Rudy: My Story

by Rudy Ruettiger

  I didn’t hop a train to some exotic locale in the murky swamps and searing temperatures of the Deep South for my boot camp, the way you see in a lot of movies or read about in books. No sir. I traveled forty-five minutes north of my house to a freezing cold training facility in Chicago. Still, it didn’t take long for me to realize I was about as far from home as a young man could be.

  As we filed into the facility, the first thing they did was shave our heads. I was used to that, of course, only these guys did a gentler job of it than my dad. I remember looking around at all of these other faces as they lost the identity of their long ’60s hair in an instant. There were guys there from all over. All walks of life. All ethnicities. There were some guys with lice falling out of their hair as their locks hit the ground. It certainly wasn’t high school anymore. It certainly wasn’t the workplace either. And it set in very quickly that this wasn’t just a quick jaunt from Joliet; there would be no going home.

  “Get this through your head, men: you’re not going home to your mother. I’m your new mother, and this is how it’s gonna be!” These drill sergeants were dead serious, screaming at us, shouting directions on where to go, where to stand, which line to get in, to stand up straight. Boom! There was no transition. This was it. This was how it’s gonna be.

  The first time I got yelled at I wondered if the guy was picking on me. But then he went right over and yelled to the next guy, and the next, and it dawned on me that we were all gonna be treated equally here. This wasn’t school. I wasn’t being called out and sent to the back of the class. We were all being called out and told to forget everything we thought we knew. No baggage. No goofy thoughts. “Clear your heads!” A sort of brand-new, start-from-scratch reality. They were breaking us down in order to build us up. I liked that.

  I also liked the fact that they took away our civilian clothes and issued us a brand-new uniform. They even stamped my name into my underwear. What a relief to know I’d have underwear of my own! After all those years of having my brothers steal every clean pair of underwear I ever had, I was now the proud owner of my very own hand-stamped skivvies. Plus, my very own socks, my very own shirt, none of which would be grabbed away when I wasn’t looking or passed down to someone else. Coming from a family that seemed to thrive on its relative shortage of new clothes, I immediately saw my uniform as a privilege. After all those years at home, I appreciated the little things.

  The harsh reality that I couldn’t go home also set a certain instinct in motion: the survival instinct. You’d better start doing what they say. There are no outs. There is no room for rebellion.

  “You can’t go home to your mama!”

  Next thing I knew, they were marching us into our barracks.

  “Hey! . . . Raawwr! . . . This is where you sleep. . . . This is how we want your lockers. . . . This is how you fold your clothes and make your bed.”

  Funny enough, the biggest part of my surviving in those barracks would come down to the discipline I had already learned at home. The navy is about structure. And who taught you structure? Your family. Your mom and dad. All those years my parents had been instilling in me the simple fact that your character is more important than having a new car. Your character is more important than having new clothes. You’re a part of this household and you will contribute to your family. Hello! That’s the navy in a nutshell! Suddenly, everyone is wearing the same clothes: same pants, same underwear, same socks, same shoes. And we learned real quick that we’d better have those shoes shined, that everything had better be in order, that our lockers had better be in shape. A lot of guys struggled with that at first. But not me. I had to make my bed before I left for school every day. I had to pick up my clothes. I had to keep my things organized from the very beginning back under my parents’ roof in Joliet. And I certainly knew how to fold every part of my uniform, including that brand-new underwear of mine.

  It occurred to me, very quickly on that very first day, that there was something much deeper than chaos-control behind my parents’ insistence on discipline. The reason they wanted us to know how to do all of these things was so we would be able to handle them when we faced real life. My dad had been through the War. He was quietly preparing his kids for what he had faced, should we ever have to face it. I couldn’t have understood that at the time. And he couldn’t have explained it, in part because there just wasn’t time to explain it, and in part because a kid wouldn’t understand the explanation anyway. What was he going to say to me: “This will be good for you when you go to boot camp”? I wouldn’t have believed that in a million years! I never thought for even one second that I would go to boot camp, until just before I walked down to that recruiting office and enlisted. It was never in the plan! So even if he tried, I would have rejected my dad’s explanation completely.

