including ship captains, do for a living.
autocratic powers to deal with mutinous sailors. And for sailors in peril on the sea, having someone clearly in charge tends to be comforting.
The question, of course, is whether a captain can use this power in ways that win the crew’s respect and trust. Neither tyrants nor pushovers have a chance.
The best skippers blend fairness and strength, and they learn from life, not just from a book.
In this case, the two black sailors had been in trouble before. Earlier in my career, multiple disciplinary proceedings would have been enough reason to throw them out of the Navy immediately. This time, however, I asked Master Chief Scheeler what he could tell me about these sailors to help me understand why they acted this way.
I learned that they were both from the inner city of Detroit. One had a father in prison, and the other had never met his father. Both their mothers were on welfare. That didn’t excuse them, but it put events in another light—and gave me an opportunity. I thought of my own childhood, growing up with two caring parents in a small town in Pennsylvania. It seemed clear that neither of these young men had a positive male role model, and I started to wonder if I could handle this situation in a way that offered them a different experience. This would depend on their behavior and what I learned and did in the initial hearing.
Thus far, everyone involved had been lying. The white sailors didn’t want to admit that one of them had muttered the word “nigger” in the confrontation, and the black sailors didn’t want to admit they had used the word, too, as part of their rap song. I needed the truth, so I sweated it out of them—literally.
The hearing was in a room much too small for the sixty witnesses who were crammed into it. I turned off the air-conditioning and started asking questions. It got hot, and then hotter. Three hours later, one sailor cracked and told me exactly what had happened. Once the dam broke, everyone turned honest.
I asked the two black sailors if they wanted to stay in the Navy.
“Yes, definitely,” each of them answered.
“Okay,” I said. “I’m going to throw the book at you, only if you want to stay.
One more violation, though, gets you an e-ticket out of the Navy.” The white sailor was a punk, and I startled the entire room by calling him such. All by himself, he could have avoided this whole sorry drama, and I wanted everyone on that ship to know that I knew that. I wanted them to know that I expect people to walk away if they can. I sentenced them and the white sailor who had been involved in the fight to the maximum punishment, short of dishonorable discharge: I restricted all three to the ship for forty-five days, gave them forty- five days of extra duty, and put them on half pay for two months.
The whole process was draining. Nothing in my training had ever prepared
me for this. I was in totally uncharted territory and I knew that this one case could make or break my tour as CO. I walked back up to my cabin, completely exhausted and drenched in sweat. I felt we had just successfully navigated through a minefield. Much like many black people in civilian society, the black members of the crew felt they were being discriminated against. Unbeknownst to me at the time, this would be the last disciplinary proceeding involving a young black male for the next twenty-seven months, marking a dramatic decline in offenses. Did we have a policy that said “turn a blind eye toward any violations by black males”? Hardly. In fact, we tightened the standards for everyone.
What explains the dramatic decline? Unity and the fact that our values determined how we led. Those young black men on Benfold were also here prior to my arrival. Only now did they have as level a playing field as possible.
Instead of restraining people, we strengthened them. And we provided a positive model for all to emulate.
I met with Master Chief Scheeler. “I just tore those three sailors down,” I said. “Now it’s your job to start building them back up. I want you to redeem these kids.”
Master Chief Scheeler called them into his office and said, “You know what?
You’re on the captain’s shit list. You can stay on it and suffer, if that’s your choice. Or you can get off and become responsible citizens, in which case here’s what you need to do.” He worked with the two black sailors every day, while First-Class Petty Officer John Rafalko and Chief Petty Officer Janice Harris supervised the white sailor. They both spent an enormous amount of time coaching him and setting an example for him. This mentoring process was becoming so successful that it was rolled out as a preventive measure to every crew member who was close to being in trouble.
One night at sea, I saw the two sailors that Master Chief Scheeler was supervising, so I asked Scheeler to join me in challenging them to a game in the mess decks after dinner. Naturally, they accepted. People walking through the mess decks were flabbergasted when they saw the four of us sitting around playing cards. We gave these young men big-man status, and we were sending a message of forgiveness and acceptance. I felt it was my privilege to support these men. They turned around completely and became stars among their peers.
Both were promoted and both continue to do well. It is possible that if I had thrown them out of the Navy, they would have ended up in the criminal justice system. A year later, the white sailor asked me to reenlist him for another tour in the Navy. I was sitting in my chair on the bridge wing and asked him if he could have envisioned this a year ago when I called him a punk. “No way,” he responded. But he was no longer a punk. He had matured into a fine young man.
This experience taught me—and the whole crew, I hope—two valuable lessons. The first was the importance of taking people’s background and circumstances into consideration before passing judgment on them. Not everyone starts out at the same place, but with half a chance and some direction, most people left behind will catch up fairly quickly. The second was the significance of helping wrongdoers become better citizens, instead of discarding them, as our society too often does. The effort we’re putting into building prisons should be used instead to redeem people.
I was determined to move away from the zero-defect mentality that, in my view, is a cancer spreading through too many organizations, including the military. I wanted people who screwed up on my ship to know two things: First, they will be appropriately punished; second, they will get another chance.