do you say it? Mariana's.
Jeff Grimes:Islands. I feel like just Kuala Lumpur and the Cinemas and all the Mariana's Islands, marianaiana Islands, mariana Islands Is.
Gary Wise :Mariana, part of Macro Indonesia, or is that Micro or is it something different? Micro, okay, definitely is a unique island chain. Right, definitely is a unique culture. Eric and I got the chance to meet Jeff and his family there when we served on Guam, where we served on Guam, and just you know, for the people that don't know, the island of Guam, which has been an American, I'd say, mainstay and or place of having American people on soil since the Spanish-American War, right.
Jeff Grimes:Well, it was in the same day. It was just across the international line, so Guam was attacked?
Gary Wise :right, guam was attacked by the Japanese during World War II and the Chamorro, the local people that were on the island, and the Americans that were there all were Americans, to be honest fought and unfortunately lost that battle and they had to wait a couple of years, living under Japanese occupation, until they were liberated. General MacArthur and all of them coming back to the Pacific, hard World War II, taking back the Philippines, taking back Saipan, taking back Guam but the thing about living on Guam, one thing I will tell you is God, they love some America over there. They are very patriotic people. They definitely know they're living on the tip of the spear and they're proud to be part of the South China Sea, the Western Pacific region, but they're also proud to be freaking Americans. Right, and it's awesome to be talking to you, jeff, from Guam. Right, high speed internet.
Jeff Grimes:Right, here we go, so a lot of pay, the highest enlistment rate for the service of 0.45% of all Americans who enlist and serve in our country, about 6% here in Guam, and the CNMI who do that so extraordinarily high number, high patriotism, fought in all our battles. Glad to be here and call this my own.
Gary Wise :The mantra that Jeff came up with for Naval Base Guam before I got there, and we're going to get into this other stuff, but I want to hit on fighting for Guam real quick, right? Because when I first got to Naval Base Guam, jeff had already been in command for about, I'd say, a year to year and a half at that point, and he had really locked in on fighting for Guam or fighting from Guam, because it just if you didn't recognize how far away we were possibly from having some support, you didn't understand what was going on in the world, and so we had that mindset of we had to be prepared to fight for ourselves from where we were at, and what I love about that is, as a sailor, that's always how it is right. You go out in that ocean and you go across the horizon guess what, dude, you're fighting for your ship from your ship. There ain't no one coming out there to save you, right? And so it really connected with me.
Gary Wise :It made me feel like we were a land-based aircraft carrier, and there was times I felt like we were. We were operating as such, yes, with multiple entry points. So that was the mantra and that's definitely I know that's the way he lives his life still in his heart. And you know, and I feel that same way every day, even just in that Comfort Mountain home in Ocala, florida, you know, I feel like every American, every person's, got to be ready to do what they got to do, to take care, because the fight doesn't always mean it's an enemy, like a wartime foe. Look, you got these people in Texas right now fighting against the weather, right, and they are trying their best to come through it as a community, and you got to just fight you know there's just you don't quit.
Jeff Grimes:Just over two years ago, typhoon Mawar came through here and significant damage across the island. It was Gary, you remember the different typhoons that come through and I think you were on a tailwind. We came through, and then Dolphin, which did it up at Anderson Air Force Base to the north of the island, and you know, right through us all, the whole island, massive devastation. I didn't have water for six weeks.
Gary Wise :Yeah, that one rocked. Y'all that one rocked. I was hearing the stories and it was, that was a tough one, yeah, but again as an island, you guys came together and figured it out and that goes back to what you said.
Jeff Grimes:No one's coming for you out here. This you're far away. You're closer to the philippines you are, so hawaii is seven hours away by flight, so everything's far and you're in the middle of it. All that's it.
Gary Wise :You know, and for me that mindset is the is the beginning of any sort of resilient conversation. In order for you to have any, any level of real resilience, you've got to first have the mindset of. I've got to take some responsibility for climbing my butt out of this hole and helping anybody to the right or left of me immediately, but not worrying about all of the things that are way beyond my control. So today, jeff man, I'm so thankful that you are here. I am excited to share your story with the world, for my students, for anybody who's watching this podcast. I believe you're an American hero. I really do. I got the chance to serve with you close up and through a bunch of dynamic things, right, and I'd go to war with you any time. And I don't say that about everybody, I'm just going to be honest.
Jeff Grimes:We went through a couple little wars when we were together, you know, luckily not to the casualty level you would expect from a war, but we definitely went through some stuff. We'll talk about that on the board.
Gary Wise :Let's get back to before you joined the service. Did you come? I feel like you were from Kentucky. Were you from Kentucky? Yep, okay, so Kentucky.
Jeff Grimes:Born and raised Louisville, Kentucky, a little place called Fern Creek in the southeastern side of Louisville, Lived in the same house a whole life Fern Creek Elementary, Fern Creek High School that's where I was born and raised.
Gary Wise :When you were coming up as a kid, were you big into athletics.
Jeff Grimes:Yeah, that was the thing I did. My mom, my dad, everybody was very athletic, so I definitely played every sport I could and every dance I got and helped me along the way. My discipline strength. You got to juggle all those Okay.
Gary Wise :I know that when you were in the high school I feel like you were wrestling, but did you play multiple sports in high school?
Jeff Grimes:Yeah, I was, I played football, I wrestled and then I kind of in the spring I kind of moused around between drag and baseball. So I didn't play.
Gary Wise :So, coming through high school, louisville, kentucky, being an athlete, being a part of a team, I'm just curious how did the Mabel Academy hit your radar, because that's not an easy place to go to school.
Jeff Grimes:So I don't think we've ever talked about that. How it happened is I'm a sophomore year. I'm finishing up thinking about, hey, what am I going to do next? And it just happened that right across from the wrestling room at the high school is the ROTC and it's Marine Corps ROTC at Fernbury. And my coach said, hey, you should do it. You know, I didn't. I wasn't from a well-to-do family. If I was going to go to college, I back then, you know, wasn't student loans and the things that got you through you just just figure.
Jeff Grimes:So chances were, I wasn't going to college and really wanted to, and sports wasn't necessarily the thing that was going to get me there, depending right, no, it was a wild card. So the one thing that helped me is I joined the RNGs in my junior year.
Jeff Grimes:You know, this was a Marine Corps ROTC. So my junior and senior year I actually was in JROTC and when that happened the Colonel at the time started talking to me about the military academies, cause I actually had good grades, I was taking hard classes, had the athletic background too to help, and he started talking to me and then I got interested so I applied and that's it really was the decision to go into jrntc. They kind of said, hey, try to go. And I went. I applied for other colleges and got accepted, and so that was the one that kind of kicked me over into this different thoughts thing that I never even knew about. No one in my family really was in the military.
Gary Wise :Yeah, I did not know. You were in JROTC for two years in high school.
Jeff Grimes:Hey, everybody, listen to that and you can come in junior year.
Gary Wise :It's not too late and you can still get opportunities right.
Jeff Grimes:It was challenging. You know I'm an athlete, you know I was. That was pretty good. It wasn't a big high school. But then I go into JROTC and you know people had been doing it for for the years.
Gary Wise :Oh yeah, it was kind of embarrassing.
Jeff Grimes:I mean they were ordering me around, get on the rifle range, couldn't get anything. Yeah, it was. It was humbling and you know. And then there was another level of discipline there that even in sports you don't get to, and that's kind of where I started going. I like this military thing. And so it opened the door. It opened my aperture to look bigger and broader than what I was.
Gary Wise :the traditional plan which is blow up the road. You know, go to work and just work you know Right.
Gary Wise :So I I trust I do know I'm talking to these kids all the time and they're trying to figure it out and you get, I mean I've gotten kids. Last year we had somebody got the air force Academy. One of our cadets got university of Florida. She's going to be a nuclear engineer, rotc, and I'm trying to get her to go submarines right because I think she'll be all at it. And so I I do know and I see these kids trying to figure it out and I tell them all the time, like I didn't figure out a lot of lifetime, about 25, 26, like just being honest. So the military is kind of where I went to hybrid a while I figured out who I really was in my life and then, just so happens, I liked the military. So why not keep going? You know?
Jeff Grimes:So you went to.
Jeff Grimes:Annapolis right, yes, I ended up at Annapolis and I didn't go there directly, no kidding, okay. So the interest kind of my trek to college from high school was really my senior year of learning and I applied for Naval Academy and I applied for what was called the Merchant Marine Academy, so that's a Department of Transportation Academy, and I took a visit with my dad on a work trip at Merchant Marine Academy in Long Island, new York, and we went there and he was doing business sales while with him and I could not communicate in New.
Gary Wise :York city.
Jeff Grimes:Being from Kentucky Dunkin Donuts and couldn't understand anything anybody was saying I was so frustrated because I didn't hear the talk that way. So I got accepted to the Mercer Green Academy, believe it or not.
Jeff Grimes:And at the same time I got accepted to the Mercer Green Academy, believe it or not. And at the same time I got accepted to the Naval Academy preparatories. My grades were good, but not quite good enough to go directly into the Naval Academy. So I had a choice to go directly to the Mercer Green Academy or go to the Naval Academy in preps. And so I thought about it and I'm like man Annapolis, that's the real deal. I'm not anything against or anything. But then I had my New York experience, because I was charity and let me do this. Let me go into the Naval Academy Prep School.
Jeff Grimes:And in order to go there you have to enlist. So I enlisted and went to Newport, rhode Island, in 1984 for the Naval Academy prep school. It's a one-year preparatory school. It was the hardest, until my junior senior year at the Naval Academy. It was the hardest academic I've ever done. I mean, we still had sports and everything else. It was six, six class. You know, four to six classes every single day, monday, very intense, but it was well worth it. So I did that for a year.
Gary Wise :I saw the naps. Are they? Are they midshipmen, or are they called cadets at naps?
Jeff Grimes:You're. You're not a midshipman, yet You're a sailor, you're a sailor.
Gary Wise :You're a sailor, okay. So when I went to the Senior Enlisted Academy it's there on Newport and you saw the NAPS sailors all formed up marching around like almost like great basic training, right, I remember thinking what is this? You know, because for me, for a surface sailor, a surface guy, newport is almost kind of like this mecca of like the SWO name you know, and you got to go there and like pray to the gods of the surface, maybe for the submarines. You got to grot right across the way or whatever else you know.
Jeff Grimes:Well, all the leadership schools. I've been back to Newport, rhode Island, when I was at once every four or five years for leadership schools or other types of things, and they do there. So even as a submarine, I had to get back through there for some of the courses that they did.
Gary Wise :Yeah, especially like the command pipeline Navy. I believe it was the ethics and leadership. Naval War College is there. I'm sure the people of Newport, Rhode Island, are very ingrained in the Navy heritage.
Gary Wise :right I'm watching sailors come in and grow and develop and grow a connection and that's how it is at all these hubs right Of our military, whether it's San Diego, whether it's Yokosuka, whether it's Guam, you just have these communities that have this. They have this affection for their, their branch, their bases, their people, and then a lot of us meet people from those areas. I'm from Florida, I'm from Utah recently, right Like I met my wife in Florida Okay, so academically challenging at NAPS. So when you get done with NAPS do you go to?