  Now, this was life. It was real. And I got it.

  The drill sergeant at our barracks was a big, gruff guy with a husky voice, who smoked cigarettes; he was right out of Central Casting. The very first time he came through for an inspection, he tore into my shipmates— we were all called “shipmates” even though we were still on dry land—for every little detail left undone: the corners on the blankets, the sloppy lockers, the wrinkled shirts. When he got to me, he looked at my locker, took one look at my uniform, took one look at my perfectly folded underwear, and said really loud, so everyone could hear, “That’s good, sailor. Show your other shipmates how to do that.”

  Whoa.

  “Yes, sir!” I said.

  That was big. Show your other shipmates how to do that? That’s not the kind of thing someone usually says to the dumbest kid in class.

  He didn’t ask me where I had learned that skill, which until that moment I had never considered a skill whatsoever. He didn’t have to. He saw my character. He knew I had good habits just by looking at the results. Looking back on it, I realize that’s what good people see in all walks of life. What true leaders see. As gruff as he was, I immediately knew I was in the presence of a guy I could respect. And it dawned on me: with that one, confidence-boosting, encouraging statement in front of the rest of my shipmates, he instantly turned me into a bit of a leader too.

  That was a first.

  That gave me confidence.

  That flipped a switch in me.

  The fact that I could do something so seemingly insignificant, something so routine as folding my underwear, and have it mean a lot in this new environment started me down a path of believing in myself. I realized that doing the best at whatever I could do was, in fact, worthwhile. It was, in some ways, like playing my part on the football team, except this was real life in the real world.

  I’m pretty sure that’s when a new thought began to take hold for me: I don’t have to be a star to be somebody.

  Working within the forced limitations of the structure of the navy’s teamwork brought out my individuality. My purpose. My heart. As tough as it was, that do-or-die mentality of the navy’s leadership that’s exhibited by empowering the team over individuals worked like magic for me. It works for lots of young guys. There’s a reason why our military has such a great history of creating leaders—the system just works.

  It was not easy. For nine full weeks we were drilled. Constantly. We watched kids break down in body, mind, and spirit. Remember, this was wartime. Vietnam was raging. They had to test us because we were heading out into a world where those tests would truly matter. We weren’t headed into the jungles, but when you go on ship you’ve got to be disciplined and structured. When they call general quarters, you have to know what to do and you can’t panic. They need you to react as you’re told— almost like a robot. “Don’t worry about what’s going on, just do your job.” For most people in a time of crisis, if they stop to think about what’s going on, they freeze. The military can’t have you thinking like that. It’s the same on the football field. That’s why there’s so much repetition in football practices: as soon as you start worrying about that opponent, you’re done. Worr
y about your job and how you’re going to execute your job. Don’t worry about the play. Execute. Having that football background and the ability to see the correlation definitely helped me get through it. A lot of guys don’t learn that mentality because they have the talent, so they can get away with not fully paying attention to the amount of teamwork it takes to win a game on the field. Me? I wasn’t talented. I had to work hard for every inch of accomplishment, and that was certainly still the case in my first days with the navy.

  In fact, as I opened my eyes to reveille before dawn every morning, through countless moments of physical agony and exhaustion over the course of each and every day, and as I collapsed onto my bed each night, I found myself questioning whether or not I could make it: I don’t know if I can do this. Can I do this? Can I get through this?

  I had never faced anything so physically and emotionally demanding in all my life. But every time I questioned myself, I fell back to the very same thought: I’ve gotta do this! I’ve gotta! I can’t quit! I can’t!

  Guess what?

  I did it.