Jeff Grimes:a plebe year. Yeah, so if you graduate from the one year school, then basically get an automatic admission to the natal academy. Yeah, so if you graduate from the one-year school, then basically get an automatic admission to the Naval Academy. Okay, so the story continues, though because I had a medical issue, I graduated, I finished, I had a medical issue. Then summer I did not get inducted to the Naval Academy, so they sent me back to NAPCS, but I got left very lucky because they could have discharged. Yeah, and they allowed me to go back to NAPS, but I got left very lucky because they could have discharged. But they allowed me to go back to the Naval Academy Prep School, but I had already graduated the school.
Jeff Grimes:It's one year, so I wasn't a student, I was on the staff. So there I was in E3, I made semen and I actually worked on the staff of the Naval Academy. So I didn't live with the students, I lived in a separate dormitory and I took like two classes that they offered that I didn't take the year before just because they wanted to keep me in the academic realm some way, and I coached football and I coached wrestling. I couldn't really do too much because I had some physical issues there, but I got luck. The Navy has been a solid for me and held on to me one more year. So I went back to the Navy. I made prep school each year, got medically cleared, got help and then in 1986, I went to the Navy.
Gary Wise :Coming out of Annapolis? Did you know what you wanted to do as a naval officer?
Jeff Grimes:So how it works is, for the end of your year you go through your service selection, your community Different if you're submarines. So in order to get brought into submarines I had to go to interviews at Naval Reactors and be accepted into the submarine program. So when you do a service selection night at the Naval Academy, I was already done because I had done my interviews with the Naval Reactors in Washington DC. I had been selected to go to submarines. So I knew I was going to submarines. I didn't know where, because there's a training pipeline after you graduate before you ever get your first submarine design. But I knew I was a submariner. That was my plan. I was a mechanical engineering guy and then I kind of looked at hey, what's the long-term future? Let me try this submarine thing out Made a choice and was lucky enough to get picked and in the end, what I love to do I'm not saying I wouldn't have loved being a Marine, but I really, really love being a submarine.
Gary Wise :So hold on, just so I understand that correctly, your whole time through the Naval Academy you were wearing a Marine uniform. When it came, to the uniform.
Jeff Grimes:No, you wear the same as everybody else. You wear your midshipman uniform. I was doing activities with different Marines, aids, physical stuff, just saying, hey, this is kind of where I'm leading the beast.
Jeff Grimes:You fall into these different groups of mentors that you have to make your source selection layers In the summers you have the different they let you the Naval Academy they're in the summer you do something also, whether it's a cruise or a Marine Corps activity, so you kind of learn and you get to make a choice. But it was later in my sophomore year when I said, nah, I'm going to go for submarines, okay, and then I've never been on one either.
Gary Wise :Well, I mean, it's kind of hard to get a midshipman cruise on a submarine, right, but I think there's so many aspects to the submarine force that I find interesting. Most I ever got around submariners was when I was in 7th Fleet. I got a chance to work with them and listen to them talk, right, and then both my bosses all my bosses were submariners, and then the fleet master was a submariner. So getting the chance to just be in the room and listening and then come into naval base guam and get the chance to see what it's like for the four deployed submarines there out of guam and get to know those people in the community, right, very interesting though, as so I'm very interested, very supportive of them, because they have a lot of pride in what they do. I got invited down to one of the boats one time to have lunch by one of the cobs, and that was such an awesome experience right To go down there and just get the chance to sit on their mastects and see how they eat a meal.
Jeff Grimes:Right, and that was it was an honor.
Gary Wise :So when you graduate Naval Academy, where do you go to nuclear power school? Are you going down to South Carolina?
Jeff Grimes:So at the time, because I'm old, I went to nuclear power school in Orlando. Oh, okay, you go to Florida it was still open and let the nuclear power school over there. And then when you graduate, that's about a six-month course and then you graduate and you go to prototype after that. And I went to Charleston and you go to prototype after that. And I went to Charleston, south Carolina. I was the second or third class to go through that prototype, so it was brand new back then and now it's the major prototype of the submarine. But that was. I was like the second or third class there's only one boat there at the time so and just got decommissioned. I just saw it. The submarine got decommissioned for other ones that are there.
Jeff Grimes:The prototype was a submarine. It was a submarine, didn't get in her way, it was the engine room of the submarine. But we actually went onto the submarine and did the prototype and that's where you learn the first year of graduation, when she's like submarines is all about nuclear propulsion. So let's first, six months in orlando was heavy classroom and then the next month was actually classroom and operation. You actually operated and normal and in casually simulating casualties for the reactor. Make sure you know what's going on before you go.
Jeff Grimes:Then after you finish prototypes, then you go into submarine warfare school and your junior officer course, go to your first basin course and that's where you learn how to navigate and drive on the surface of the world and all those things and basics about a weapons employment system. So you do the front end of the boat. All in all, after I graduated from the academy, I went to the school for another year and a half, and then that's from that last submarine officer bait course is where you get your assignment to what submarine you're into.
Gary Wise :For those of you that are listening to the sounds of our voices, one of the things I picked up from the submariners that I got to know is when they said their front end of the bow, that's like everything, not propulsion. And when they said the back end of the boat, that's everything, propulsion. So I will tell you, I never got to go past that one frame, that one door. They're like nope, gary, you can say this a-ganger stuff here, but you can't go any farther past.
Jeff Grimes:And I was like hey, I was on a nuclear aircraft carrier.
Gary Wise :I had a tld are you a front ender, are you a back? Yeah, they have this language. That is part of that culture, right, that's part of that community and I think that it matters. So when you how was it in orlando when you were going to school? Were you living on base or did you have to get an apartment?
Jeff Grimes:I actually had an apartment. Yeah, I lived out and I had. It was just fortunate for is my naval academy roommate also was a summer raider, so my same I, just he and I lived together in Orlando, so I didn't have to worry about you know, getting to know someone new.
Gary Wise :I knew the guy.
Jeff Grimes:We lived together for three years. So yeah, but we, we lived in an apartment.
Gary Wise :How was that going from from up north to Orlando, florida, young commission Naval officers going to nuclear school. Did you have time to like enjoy it? Oh yeah.
Jeff Grimes:There's a lot of stadium, but it wasn't bull time. Orlando's great, that was great. I mean then it was just happening everywhere around and I mean now it's even more flourishing. But it was a good town like that. Yeah, good Liberty. Yeah, charleston was great too. Charleston, south Carolina, is one of my. I never made it back there again, but it was. It's a night, it's a great place. I mean, I really liked Charleston. I was only there six months. I didn't get to do his butt and everything I remember about Charleston.
Gary Wise :I lived in a place called Goose Creek which was outside creek, outside really in charleston, and that's where the base had. It was a lot of. Here you are, this young man coming from kentucky joined the military out of high school, got through the naps process, got through the naval academy process. Now you're freaking going down one of the most rigorous, academic I mean strategic important pipelines of the United States Navy and along the way you're hitting, you know, orlando and now you're going to South Carolina. Where's your first boat?
Jeff Grimes:Submarine office basic course is in Groton. So that's the heck of submarines, since you ever lived in Groton, connecticut, and I got my first boat out of Norfolk Virginia. So yeah, your first two years I moved four times and I landed on my first submarine, uss Albany, out of Norfolk Virginia. We're operating.
Gary Wise :So USS Albany out of Norfolk, virginia, and as a nuclear officer, I mean I would imagine all officers on submarines are nuclear right.
Jeff Grimes:Yes, everybody starts.
Gary Wise :So everybody's a nuke. That's different than on the surface side. Surface side you'll get this blending right, but on a submarine, everyone's a nuke. So you guys all have that common DNA strand and I remember watching the nukes on the carriers. They had to manage the academic maintenance of their warfare, their designators, as well as doing their jobs right. Do you remember what your first job was as a first tour devo?
Jeff Grimes:I was the reactor controls assistant. That was my first division officer job RCA, and then. So you always start in the end your division officer jobs are in the engineering department and first there's a few before the end that you may end up being a division officer forward if they have them. But your focus is engineering and so I did a reactor controls assistant, which that is the kind of anything to do to startup, shutdown and control the reactor. Because there's reactor controls assistant, electrical assistant, so you do the electrical piece. There's the person in charge of the chemistry and all of the radiation surveys, so you have those. And then you have the mechanical division. Those are the four divisions in the engineering. And then there's one forward auxiliary division officer called Damage Control Assistant and that's what ended up being most of my time was the DCA, so I did RC and then, I was the Damage Control Assistant so I did a lot of my different officer on the board work side of the boat, as you say.
Gary Wise :So that falls in your category 100% Damage Control is my thing, but you guys, they had that inline air breathing capability where they could fork out of air and plug in air. I always thought that was got to be complicated, trying to figure out a fight or fire. Scbas are a thing on there or no.
Jeff Grimes:You do, but they're only designated for quick reaction. You put on the emergency air break. There's no clean air, you're in a tube, it's totally contained. So everybody has to put on the emergency air break If you want to quickly react, cause it takes you time to load up on it with an SCVA. So everybody needs to be able to do that for one to save their life, but also to emergency respond until you are relieved by the people with the SCVAs.
Jeff Grimes:So yeah, you have to learn how to go from all the way in transverse the ship plugging in, take your breaths, move to the next location and hopefully there's four there that should plug in. Hopefully there's one left, or you got to find a buddy and plug in the hub. Yeah. You end up in a decay and you're all plugged together and all this plugged into the supply those things happen, it's pretty fun is plugged into the supply, those things happen, it's pretty fun, I believe it.
Gary Wise :We learn. Yeah, I much respect, but I know the challenges of being the damage control person on a surface ship. I can only imagine trying to train the crew, all these fun. But I would also imagine you get a lot of help from everybody, because everyone knows that they all have to know these things.
Jeff Grimes:I think that's the thing about a submarine is where everybody is a damage control. If you were there, officer, if you were there when the fire breaks out, you are the primary response until relief, and that's because of the environment in which you live in. You can't go topside. You are underwater. You have to save the ship, to save everybody. So that is a big difference, and we're all heavily trained in those types of whether it's money or fire or anything else. Everybody's trained. That's really the thing when you get your dolphins. That's really what it's about. You know the systems throughout the ship and how they interact, interrelate and where the critical places are, so that you can save the ship. That's really what it's about. That's really what the Dolphin's about.
Gary Wise :I will tell you, I love our Navy for a lot of things and there's some areas that I was frustrated, but I believe the submarine force is just going to leave the Navy out of the quagmire. The submarine force is just going to leave the Navy out of the quagmire if they people will put away all their petty prides and we'll lock in on some of these fundamentals. Right, because I'll tell you, the surface Navy, it's just all over the place. But I know in my heart that what you just said is the what the spirit of everyone has got to have, and it's not just in the military either.
Gary Wise :I had that same synergy with my team in my high school. Right, when my cadets promote to chief petty officer now in my unit, I tell them I don't need you to memorize everything in those books. I need you to know how to be a good chief petty officer in this unit and do the things that the commander wants you to do and that I want you to do. But if there's an emergency situation, I need to be able to trust that you can handle that enough until you can get to leadership and give us an opportunity to help you out. So, control the chaos until the people that are making sure that we're all safe can get us there. So I feel everything you just said is still spot on. So, coming through your first tour, coming from Rack to Controls, coming to Damage Control, is that a two-year tour or is that a three year tour on your first?
Jeff Grimes:So in average of 36, I did 40 months on my first boat and it's because I deploy three times R, so she brand new ship that we deploy went a bit Okay. So I ended up doing 40 months. I actually transferred on the last appointment out of France to go to my next assignment. How did you like Virginia? Oh, I lived in Virginia. I lived in Virginia Beach at the time. A lot of my career in Norfolk area. Hampton Roads is great. It's a little bit of traffic. You got to fight through there Bridges and everything, but you are in the central of everything On the 95 hub, west, north, south.
Jeff Grimes:And overall, just Pappen Road area is great. There's always something to do.
Gary Wise :It really is. We lived in Virginia Beach as well, right down there by the amphitheater, right off Damneck Road. Yeah, it was great for Erica and the kids because they never had to go to Norfolk Not that I guess Norfolk, but I like the little slower of the beach side, right.
Gary Wise :And then I always thought I was going to go back there and get a job on Little Creek and enjoy being on Virginia beach sides, you know. But you know it didn't work out. But it's fine. You left that first boat and you did 40 months, got all that experience. Did you then after that go back to school again or do you go right to another ship?
Jeff Grimes:I didn't. I meant to go to your shore tour and so I went to Pearl Harbor, hawaii, and I was for Commander Submarine Forces Pacific. I was a command center watch officer, so they actually run an ops station there. So I ran that. But I also was the short term, I mean terminal officers when they tomahawked up stuff. But when you say go back to school, I chose, I went to Knights, so I went and got my master's at Chaminade University. So I worked all day and then did my night time. Most nights I went to college and got my master's in business administration from Chaminade. So did I understand that it was sub-pac, sub-reinforced and specific sub-pac?
Gary Wise :Sub-reinforced and specific. You're a watchstander on the watch floor and then you were elected. Instead of waiting until you're going to go to the war college or wherever they go in Monterey someday to get your master's, you chose to pull it left and do it early on the night.
Jeff Grimes:Did you come up with it? Well, because you go to that 18 months of school prior to getting to your first vote. It's very hard in your career pipeline to get Monterey or something like that and stay on track.
Gary Wise :You can do it.
Jeff Grimes:There's people who go, but it is a little bit more difficult for us. So I chose you need your master's and at that time I wasn't for sure what I was going to do. I was staying in or getting out. Wasn't quite sure, so I went and got my master's because either way it's helpful to whatever path I chose. And tuition assistance the Navy paid for.
Gary Wise :Good and tuition assistance. The navy paid for good. I was gonna ask you about that. So the navy paid for it and at that time. So for you've been in the navy about that was that five years, six years by the end of subpac acting duty side after school. So you're coming out of submarine force specific a lieutenant lieutenant are you already a dad at that?
Jeff Grimes:point. I'm a dad, I'm married at my first door, had two kids already, okay, so how?
Gary Wise :was that coming off of that tour as a dad? Because it sounds like it's a busy tour? I mean it's supposed to be for whoever why it's supposed to be short, but it sounds like knowing you, that's a grind right. And I got my education on shortening and the ships. I got it. It's a grind. How was that for you? Was everything going okay? Were you able, were you balancing well, or was it a struggle?
Jeff Grimes:Yeah, it's always. You know you're, you're everything. It was challenging. It wasn't a struggle, but it was challenging and you just have to manage as best you can on. Sometimes I'd get up early, before everybody got up and did my studying, or wait till everybody's in bed and do my studying or whatever I needed to do. Overall, you just balance out the best you can and you need a supportive wife, family that can get through it. Now they can do it.
Gary Wise :What was it like back then? Cause there was no internet, right? What was the?
Jeff Grimes:internet. It was, this was the advent. Oh man, it's bringing back some memories. This was the advent of AOL.
Gary Wise :Okay, so you got like you had dial up.
Jeff Grimes:Yeah, and you know that old sound dial up and get the sound.
Gary Wise :So there was some of that, but most of it you had to go to the class you had to go to the library, but there was some dial up. Now that you say but there was a school, a physical school, in hawaii that you were going to for your master's yeah wow, that's. That's a whole different game changer, you know, because all of my education I had internet for the most part, and I was able to just, you know, get online like this and talk to people and get it done.
Jeff Grimes:Even at the neighborhood. I mean, we were the first class to issue the culture. It was death, but we didn't do a whole lot on it because there was no connectivity. It wasn't internet, it was analog desktop. Yeah, you would have to programs in and then take a floppy disk with you to class. Let's be turning in.
Gary Wise :Man, I still remember when the Navy said we couldn't plug our USB flash drives into the computers anymore. Oh man, I was at a float training group, san Diego, and I thought my life was over. I was like what?
Jeff Grimes:How do I do it? I'm really old.
Gary Wise :Okay, so you're leaving Subpac as a full lieutenant. You and your family just did a couple of years there in Pearl Harbor and it sounds like you're probably going back to Virginia.
Jeff Grimes:Nope, this is the one off. I go to. Connecticut and I become the weapons officer, the combat systems officer, short-term WEPs on the USS San Juan. So my department head tour was out of Groton, Connecticut, East Coast, back to the East Coast, Same type of boat was a. Los Angeles class improved, just like the first one and that tour. You stay that position, that department head position, the whole time, which is another 36 months, which I did about 32 on that.
Gary Wise :When you look back on those two first ships as a young first, as a divo, first tour, second tour everyone would look at that. And then going back as the webs, what was it like working with your enlisted lead counterparts or the people, the sailors, that worked for you? Were they what you expected from them when you got there, or was it?
Jeff Grimes:was it? So, my first tour, you know I had no expectation, but I the most, the most I've taken with me from my career out. Each individual tour was my first tour. The things you learn, the standards that have to be there, that was all taught to me then and I took and I learned something from every tour, don't get me wrong, but the first one is the most. There's numerous ones, but I think I've told you this before, gary, the one I carry with me today as much as I can is what my chief told me when I became the damage control assistant.
Jeff Grimes:My chief told me I had been working hard on something, but not doing a very good job at it, and it got sent back to me to do again. I was kind of frustrated and he then called me aside and he goes hey, lt, here's the deal. If your standards are higher than your bosses, you work for yourself. I carry that with me, and that's. I carry that with me and that's. I learned that on my first floor. I carry that with me all the time and it served me well, and there's many other instances, but that's the pivot of my understanding of how to be a summary.
Gary Wise :My students that are going to hear you say that are going to say, oh, he's the guy. Because I'm always telling them you learn to become essentially an entrepreneur inside of an organization. You take ownership right as much as you possibly can, and what I love about those people is because they might make mistakes, because they're going to shoot for the sky, right, they're going to go really high, but they're authentically trying. I love those people for that. Right there. You know, I can deal with people that are really trying. Okay, so that right, there is a nugget. I love it, I use it. I use it all the time it is such a good thing.
Gary Wise :So now you're at WEBS. How was that tour as far as the deployment started? Did you get to do any fun Liberty Forge? Or did you get to do anything where you felt like, all right, now I know what the heck's going on around me. I'm not learning all the things like the Navy stuff. I'm a department head. Like, did you guys get to do any fun things like punch a hole in the North Pole and get out and throw some snowballs at each other or anything like that?
Jeff Grimes:Yeah, I did actually. I surfaced under the ice, saw the polar barrels. We surfaced in what's called a palenia. Actually it wasn't through the ice. You find an open space in the ice, drive around and find it and then you surface it out. We were the first one of the first 68 guys there to kind of do the proof on the surfacing procedure, because you actually don't drive to the surface, you just float to the surface straight up. So it takes a little bit of skill to do that. And definitely on the first tours was Northern and a lot of Norway and Badlands, katwa, pretty much. That was the first tour. The second tour which on my department head, I was in the Mediterranean, most of Italy, naples there was a little thing called Bosnia-Herzegovina going on that we had to prepare for and work for. So yeah, I've been to the Straits there a couple times. That was my Atlantic operation, part of my career.
Gary Wise :I just think it's so different, such a different dynamic with the submarine force, because most people have no idea where they're going, what they're doing, they are the silent service. For a reason you do these. You want things like come up on the North Pole, right, like a buddy of mine was an FT and he was telling me about how they went out there and they surfaced and they went out there on the ice and I saw a meme the other day of a feather in the water, so it was a Periscope, right. And one of the former Master Chief Penance officers of the Navy comments on there. He's Rick West, right. He comments he says, oh, I brought liberty, I brought liberty.
Gary Wise :And I was like, oh, I can imagine there's a bunch of subredditors looking through the parents, like, oh, my god, it must be nice to be over there right now. You know, I have our liberty. And then he said, don't worry, we don't all think they saw us. I. I just think such an interesting culture and such an interesting perspective in naval operations, right, and the operations in the united states, maybe, when I look at the things like it just went down recently in history and and I can imagine what those submariners were thinking when they were going kinetic and it's just awesome stuff. Okay, so, coming off of your webs tour, I would imagine you finished that tour as an oh four.
Jeff Grimes:Justin out and I was selected.
Gary Wise :So I'm like Groton, connecticut. You've already got your master's degree out the way and are you all the way in right now. Like you'd like, I'm staying forever.
Jeff Grimes:Okay, yeah, I'm here years now, almost 10 years in, and so that was my career.
Gary Wise :And you know you wanted to be in command.
Jeff Grimes:Yes, definitely. That was the goal right. So I finished that tour and you, you have to get through certain exams along the way. One is a command, command, qual done. There's certain definitely a milestone you have to achieve. I had made that achievement to go. There was the focus.
Gary Wise :I mean I would imagine coming up that tour you've had to already kind of start voicing your hey, I want to be potentially considered for command someday. So after that tour, is that when you go back down to the hampton roads area after we get there.
Jeff Grimes:I went to millington, tennessee, as the development yeah, I was a detailer, so I went to millington, tennessee. Now that was a lot of fun. I got my jME an online course.
Gary Wise :I did that.
Jeff Grimes:That was online, so I was into the internet age by that time. Millington is just north of Memphis. Excellent place, great culture, great history, yeah. So that was kind of definitely a payback tour. It wasn't a hard job. It was work but not hard.
Gary Wise :And extra work was of a definitely a payback tour. It wasn't a hard job. It was work, but not hard, and extra work was, you know, just things that you may not. I got a lot of time to do the thing.
Gary Wise :I think Millington is one of those. Again, you go to Millington and it's just a community built around a Navy base, right, like it's a. It's a whole town, a village built around the Navy base. And they know personnel management, right, they know about the bean counting when it comes to what it takes to fully staff and man an organization like ours or like our old one, right? Okay, so I coming out of Millington, are you, I mean, are you able to almost pick your own orders coming out of there?
Jeff Grimes:No, the truth is, naval reactors picks all summary orders, but I definitely have some influence even though, even though I did the assignments, I had to get approved by department head, like they were approved and I just picked and gave rationale why. But yeah, they get the pick. And so from there, that's when I got told I was going to be in the XO on the Tennessee Eagle out of Kings Bay, George. So my first strategic missile boat, uh, as executive officer.
Gary Wise :Okay, so that those are kind of like the boomers. Right, those are the boomers.
Jeff Grimes:Ohio class boomers strategic missiles.
Gary Wise :So were your first two boats fast attacks yeah, first two were at los angeles.
Jeff Grimes:A class. They improved fast attacks.
Gary Wise :They died and my, my, xo and co tours were both on a ballistic missile okay, how was that, being xo of a rotating crew?
Jeff Grimes:Challenging. I mean the crew. They have a culture that comes together inside the ship. So when you change the inside of the ship out crew outside of that ship that you go back, put another one in there in that culture. So where you put stuff, how you do things, it's the crew that does that.
Jeff Grimes:So there is a little bit of a transition each time and although the standards are the same, the how you do the things is different, right. But the good thing is, unlike the 688 and the responsibility you have for a ship that has a reactor and weapons and everything on it, you never as a member of that crew on those 688s it's with you all the time. But, boomer crew, we were ashore and I was in a building, we were training, so operate just as hard, but your time ashore isn't as stressful, right, because the other crew has it. So it is a little bit different. There are some good things to that. The transitions are tough because they're they happen a lot, as compared to if you own the boat all the time but at the same time you don't own the boat all the time.
Gary Wise :So there's a little bit of a big world there. Those are like the four months on, four months off kind of rotation.
Jeff Grimes:General four on four off.
Gary Wise :I remember my buddy my buddy they were currently together and he went to. He was in Kings Bay on the boomers and he did that because his mind it was better quality of life for him and his family because he gets to be home. Theoretically, yeah, you know a little bit more, but I think when they're underway for that four months they're like underway underway, like they're not hitting ports and all that other stuff there.
Jeff Grimes:That's the thing there was no ports. Like they're not hitting ports and all that other stuff there, that's the thing. There was no ports. I got Kings Bay and Kings Bay and a couple times into oh God, this coast.
Gary Wise :Well, down south over there.
Jeff Grimes:Okay, yeah, I know a couple of dots in there which mainly we were there for an exercise so, and then they put then I think that happened 9, 11 and stuff. We didn't do that anymore either.
Gary Wise :But yeah, I'll tell you you didn't miss a whole lot. I will tell you some of those nights before pulling into a Liberty port of CMC and CO we would be up all night pulling our hair out with Liberty plans and all these requests who's sleep? Oh my God, it was. It was almost easier when they said you're not going nowhere. Okay, fine.
Jeff Grimes:In some respects you're right, even on a. I mean, you are you like those port calls? But boy, you're getting it on board and then you know just to shut everything down and get it ready for different operations in port and then getting it ready to get back underway. Those are not easy things. Those are hard tasks when you're on the Liberty, but the front end and the back end is super challenging, and so you got to take the good with the bad, as always.
Gary Wise :It was fun. The more senior I got, the less I went on Liberty and the more I enjoyed being on the boat, fully ready to do whatever I had to do to take care of the problem. Hey, master Chief, you want to go on Liberty? I was like, no, I don't. I'm going to go to the Chiefs mess and wait for y'all to get back and hope that we don't lose anybody in this damn port because someone's going to be so stupid, you know, just saying. But I also remember being when I was in 7th Fleet and being in the room and saying, hey, where are these guys going to go on Liberty once in a while? Because we're planning out their next 15 months, their next 24 months and nowhere we even putting flags in the poll and the sand for Liberty calls and for an 18 to 22 year old quarter. Why they're joining to serve their country is to go see the fricking world.
Jeff Grimes:And like yeah no, I mean it's important to see the world, but to understand the world that you're out there interacting with, and potentially in a hazardous way, but hopefully in a peaceful way. Yeah, so you can understand that. It's way bigger than Fern Creek.
Jeff Grimes:There's a lot of ways to interact. You name it. It's different governments. And you see it when you get out, even though you're a tourist of sorts, you know you're a visitor. They tell the sailors we're ambassadors for the United States every time you step ashore. So you learn all those things which you take back with you and helps you understand the mission better. You've seen it.
Gary Wise :I think the other thing for me I always took back as well how far reaching our culture really was, the American culture, because you know, when you get there they got Coca-Cola and Pepsi and the music they're listening to. I mean, there's a lot of differences but there's still a representation of who we are and I always was proud of that, you know, as an American. Okay, always was proud of that, you know, as an American. Okay, so you're on that ship now as an XO. Yeah, how hard was it at being an XO?
Jeff Grimes:So executive officer is um is an interesting position One. You're second in command, that's really for a submarine, that's the most important, okay, but you're second in command, you're not in command. That's really for a submarine, that's the most important, okay, but you're second in command, you're not in command. So the captain is everything. His culture, his philosophies is what you execute, and you have to do that, whether you believe it or not, with a straight face and with all the commitment that is required to do that. The XO is also the administrative guy. Everything comes through. So you got that piece of it's an interesting tie of the operations to the administrative, but it's a part of the step.
Jeff Grimes:Along the process you start feeling the weight of command because it's a different weight that you actually do take it and you need to understand a little bit of it before you put yourself put those boots on.
Gary Wise :So that's how I kind of.
Jeff Grimes:that's my memory of what it was to be an executive. Okay, so a lot of time. What's the challenge? You jumped on.
Gary Wise :Did you have the relationship with your CEO that you hope to have you remember? Did actually you know?
Jeff Grimes:like I've heard stories you know and you probably have too about any different, different relationships and different experiences with commanders. I never, fortunately, whether it was a department head when I was a junior or my ex-O's when I was a department head or ex-O's in my field. I never, never, felt any of that, never saw any of that. It wasn't always perfect, but it was definitely not that. Some of the experiences I've heard, it's all very positive Good training, experience, development.
Gary Wise :And as a Master Chief, that's one of my priorities Because I would get at least for the Surface Navy, I would get these first XOCO fleet up, at least at my level. I did not want this person to get soured on their XO tour. That would not only become a future commanding officer, but also could be a future commanding officer at other places. Xl could be a tough, thankless job, and what?
Jeff Grimes:could be told. I think the other thing that you and I talked about many times is this was my first experience with the Triant right. The CEO of XO and on a submarine command master chief is called the chief of the boat your first one.
Jeff Grimes:Those three people in a room and handling some very, very tough issues, discussing it at home, where all three of us didn't always agree Sometimes it was three different opinions and when you walk out the room it's the captain that goes forward. But you had a voice and you had and you were able to talk it out and you're able to uh, to get other other perspectives, because a weight of that commitment is on the captain but also on the cop people, the boat so that was that was probably the most beneficial or most powerful of being an executive officer was understanding the dryad and how it all worked, because he, he didn't get a, he didn't get a glimpse of that. I didn't get a glimpse of that before, yeah.
Gary Wise :Good, I mean powerful stuff, but I can't. I definitely agree with you. I understand the challenges, but it's just, it's hard to prepare for it until you're actually in the seat as the XO, as the comp, as the match chief, as the CO. You know, people tell me oh, I fell down for so-and-so. Okay, it's not really. It is not the same thing, bud. Did you know coming out of that XO2, like, did you get some downtime after that, before you got notified where you're going to go to be in command?
Jeff Grimes:I had to go to my next tour and I went. It was a commander's advisory group for a command called Joint Forces Command. It was a combatant command back in the day. It's no longer a combatant command, so I worked for a four-star submarine. Spencer hired me and then he got picked up to be the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. So I ended up working for a four-star Air Force commander and I was command by a free group, so it was three of us in there. We're just keeping his busy business schedule going because there's no way I can bring in that much data, that much knowledge. So you had a group of people who dug deep into the issue, provided up in a short, concise way way the issues, limitations, the challenges and the solution. You try to pack into those up. So when he did engagements and in this case the Joint Forces Command also had a NATO, so I had to do it for both NATO and for US forces that's the trip that ended up taking me.
Jeff Grimes:I went to several NATO deaf men conferences and then also ended up in Iraq and Afghanistan from on that tour to support my boss for about six months. So, not what I expected when I got there, but I was away from home quite a bit.
Gary Wise :Well. But if you also look back at those years, though, yeah, there's a big time for our military right.
Jeff Grimes:I mean those years we were humping you know, and that was norfolk, so that was got me back to norfolk.
Gary Wise :That was my next venture back into norfolk now that I've been retired and been out here to the civilian sector, there is a difference between those of us that served from 97 to 2022 was my years. If you were around for the whole global war on terror, the Iraqi campaign, all that stuff that experience is just different than any other timeline right Then, of course, within that experience, there's all the different experiences from the guys that were on the ground running and gunning and the guys that were on the boats. But, looking back on it, it was some of my favorite times too, though. I loved being operational and knowing the things that we were doing were directly in line with executing this mission. Right, I mean months of we would. When I was on USS Ogden, we went months with no contact with anybody else because we were just doing all kinds of fun things. We were just snatching people because we have embarked special forces that we're doing.
Gary Wise :First time I ever saw a submarine, ever in real world, like it was what I'm on the ocean and there's dc freaking, two wise out there just minding my own business and a submarine just boom, shut. Well damn. And I had no clue no one's telling me what's going on and we got a bunch of guys off that boat that looked like a bunch of freaking people. They needed showers and shakes and they came on board our boat and we went, oh, did other things and I was just thinking of my like it's how, once I got older and I got more experience to see how much really goes into using all these forces that I really became super impressed with how hard, how strategic, how challenging it all can be.
Jeff Grimes:Right.
Gary Wise :It really is. And, by the way, we were doing real-world things right. Even though I was just a DC man hydrostatically testing fire hoses on the flight deck, my ship was directly in support of combat operations. We were a stanching deck for all kinds of other things, and that whole year from 2003 till probably about 2013, it just stayed pretty busy. It stayed pretty busy. Okay, so you're at the Joint Force. That's not your last staff duty, right, but that's your last flag staff duty, is that correct?
Gary Wise :Yes, so in a way, you're going to have the future flag or your future job in Guam, right, I don't. But I would say, working for this four star. You were at sub patch is a three star, I think it is Right. So you were at subpatch as a three star, I think it is right. So do you think that? Staff duty? Do you think we're getting it wrong somewhere when it comes to staff duty? Because I'll be honest with you, I think it's just a freaking clown show sometimes. Just so much crap going on and it needs to be watered down and just simplified. It's crazy.
Jeff Grimes:Well I mean, I talked about this before too is what do we do? That's directly related to the mission that you're trying to accomplish and, if you're not doing it, to the mission that you need to not do. And part of that rebranding of Naval Base Guam was, for a reason, right. When you're in Guam, especially in the weapons and equipment zone of the primary threat, you need to understand that it's not day-to-day operation. You're going to do day-to-day operations, but your focus is preparing yourself for the military is. Therefore, it's the major deterrent to prevent war. But if it happens, you got to win. So that's where staff, even you, look at it. You got to try to boil it down and in some cases, it's hard to see, like you mentioned. Hey, you're doing hydrostatic testing on beholds right, how's that going to work? Well, it's very important. There is some staff work that is so important, but there's a lot that's not, and that's what we continually have to bite through. Is this related to the mission or not? We continually have to bite through.
Gary Wise :Is this related to the mission or not? My heart goes out to those people that do just back-to-back-to-back staff duties and they don't ever get the chance to get back down there and actually do the thing, do the work. That is where the heartbeat is of our force. I'd feel for those flag officers, the flag riders, the people that are always stuck in staff duties and it just gets worse and worse and worse. Cause I did not enjoy it. I was so happy to go to Guam and to be a base master chief and to get out of there.
Jeff Grimes:Because I didn't feel like nobody needed me.
Gary Wise :Everybody was just like super smart. I didn't feel like all the PowerPoints was very much fun.
Jeff Grimes:But I think that's most of my go here one who can never think like that. Even my current job is of my go here one who can never think like that. Even my courage is a kind of philosophy. Think about it's not just I've worked the car running.
Gary Wise :You're out here actually trying to do something, even though I'm on it, I think but I know the one thing about you is you'll never forget where you come from. You'll never forget where you come from. You'll never forget the reality and then get stuck talking about all of the other things. Anyway, I digress right. I do see a lot of synergy in our upper level leadership and they're probably all looking at each other saying what are we really doing here and how can we peel away some of this stuff to make it a little more streamlined and to focus on the things that really matter. You remember how much I never wanted to be a party planner. When I became a command master chief, like just, I spent so much time planning freaking parties and I was like how much I would much rather go out and make sure I was a PT.
Jeff Grimes:I would much rather go out.
Gary Wise :But anyway, again I digress. I was curious because you had that experience of those four-star, three-star. Those are different levels of staff than, like, the one-star staff, right, it's just different levels of things. So you go to that joint staff, you do a bunch of travel and now you can get to be in command.
Jeff Grimes:Go back to Kings Bay and up the commanding officer of the maryland gold like to see.
Gary Wise :That's where you want to be sure you're probably happy they'll be back on the boat, not to be doing all that other stuff you were doing.
Jeff Grimes:I'd be a summary I'd go back and I told you this before I go back to suffering now I just physically probably can't do it like I could back then, because you know you've got to have physical capabilities and keep your mental acuity right, because it's a mental game, but your physical supports it and, as you, get older, it's harder to move around on those things.
Gary Wise :I remember the sailors had asked me how I could do so well on the ship and I said man, this is like breathing to me. I've been doing this for so long. My favorite thing about the ship was everything was on the boat forward to starboard, high to low, everything was where I needed it. I didn't have to go anywhere and I was probably annoyed if I had to, because I knew I need to be on my boat. I need to be on my ship doing stuff for a ship. Okay, so how, how much fun was being in command your first time.
Jeff Grimes:Oh, it's, yeah, everything that endeavor was cracked up to. I was lucky, because you probably hear a lot of commanders say this, but I had a great career. I mean, it wasn't that I had. I didn't come into oh my gosh, the boats broke, you know whatever. I came into a great situation and was only allowed just to get deep, pushing it to the next level, and we didn't very well won a couple of battleys, but it was really in the crew. I, you know, I had a good group of people who were focused and motivated on doing their thing. They were great for my team. So, yeah, great time.
Gary Wise :Awesome, I will tell you it's for my COs. I always wanted them to enjoy their being command, because when it's over, it's over, right. When it's over, it's over, right. When it's over, it's over. And I'd always try to reframe it for him because we'd be going through some crap time and it would just be so horrible and I would just be like, sir, but you know, pretty soon we're not going to be doing this anymore and I don't want you to tell this to my high school kids because I've got co's and xo's and all that.
Gary Wise :I'm telling you work three years for this, one year, right. And, by the way, this one year is really a give back here, because it's not about you anymore, it's about those three other previous grades coming up underneath you. So I know you're the ceo of the excel and the mass chief and the ops and whatever, but I don't care. Take care of those junior cadets and make sure that they're all looked after and then enjoy the ride. Enjoy the ride because at the end of year, when I play that video on the screen and you're all given your trophies, it's over, and then the band plays and you go somewhere else.
Jeff Grimes:I think you said it is not about it can't be about, and it's about everybody else. It's about the most junior person to the chief of the boat is Wiccan. It's about them and how they do it, cause your success is irrelevant to the boat's success, and that's really the key success of the ship, and so that's where I try to focus in on. It is how do I make the ship successful? And that means every individual that's on that ship has been successful, and you know and that's what you fight for.
Gary Wise :That's it. So was your boomer in Kings Bay that you were in command.
Jeff Grimes:Yeah, so I was back in Kings Bay on that, okay.
Gary Wise :So you know the waterfront, you know the people.
Jeff Grimes:Yep, you're in the bow, you're in the camp. But it was very simple. You know same type of mission, so it was beneficial to go from you know the XO and then become the CEO of that mission. Just different than a facet. A lot, of, a lot of different things in there that you have to do, but so that it was. You know wasn't my first choice, but it ended up being best choice for me. Yeah.
Gary Wise :Well, you know and that's that's one of the challenges of being on those leadership trawls You've got a bunch of people that got good ideas about where you should go and to be told that's one of the reasons why I said I'm just going to retire, because I got tired of everybody else having ideas about where I should go and nobody calling me up about it. Was it after that tour that you got that leadership award?
Jeff Grimes:It was during that tour. And so the Stockdale award is for the 05 command Awesome 055 command. Awesome 05 C command. So yeah, I won the James B Stockdale award Awesome, and.
Gary Wise :I'm sure everybody in your crew is super proud of that accomplishment, because there's no way any person can win that, like you said, without the whole team pulling everybody's rolling, yeah, after the tour. So you're wrapping up command. 05 command. That's crazy. That's an wrapping up command. Oh, five command, that's crazy.
Jeff Grimes:That's an old lab command. Most powerful warship. Third most powerful country in the world.
Gary Wise :Wow, yeah. So after that, after that boat, or where are you going to go for life after being commanding officer?
Jeff Grimes:So then I went up to Norfolk, back in Norfolk and I worked for submarine forces, atlantic, and I was the senior inspector for what's called the tactical readiness exam. So submarines have two major inspections One operational reactor safeguards exam, that's for the engineer and the reactor, and the other is the tactical readiness exam and that is war fighting capability shoot missiles, torpedoes, da, da, da, da, da, da da. So any of the doing ISR, all the different war sets. So I was the senior guy for the Atlantic fleet so I did all the inspections on both boomers and fast attacks, every submarine out there for two years. I forgot how many inspections I did, but pretty much one a month. Yeah, I mentioned that, no matter how long an inspection, scenario driven yeah.
Gary Wise :A lot of times.
Jeff Grimes:Florida and Autek.
Gary Wise :Torpedoes. What I loved about my time as an inspector was I got the chance to go on a bunch of different boats, see a bunch of different crews, get a bunch of different. I used to tell people I'd go on any surface ship and you let me see a general quarters damage control training brief, you let me see a DCPO training and a zone inspection and I will tell you the culture of that ship. I just needed those three indicators and I felt comfortable that I could go tell that captain, sir, here's where I think your crew is probably good and here's where he probably got some areas to be careful of, right, because I had that level of experience. So when I got to my aircraft carrier and I was the carrier guy for my time when I got to George Washington, I remember my XO and my Chang my chief engineer was like oh my God, this guy has all the cheat codes. Because, again, I had all this experience, all these.
Gary Wise :I knew the standard for the fleet. Really, I really knew the standard, not what somebody was telling me. I'd been there, I'd seen all the boats, I was the guy assessing them all and of course inspectors hated me because they came out to see me. I knew, but I also knew it was our job is to get inspected. Your job is to inspect me. You gotta do your job, it's okay, but it definitely made me more powerful as a leader on the waterfront because I had that credibility. Did you find, after you finished that tour, when you got your next afloat command, that you brought all that experience with you and that seasoning?
Jeff Grimes:yeah, I mean it was. It was very helpful because after that I went to the submarine squadron that was the deputy in the commodore, so and that was only we had four boats assigned to that squadron being the fact that I had seen and I agree with you and I didn't believe it at first, but but you did learn and when you went down the hatch for the first time you could almost smell the green. You know, got any weird about that, yeah, and so it did help me integrate when I went to be the Commodore in charge of four boats. That's something my grown-up the to give them a heads up on. Hey, watch this, watch, watch, because you see so many crews.
Gary Wise :Yeah no, I can see the brilliance of them picking you to be the guy to go to submarine squadron 15 to be the deputy.
Gary Wise :Because, hey, look, not only did you have a good command, tour, xo tour, not only did you get all this diversity of stink on you as you go up the chain from sub-pack to sub-land to the joint force, and seeing all those different things.
Gary Wise :Because Guam, like we know, and for those of you in the world that don't know, guam is a joint island. It's not just a Navy island, it's an American island, it is an island for the people, but it's also a very important strategic location for the entire joint force, right? And so when you go to that island, not only do you need to understand your branch, but also how do you correlate, how do you synergize with everybody else? And then, oh, by the way, submarines 115 doesn't have four boats, but they also get control of a lot of other boats that are passing through and are involved in that very important waterway of strategic navigation. Right, and how that works is you guys are really how I understood the care, the feeding, the housing, the maintenance, all those other things, and it supported them. Were you excited to go to Guam when you first got told you were going to Guam supported them.
Jeff Grimes:Were you excited to go to Guam? When you first got told you were going to Guam, I chose. I and we just talked about was my only time in the Pacific. Was that submarine?
Gary Wise :forces Pacific when I went to college every night, but it really didn't blur the Pacific.
Jeff Grimes:So I was like I'm going to tour, or you know my career, I want to go to the Pacific and see what it's like. And then so, yeah, I requested to go to the Pacific and see what it's like. And so, yeah, I requested to go to. I was, I knew I was going to go to major command, my 06 command, but I said, hey, let me go. The position verse 115 deputy came open and I said I'll try that and let me see what the Pacific is like. I had already put in my request for major command locations you know my wish list, as we call it but they were on the east coast. So once I got to guam and as the deputy, I asked to make squadron 15 my number one. So they allowed it and they picked me. So I went from the deputy to the colidor, which doesn't normally happen. It happened for me and started my life at Guam right 2013.
Gary Wise :When you made that choice to go from the deputy to the Commodore. Was that purely? Was that just, oh my God, I see the vision for this job and I'm not done yet and I want to see this through. Or was that where you already started recognizing like, hey, at some point this journey is going to end? And I kind of like this beautiful island called Guam and I'm looking around me like, hey, at some point this journey is going to end and I kind of like this beautiful island called Guam and I'm looking around me like this gives me everything I want out of life and it could, because I got to be honest.
Gary Wise :At some point the Navy tells you you got to go home. You don't get to stay there until you're no longer physically able to do the job Because some of us might still be doing it till we're 60, if they let us but they tell us that you're going to go home by the time you're 55 or you get cursed with being on staff duty for life, and not everybody maybe wants that job. I know, I don't, you know. And so I think once I woke up one day and I was like you know what? They're going to tell me to go home in the next 10 years anyway. Why don't I just start making choices for myself? Then it got to be hard to focus a little bit, because that was a new way to think.
Jeff Grimes:Right Now come to fleet up is purely what you said initially was. I saw what the subreddit for doing Pacific and said this is a mission. This is where I want to round out. So it was more about mission than it was about Guam. Guam came after when I got back here as Commodore and that family, family choices and none of Guam's were cause. I was when I was finishing up squadron 15, I was on my way. I had pencil pen to go to CTF's commander task force seven Boren U group. That's where I was supposed to go and I asked by that time this was where I started making my career and family choices to stay.
Gary Wise :I could see 74, but I could also understand why you made the choices that you made. But I I know how operational it is out there in the Pacific and I know, once you get a taste for the Pacific and how, what's really going on. And God, I can only imagine what it's like now. I mean, I remember the first Trump tour and I remember the Obama years and just be like what the hell are we doing, watching these guys build things in the middle of the ocean. And I was afloat on a ship.
Gary Wise :We got in trouble because we drove by Fiery Reef one time and me and the captain was like Mass Chief, let's fly our battle. And so we threw our biggest flag. We got in trouble. We didn't have to fly the biggest flag. I was like, sir, screw it, america, you know, but no, what? What are you? What are you gonna do? But I can now I'm sure it's freaking like, hey, man, chest around a little bigger, shoulders back a little stronger. And everybody's saying, okay, I respect strength, I don't want to respect strength, but if you're not going to give us strength, we'll take advantage of it. Why not? I don't judge people for doing that either. The enemy gets a vote, man, and so I can see well, looking back at that timeline of those years, of when that synergy's happening in the Pacific. And that's right about the time you became the Squadron 15 Commodore and there was a lot of things going our direction in the Pacific and there was a lot of things going our direction in the Pacific and it wasn't just like when we were. I was there when we were bringing that fifth submarine over for Naval Base Guam and that was a big deal, right. I remember watching it all finish up here and how the barracks all played out and remembering how we had to put that plan together to make all that work and people that weren't there when we were there. We'll never know how much thought we put into all that, but we really did.
Gary Wise :Okay, so you go to a submarine squadron 15, and I'll tell you, for those of you that don't know Japan, yes, sasbor, japan has some forward-deployed ships, but I would put pound for pound, day for day, sea pay to sea pay, that those submarines out of Guam are check-raising those boats out of Japan when it comes to underway rotation days, and no one talks about it. I don't hear anyone talking about it and, of course, I'm frustrated for the surface guys up there in Yokosuka, because, after Fitz and McKinney, they're underway so freaking much that complacency has got to be violently fought against every day. Otherwise you're going to, unfortunately, get into a position where you're going to be unsafe, but when you drive your car an excessive amount of miles every day, unfortunately you're going to become complacent. It's scary, and I just I look at these. Everyone's exhausted, everyone's tired. I know they're tired on the boats down there too, and it doesn't seem like there's. I hope they're getting the recognition that they deserve, at least for the hours they're putting in and for the work they're putting in.
Gary Wise :The good news, though, is the families for the most part the families really like those locations, right. So like families really like Guam, they really like Sassable, they really like Yokosuka. So, yes, while we're exhausted from doing the job, at least when you come home, for the most part the families are not too pissed off, right, in the states, where it's different I'm not taking anything away from Guam, because Guam is America, but it's everyone's kind of all focused on the mission we're all kind of in this community that's all very connected, whereas in the States, your next door neighbor can be some civilian that has no connection to what you're going through as a person, then it can't relate. You don't have that support system of this ombudsman group and all these families, which I think makes the next period of time we're going to talk about even more unique, because we got the chance to do COVID together in Guam.
Jeff Grimes:I don't know if it was an opportunity or a chance, or punishment?
Gary Wise :Yeah, we didn't go. I thought it was a blessing. Who been looking for that ambulance For real, I got it somewhere I don't know what You're finishing up, submarine Squadron 15, major Command. You got four submarine COs working for you. You got four boats you're taking care of. And are you and Renate already dating at this time?
Jeff Grimes:Yeah, that was it when I came back go off to school come back, I left and came back. And that's when I met Renate come back, they left and came back. And that's when I became a Nazi. That's kind of how the decision to stay in Guam, not being back for 2015, came about.
Gary Wise :And that was when you got the opportunity to go be the installation commanding officer for Naval Base Guam.
Jeff Grimes:I had one step in between. If you remember, I was the chief of staff for Joint Region Mariana.
Gary Wise :Oh, my god yeah.
Jeff Grimes:I do remember that. So I did that for a few years and then got fortunate enough to get a second 06 major command and went to a qualms Yo.
Gary Wise :What an awesome career, man. Like holy crap. Dude, like you, freaking are amazing. So you went from being the summary squad to 15th Commodore, understanding all that in all your years of experience, to Joint Region Marianas right and to help and thread together what that place was becoming yeah, what was growing from from Commander Naval Region Marianas to Joint Region Marianas. Did you, were you there as that transition happened?
Jeff Grimes:no, it would already. It already happened for several years. But what we were focused on is the thing that is current is the stand-up at Marine Corps Base Camp was. So that hadn't happened yet and that was a major transition. Going on was the start of the Marine relocation and all the construction and that, just a couple years ago, resulted in the stand-up of the Marine Corps Base Camp Blasio.
Gary Wise :Okay.
Jeff Grimes:So that was what happened.
Gary Wise :But I mean, then you get all of that experience and understanding the politics of all the different islands because, again, all these islands are American territories, they're part of the fabric of our United States of America or they're at least pledging allegiance to us for protection and or trade treatings, whatever.
Gary Wise :I remember my mom flew out for a visit to Guam. She took the one that hit all the islands all the way up and I was like United hits them all, baby. It's like riding the subway of the skies, right, you, she hit them all and I just that's, that's the amount of those are all americans that are working their way to or from hawaii or from wherever, and they're all across the islands, right, micronesia, they're all across, all across the mariana strength trench stretch, all of that Okay. So you did Mariana's and then you got the chance to come to naval base Guam back in command, because you were a chief of staff there up at the region. So you're working for the Admiral, but you're managing all the herd and all the cats, right, working with the civilians, cause was that your first staff, jamie, where you had a bunch of civilians to work with?
Jeff Grimes:It was, oh, mainly civilians, very civilian military yeah. That was really my first staff.
Gary Wise :Right? Well, for me, guam was my only time with civilians on staff too, when I was a, so that's, we were a hundred percent besides.
Jeff Grimes:Wellington, right, and now I'm 10. Yeah, different, different. There's all military staff. There's still a lot of military. This was Gary M and it was me.
Gary Wise :Well, and I remember I actually you and the outgoing CEO of MBG, you guys just swapped roles. Actually he went to Maryland so you went down to MBG. Because you guys just swapped roles. Actually he went to Marijuana so you went down to MBG. Let's be honest, there's probably not a whole bunch of post-tour major commanders looking to go out to Guam to serve their country. They don't know what they're missing. I can film the commercial for them, but they don't know what they're missing. So when you got to MBG, did you already knew what your priorities were going into that role? Did you already know the things that you wanted to focus on? Like I knew? I mean, you had your, your four corners right, you had the compass that you had figured out and you had your priorities laid out and the safety and security. And did you already have all that figured out or did you come to all that after you got to MBG and actually got to see it from the inside?
Jeff Grimes:I think I had the pieces headed right, when I never put it together. I mean because I operated as a tenant as Squadron 15, then as the chief of staff hooking down at all the different tenants. So when I got there I formulated it there. That's where we came up with it.
Jeff Grimes:I said hey, the motto was crossroads to the Pacific and it didn't sit with me because we're not a pass-through, that's what it meant. That's a crossroad, even though it's logistics hub and stuff. But the environment changed right, we were and I've said it a couple of times you're now in the weapons engagement zone of the enemy. So that's what changed my thought and changed really started and we saw it and we got to change this as what's not. Is this a main operating base or are we a forward?
Jeff Grimes:operating base, you know, and those just it's how to balance that that peaked out from the installation level to make sure I can support the people who had to get out there and play well, and I think not everybody understood always how real it was.
Gary Wise :They just didn't understand with a threat, they didn't understand the amount of people that were on the Island and not everybody had our best interests at heart. And oh, by the way, we were the. We were the first touch point to collect data on our country every day. I remember telling, I remember you telling it to me, I remember you telling that to me, I remember me telling it to the sailors Whenever you stand that post as a sentry, I always want them to think that's America right there and I'm not going to try to test that sentry because I'm not. You represent our whole country, right? And then you get all these freaking tourists and all these other people.
Gary Wise :But guess what? Guam is great, but it's not that great. Like, let's be honest, some of the people are coming there because they're interested and seeing what else they can learn and what they can know, right? So, looking back on your time as Naval Base Guam's CEO, I mean, we were there for a year before COVID started, right? Do you remember your time before COVID? Was there anything that was significant about your tenure there where you were like, oh my God, that was the best thing that I'd done? Or was it just getting through the job, slugging, slugging away? Because I gotta tell you, when I first got there I was just kind of like, well, this is going to be all right. You know, me and Erica were coming off of surgery and so we weren't really sure what life was going to be like. But once COVID came, man, they got a fun real quick yeah.
Jeff Grimes:It's. It's it's life before COVID is kind of hard to remember. To be honest, we were focused, we came to the mission, we changed the patch, we were doing those things. But it was when you have something like that, that operation that we carried out in the midst of the whole publicity of it all. It was hard to remember because it was so focused. I mean, that was a lot of hours, a lot of work, a lot of breathing. We did.
Gary Wise :And it happened so quick too. I remember when the Theodore Roosevelt pulled in the first time and going downtown to the downtown hotel to have a function, right, and I knew captain crozier from a previous tour, so him and I, we I still am connected to the, to him to this day, right. I think he's doing great things and I I remember going there drinking and hanging out with him and my wife erica, and the cmc was there, pete, pete Santos was there and a whole bunch of people were there. And I had no clue that after that, that event in that hotel, that weeks later, all hell was about to be breaking loose on our in our world. Right Cause, I don't even think at that point we were talking about a COVID flu or worried about getting a COVID flu of some sort. I didn't even think at that point we were talking about a COVID flu or worried about getting a COVID flu of some sort. I didn't even. It wasn't even on my radar at that point. You know, and then I don't know when, do you remember COVID as an installation force, protection, medical health condition? God, all those terms we were using back then, right God, all those terms we were using back then, right, cause, as the installation person yourself and then the region person, you were responsible for force protection, health protection, right, how did we word that was that worded. It gave you all these different things.
Gary Wise :I just remember having a meeting at TNT. We're at TNT's, right, all the commanding officers are there, all the exiles are there, all the CMCs are there. We're at TNTs, right, all the commanding officers are there, all the exiles are there, all the CMCs are there. We're at TNTs and we're like all right, guys, look, if this flu gets here or this COVID thing or whatever it's going to be, we don't really even know. But if it comes to Guam, here's going to be our response actions at baseline level, like immediate response, and it was like if you had one, because we had only like 18 beds on the island, I remember at one point was all we had that we thought we had, and I remember thinking one was gonna make us immediately triple wire and then it was like god, it was like the next day and then it was the next year. It felt like the next day.
Gary Wise :So we had that meeting at TNTs and it's like that's out of your Sunday. You called me up and you're like Gary, we just had a COVID positive and it was like we had like three like the first day, and we 300% jumped over our red block. I remember sitting on my looking up at the stars and we're all going to die.
Jeff Grimes:What do we know? We were living in the other world.
Gary Wise :I'm like oh my God, we're all going to die. We don't have the medical facilities, we don't have the support. We were supposed to be hideaway here in this little island and now, all of a sudden, we've got. We're going to be overwhelmed in a week because, you know, we didn't, we didn't know.
Jeff Grimes:Right.
Gary Wise :That first, that first part, was so quiet, Do you remember? Oh, I remember another fun time you were on travel to Hawaii. I think it was and this was. I think this was before, right after the first positives had started. It was something.
Jeff Grimes:It was the next flight. There was a chance. It was an empty place Germantown, germantown, germantown.
Gary Wise :Yeah, it in Germantown.
Jeff Grimes:Germantown yeah, it was Germantown. I was in Hilo doing an emergency manager's court. Yeah, and I got the call that night and I'm at dinner with my wife and I was with Bill Lantos, who just happened to be there, as you mentioned earlier, Ended up on the phone with you all night, and then I came back phone with you all like which has came back and the regard was German down, and then it happened. It didn't show up a week later is when they started spitting up for the TR.
Gary Wise :I remember German town and Kahuna was covering him for you as the CEO. Kahuna, kahuna, word. All of a sudden we had to put German's out in a box and they couldn't leave the box. They were like a sandbox. Liberty all of a sudden, and it was this whole big debacle. They couldn't throw their trash away. It was all kinds of stuff right, and I knew these guys from my past life when I was a sasabo and I was just I remember talking on pier like across the way from the CMC and just be like I don't even know what this means, man Like, okay, well, I hope you guys aren't sick, bro. We thought they had. They might have it.
Gary Wise :And what was the concern? Right, and that was before we even got to this whole. You had to do this period of time before you could be considered clean, or it gave us guidance. I remember so when that first happened, you got back and I think we didn't understand how we were going to be leveraged yet as a forward operating and face, and how real that word was about to become right, I think that people always kind of took that narrative with a grain of salt, but we became the only Liberty port available, the only logistical port available for all those ships.
Gary Wise :In our theater Period, nobody was doing it like Guam. Nobody, right Cause if you pull those ships in the acoustic size, well, they wanted to go home. Right, they were that family across the in the acoustic. Well, they wanted to go home. Right, they were that family across the wire. You brought them to Guam. There wasn't family. So it wasn't family there, right Cause, that was like almost twice as much pain, even though our submariners were getting put into those fricking bubbles and they couldn't go home before they got that that was happening. I remember the news story break in that the TR was heading back from Vietnam and they had some COVID positives on the ship and there was all the different ideas about what could happen. Do you remember what you thought when they first told you that they were going to bring the Theodore Roosevelt to Guam?
Jeff Grimes:Do you remember? Was that Manoni that told you that yeah, call me, and then you know, hey, we need to get a couple hundred minutes, right. I said hey, we'll get that app, and then that's when I called you and get a couple hundred bands for us Set off to it, and then and so I can all figure it, okay, a couple hundred, they'll, they'll figure it out and go, and then you know, if you remember 20, I think it was less than 24 hours later, or at least that much. How about 2,400?
Gary Wise :Yes, it was not even a day.
Jeff Grimes:We. I mean, then I got. Then that's what real, real. Yeah, I mean we convert every piece of real estate that we can to meet the health standards required for mass housing of up to 2,400. And that's when it got real.
Gary Wise :I remember Colonel Sanger Sangster. She was the public health officer down to the veterinarian who also was like. She was like I'm a veterinarian, but at night I'm a Dexter. I'm a veterinarian, but at night I'm a I'm Dexter, I'm a fricking public health weenie. You know, what's funny is I actually talked to her not too long ago because one of my students wants to become an army veterinarian, so I connected her with Colonel Sykes just so they could talk, right. But we were getting all the guidance as to what the rules were going to be. To that point, we'll got the 2,400 beds. When we first came up with our first swag for beds, we thought we were digging deep. Then when they came back and said, multiply it by like three, give us 2,400. Yeah, I remember I was at. I was handed out SIM cards, I think at the elementary school, to the people that were there. The elementary school laid on area because they were considered to be yellows or whatever they were. We weren't sure what they were yet.
Jeff Grimes:Yeah, and.
Gary Wise :I'd ask should I go home and have dinner, cause I had had dinner with my family for like weeks. It felt like at that point and you were like mash, you managed to come back to the office.
Jeff Grimes:Yeah. I left my office, or they always ended by house. And I don't know about your wife, but no one knew. Warm shower outside, deep composer, what do you call it?
Gary Wise :yeah, decon, decon myself well, everybody else was freaking doing home watching Tiger King. We were out moving around COVID box around him all night movements going.
Jeff Grimes:You look at the number of people who participated in that the CPF guys, all of your chiefs, yeah.
Gary Wise :Wow, it was huge. I was very proud of the chiefs mass coming out of that. That first part was so big, big seventh fleet telling everybody to giving them the hey, you work with mbg, do whatever they needed to do. As soon as that happened, bam, we had everybody and the chiefs came to work and that was awesome stood up the eoc, or we had a 24-hour watch station. I mean wow, for like a year, for like a year. People don't understand like we were fighting. That fight for the whole time.
Jeff Grimes:We yeah the company's um teddy roosevelt was just the first 70. Some days after that we had the whole.
Gary Wise :We were running sandbox liberty, right, we were running bubble, the bubble. We were running all the ports. We were keeping the fleet moving. So that way we took a problem off of somebody else's plate for sure, right, because all they said was bring them to guam and they would get there. We, we had navy exchange, just putting all the stuff in the different storage facilities and making sure those are clean to go. We had so much food donated to these sailors.
Jeff Grimes:It was amazing, it was just great.
Gary Wise :We didn't love the national.
Jeff Grimes:Don't forget the French ship and the German ship.
Gary Wise :It wasn't just the US, the Allies, and partners, and I'll tell you, the island also supported right? Remember? You guys contracted that restaurant to come in and start making all the food.
Jeff Grimes:It was a little of the galley. We got out of food capacity and then we had to figure out how to keep the food fresh and within health standards. For that that wasn't easy to get and drive it do you know what's so funny about the home?
Gary Wise :in about 15 different locations yeah, I remember you and I talking about how we would, what we would do if there was ever an attack on the island, because we didn't have a galley, we didn't have these things and we were kind of just spitball and it just like what if? And then all that came to play seven months later as we were just trying to get creative with how we could leverage every asset, every resource on the island to best to support the warfight, because Because, look, that's how grab is going to always have to be Now we'll never have the luxury to not be everybody all the way invested in the fight to keep the fight going, to defend the island, right.
Jeff Grimes:It's just from Georgia are not going to drive to Guam.
Gary Wise :And look, call them a Jacksonville Naval Air Station. People on Western Florida are not going to drive there to go help. Right On Guam there's just everything is. There's only so much of what everyone has, period, and so the government and the military organizational leadership has got to work together for everyone. And then, unfortunately, they got to all fall in line, probably with the military, because in order for us all to survive, we got to keep the island alive and safe. That's a tough place to operate from, you know.
Gary Wise :Yeah, I loved it, man. Looking back on it, that was some of the most fun I've ever had in my life. Going through it was hell right. But looking back on it, I remember when it was like a ghost town and MBG headquarters and it was just military and being like I'm like running away. It was great, I like it. I'm gonna walk down to the EOC because I remember I forget what it was. You told me once when you're like mass chief, you're too close to the problem, you need to come back to the valley. Stop, stop. That was out there, man, I was in you know sometimes we were out.
Jeff Grimes:I mean you want to get in and close the ground, but sometimes you back and keep that pink picture because there's a lot more.
Gary Wise :Well, and at the first year we didn't have any people Like people don't understand how small our military staff was at MBG, especially when the security forces were all in a whole different thing because they had to be bubbled up to protect the base or storm town. Right, it got real winged real quick.
Gary Wise :You know we were everyone who was having to pitch in. We were all out there doing what we could do. Later we got more bodies and we got built up a little bit more. Then, you remember, they brought in all the medical people. That was a huge plus. They brought a lot to the fight.
Jeff Grimes:They did All those police that we put them in from those hospitals. They're all gone now. They're all gone now. Really, it shows you what we did. Oh yeah, yeah, those portables to get them back in shape with our engineers, to even be able to put a person in them, not only a person, but a person healthy, because it would end up being hospital clean.
Gary Wise :Right, you remember when we had to move all the people out of the barracks because we were going to put people in barracks. We emptied that whole big building of barracks, even people that were deployed, unfortunately. We had to figure out a way to figure out get it done. I remember us coming up with that plan that was like break glass only wind it done. And I remember us coming up with that plan Like that was like break glass only when we need. And we broke the hell out of that. We broke that glass twice. We broke that glass All of our vacant family housing.
Gary Wise :We were leveraging that for just stowing people in that were streaming to the island to help us. We had no other way to stay Because all of our maybe lodge rooms which NGIS was all getting used for freaking Apropos Palms oh, my Apropos Palms would be one of my favorite ones. The night we made everyone evacuate Apropos Palms and go to Camp Covington. And you know again, not everyone needs to always know our behind the scenes thinking, but we we were able to also work our battle plans with our other long-term plans for naval base quam, because we had a vision of getting all of that ctf warfighters on camp covington and out of.
Gary Wise :APRA and we. I remember I was walking through APRA Palms and people were just like come on, gary. I was like, no, get your butt on the bus. It was, it was something, man, I'm very proud that I've been a part of. That. It was. You had to have been there, you had to have fought for it, you know yeah.
Jeff Grimes:Yeah, you had to have been there before, you know.
Gary Wise :Yeah, yeah, you had to be there, and also because all those rooms, all those beds were laid on areas for sailors that were going to be vacating off of that ship. And then what started happening was we had all these houses that were like hotel rooms that we use in guam, but now now Pack Fleet was expecting us to use all those beds for people coming to Guam to get healthy, to go to ships, to use their deploying units right, and so we became this concierge service that would pick you up with the airport, drive you to your place, have food for you delivered by your freaking Navy Exchange app or whatever it was right. We'd keep you healthy, whole and certified, bubble, safe, and then we'd jog you and drop you off to your boat. We had drivers, we had vans, we had EOC.
Jeff Grimes:We had EO, we had the hot, we had so many. Yep, the airport was crazy, right, I mean, we were up in the airport.
Gary Wise :I remember when we yeah, I remember when the airport every night, we had watchstanders at the airport picking up people and managing that whole process. Right, we had a chief every night at the airport managing that process. But we had to do this not only for the region and for the area, for the MBG and for the island, but also so that the commanders of our Navy can defend who they were letting go on the ship because, again, we didn't. They had to all follow the rules of the federal government. Right, the federal government rules. We're all federal government employees. These are the rules of the federal government, and Guam was.
Gary Wise :We followed the rules all the way, till the bitter end, you know, whereas other states chose to just say screw. The way till the bitter end, you know, whereas other states other states chose to just say screw, we're not doing that no more. We watched that from the sidelines because on blonde, that wasn't an option. Right, it was, it was not optional. But hey, looking back at it though, my family, I think they had a pretty decent time. You know, they were an apper up there on the hill and it was. I mean, dad wasn't around a whole lot, but god, here, I mean, there's a lot of people over here that lost a lot of family members, yeah, and some of the science is coming out of the whole thing. I think we learned a lot of lessons about going through a pandemic. Tell you what?
Jeff Grimes:Yeah, many key things in my life has happened, but that one there is never was the teamwork, as it definitely wasn't me. This was huge amount of people. You mentioned government, you name it then all came together and you know, and we're very lucky. We only lost a very few. Very lucky, very lucky and a lot of a very few Very lucky, very lucky, and a lot of it was because of all the stuff we did. We were probably overly conservative, but at that point and to save a life, it was worth it.
Gary Wise :It was worth it. You know, because of how you are, because of how I am, I'm a good sailor. So what you tell me, this is mission essential, all right. So you're on to that, here we go. That's it right. I had some of my opinions on something. I tried Call up a master chief here and there, like what the hell are we doing? Like Bob, I don't know. In particular, I made a few phone calls and I was like you know, you're asking us to do things that I'm not fully freaking comfortable with and I'm going to drink the best of my ability. But don't be mad at me tomorrow if there's a picture that doesn't look exactly like a freaking Hilton. It's a freaking cafeteria of an elementary school, bro, it's a cafeteria of a high school. I remember when he said MASH team, there's got to be a bed in every room. I was putting a bed in laundry rooms. I think, hey, now you did.
Jeff Grimes:It. Hey, it was that many people you know tell it all got with Peter bar, with enough restrooms, all the requirements, you're going to sit a lot of people and be safe about it. Yeah, Everything was better.
Gary Wise :So when they stood up the hotels right and sub race larger 15, when it took on the hotels down there and you had sailors deliver meals to all the hotel rooms like it was all hands on freaking deck on guam it really was one of the only areas I've got a sour taste of my mouth was the hardest part about any mission plan, any war plan. It's not about how you start the war, it's how you finish the right. Anything you do in life that's worth doing, start with the end in mind first. Have the end in mind first. If you've got to build the plane, while you're flying the plane, start thinking about how you're going to land that sucker at some point, because you're going to land At some point, the flight's going to be over.
Gary Wise :And I remember us having so many obligations and so many responsibilities that we were being held accountable to. And then all of a sudden one day, everyone is like, oh, we're all going, we're all leaving by, and we were just left like, but none of these obligations have left, none of these responsibilities are gone, right, and I look at it. I remember our Navy before 9-11. I was a young sailor. I don't remember a whole bunch, but I remember a lot and then a lot of these changes that came after 9-11, especially on the heels of like force protection, and the problem is, you know, you didn't plus us up to man up all these unfunded billets to achieve all these requirements. I had Lisa Tisdale on here not too long ago. We were having a conversation about it and she was the Joint Regent Master Chief during COVID for Mononi and I told her I said the thing I hate the most about personnel in the Navy is when they tell me billets are unfunded, because all I'm hearing you tell me is you know I need more people and you're not going to get them for me but you're not lowering any of these requirements that I got to achieve. That doesn't feel. That doesn't feel right to me. You know, I think we we grew a lot of requirements after 9-11 and then we've never taken any of those back and so they're on the backs of the sailors that are manned still at, you know, older manned configuration. Well, now you look at those installations. Or, like Naval Base Guam, you were asking us to do all these mission sets that were not in our freaking, not a part of our manning documents, but we didn't have the resources of the people. I was a little bit sour there because these are friends of ours that I was going home to every day. They were with us all the way to the end.
Gary Wise :I remember Rick Straney called me up one night. He was a CTF 75 CMC. He was like Gary man, you got to understand at some point we got to go back to our jobs. I was like I get it, man, I get it, I get it, but this is still my job. This is still my job and no one's telling me that I can just stop doing it. So anyone out there listening to our voice, just remember just if you're going to go in, great, just have a plan to get the hell out, and get the hell out on your own terms. Right, and before you start cutting resource, just have a good plan to get out. Don't just leave everything there and walk away. That's not good. And then I think the other hard part was after you left command. I'm not going to lie, I was so upset at that command. I was so lonely there, it was not fun.
Jeff Grimes:But then it was just waiting to retire.
Gary Wise :Right, it was just waiting to retire. So when you turned over command, you immediately retired. After that, I mean, you did a little bit back on the hill, but then you're retired. And then, since retiring, how's life, man? Are you just working?
Jeff Grimes:Yeah, I'm working. I'm working on a whiteboard commercial industry for a couple of years and then I'm currently working as the executive director of Red Anderson Air Force. So pull back to this military. You know way of life and the mission. Like you said, even though we got a lot of unfunded challenges, it's still inspiring. And so I'm doing the job and I'm finding that the way the Air Force fights isn't the way the Navy fights, but it's still important in the whole strategic gambit of what's going on here in the Pacific. So I'm enjoying it the whole strategic gambit of what's going on here in the Pacific. So I'm enjoying it.
Gary Wise :Man, when I first heard you got that position, I was super proud of you because, number one, they couldn't have asked for a better guy with better background, better understanding, better perspective. But then, when I think about some of the people that I felt like didn't want to see your success in certain areas, god, I was like I really was, man, because I am a Captain Jeff Grimes fan. I will fight you over, captain Jeff Grimes. I remember, I remember I told you that from my very first day as MDG, cmc, and we really didn't know each other very well at this time. But I'm in my office, I don't even know what I'm doing. Right, ballot had just left and this in the office, I don't even know what I'm doing, right, ballot had just left and this guy comes in my door and closes my door and he starts yelling at me about my captain Right, and he was one of the seatings at the self-help place Right, and I'm like I don't know who this guy is.
Gary Wise :He's a chief and he's wearing a cookie and he's yelling. I'm thinking to myself like, okay, once he gets done, I'm like where do they do that at? Like, where are we right now, where you think you're going to come in my office and start yelling about my commanding office. What the hell are we doing? And that was my first day, right? But I mean, I just I love you to death. Man, I think you're a freak. You are awesome and I've been there. I know your heart, but I also know that you're a warrior, and warriors don't always not everyone's going to like us, it's okay.
Jeff Grimes:It's okay. As I've learned in my life, the people, whatever happens, happens for a reason, and you and me got together with Steve right at the right time and all the things that happened, and it was right.
Gary Wise :I mean it was great. I'm going to get Kahuna on here too at some point, because an important piece of that pie too. He hadn't been there at the beginning, god cause, his level of preparation and his ability was just. It was way up here, man operation center man.
Jeff Grimes:He ran that EOC, he stood that up that way and we all know that roll, split off our requirements and we execute. It was mission and command. That's what that's called. Here's the method. I don't know how to do this. Here's what we've got to do. Here's your mission. You have to do it, be ethical, be moral and execute. That's all that happens with the order, and sometimes those are the best orders to give and let good people who know their stuff get stuff done. And you guys did it. You guys nailed it.
Gary Wise :I remember one time I was on George Washington and we had just pulled into Hong Kong and we got the call that night to recall the entire crew, the entire heroine, because we were getting sorted to go to the Philippines in support of a humanitarian mission. Right, and I remember thinking that this is impossible or whatever, but all the, all the rules were off, I get it done. That was, I love those operatives. You know what, trust me, thank you, I got you. Don't give me all this bureaucratic crap. Tell me the mission, give me the parameters legal, ethical and moral Go and then great Message to Garcia.
Gary Wise :Yep Message to Garcia. Oh, my God, we got to cover that one in a future story. Okay, I got one last thing to do, man, before I let you go. Alright, this is my quick pass in a hurry. I ask you questions and you just try to answer them as fast as you can. Okay, would you rather have pizza or wings Pizza? Okay, you're a young division officer, or you're a young officer, or wherever you're at in your life. Would you rather have worked in the burning?
Jeff Grimes:cleaners or on the working party Working party.
Gary Wise :Okay, I'm not surprised to hear you say that. I'm not surprised to hear you say that Okay, I'm not surprised to hear you say that. I'm not surprised to hear you say that. Okay, these gentlemen are both actors. Would you prefer to watch Robert De Niro or Al Pacino in a movie?
Jeff Grimes:Al Pacino Okay.
Gary Wise :So throughout your I mean, I think I know what you're going to say, but throughout your career, what was your favorite duty station Out of your career? What was your best? Liberty port, maple City Okay, throughout your career, what was your hardest watch qualification that you ever had to earn?
Jeff Grimes:Engineering officer of the watch. The culmination of my first tour.
Gary Wise :I believe that. All right, I think I know the answer here, but I'm going to ask it anyway. If you were on a boat again, would you rather be overseas or stateside?
Jeff Grimes:Overseas.
Gary Wise :Yeah, definitely, it's just simpler, I think Okay, would you rather be independent or on a team? On a team Okay, personal. You rather be independent or on a team On a team? Okay, personal leadership philosophy. Do you have another leadership philosophy that is personal? Do you think it's the one where you keep your standard above your bosses?
Jeff Grimes:That's more of a work ethic. Okay, I think I'll take one back from, I'll give you another one. I don't think I've ever told this one, but it's more of a I don't know leadership loss. It's about the team, it's not yeah, it's not about the leader and it's always about the team. The Tim Tebow. As a recent boss of mine used to say, that's the team Tim Tebow effect right and I would have never talked about himself in this turn, okay.
Gary Wise :Yep, all right. So in the team's mess we have a few of these guiding principles. We have deck play leadership, we have institutional, technical expertise. We've got professionalism, character, loyalty, active communication or a sense of heritage. If I asked you to pick out of that listing which one of those you thought resonated the most with you, which one do you think it would be? So? The first one is deck play leadership. Next one is institutional and technical expertise, professionalism, character, loyalty, active communication or a sense of heritage, I would say character probably overall.
Jeff Grimes:Although it's very hard to separate those from each one individually.
Gary Wise :They are definitely. Yeah, would you rather lead or follow? Lead Me too. I'd rather be on a team, but I'd rather lead or follow. Lead Me too. I'd rather be on a team, but I'd rather lead the team. Well, I tell my students I say you know, but there's nothing more satisfying than when you know you're leading a team of leaders and they're all choosing to follow you. That, right there, it gets no better than that. Do you have any, say sad rounds or alibis for clone?
Jeff Grimes:oh, appreciated, great, great, great. Reconnected with you and just reminiscing, but also, hopefully, the words for the words from the wise as we're here.
Gary Wise :hey, man, and you know, for those that are listening, jeff is also my advisory board, so I owe you an update and how things are going there. It is going good, right, it is going good right, it is going good. I'm hosting a live leadership development event here in Ocala on July 25th called Ocala Inspire. So that's one of my initiatives I'm currently doing. It's going to be a good time. Wise Leadership Solutions is still growing and booming and we're getting busy. I've got, like I said, I've got, I believe, one of my former commanding officers coming down here to be one of my fellow instructors. I'm hoping to lasso him in a little bit to help me out with this. It's fun. So I would give my love to the family man, tell everybody I'm happy day and thank you very much. I'm sorry to go long, brother.
Jeff Grimes:No problem, have a great one. Talk to you soon.
Gary Wise :Yes, sir, my life.