  So did every other kid. From every walk of life. Of every size and shape. Not one of the shipmates in my barracks dropped out. Not one of them failed. And that got me thinking, This isn’t like school at all. They pushed us hard, sure. But they actually wanted us to succeed. Every one of us. And we did.

  On graduation day, I stood with them, proudly, shoulder to shoulder. I looked out at my parents and my brothers and sisters in the audience, and I swear they were looking at me with more pride than I’d ever known. As if I were somebody. A big shot. Especially my dad. He had a look in his eyes. When I walked over after the ceremonies, he walked right toward me with the sort of excitement he’d show while listening to the Yankees game, or watching Notre Dame highlights on Sunday nights. He put his arm out, shook my hand, and grabbed my shoulder . . . with that look. The polar opposite of the look he gave me back when I broke—and then re-broke—my collarbone. I think he recognized that I had changed. That was awesome for him.

  “I’m proud of you, Danny,” he said as he looked me in the eye and squeezed my hand tight.

  That was something.

  I have to admit, I was pretty proud of myself too. This was bigger than anything I had ever accomplished. Scary, yes. Nerve-wracking, sure. Tough? You bet. Yet I did it. All on my own. I emerged, standing on my own two feet, ready to tackle the world.

  Of course, the big question that looms the moment you graduate from training camp is, “Where in the world am I going?” And when they hand you that envelope with your deployment orders in it, there is nothing like that feeling. This thin, sealed, folded piece of paper is all that separates you and your fate. It’s amazing how much weight a little envelope can hold!

  I was shaking when I tore mine open. Where am I going? What will I be doing? I read as fast as I could, as my new fate emerged in black and white: I would be shipping out to Boston, where I would serve as a yeoman on the USS North Hampton (CC-1)—a communication command ship that was fully capable of serving as a command center for the president of the United States in case of a national emergency or disaster. Heady stuff. It was dry-docked at the Charlestown Navy Yard in Boston, Massachusetts.

  Holy cow! I was going to Boston! I’d never been to Boston. I’d heard about it, of course: Paul Revere. The Red Sox. The Boston Celtics. It’s hard to describe the feeling, knowing you’re about to leave on this great adventure to a brand-new city all the way on the East Coast when you’ve never traveled much farther than the forty-five-minute trip to Chicago your entire life.

  I remember hitting the airport in my navy blues; feeling good and proud to wear that uniform but scared at the same time; landing at Logan airport and trying to navigate my way around; making my way to the navy yard thinking I had some idea what I was getting into . . . until I laid eyes on that ship. It was huge! I had never seen anything so big. Towering like a skyscraper, stretching out longer than the street I grew up on. Like a floating city. A floating factory. I was nervous. I remember walking up the gangway onto that great ship thinking, Wow! This is cool! This is my real station now! No more of that yelling and screaming they did at boot camp! Knowing I would now be charged with actually carrying out everything I had been taught in boot camp, I reached the top of the ramp and fumbled in front of the officer who was there to greet me.

  “Hello, sir. Seaman Ruettiger, sir.” I messed up! I was supposed to say, “Permission to come aboard!”

  “Sailor, relax,” the officer said to me. “Say it again.”

  “Permission to come aboard, sir. Seaman Ruettiger.”

  So far, so good. He didn’t yell at me. Just as I suspected, this whole thing was going to be more about respect, teamwork, and getting the job done. Moments later they dropped me down a hatch and told me to report to the master at arms, the guy who would tell me where to go and where my quarters would be and what my role would be on the ship. Well, he and I didn’t get along right away. He was smoking a cigar when I got on board, and the stink of it made me sick. He saw that and, well, let’s just say he didn’t go out of his way to avoid blowing smoke in my face. The boot camp mentality was still there for us newbies. I quickly found that lots of the older sailors, the lifers especially, liked to pepper the new recruits that way. I tried not to let it bother me. After boot camp, I figured, this would be a piece of cake. Heck, anything would be a piece of cake!

  They took me down these little gangways and hallways, and the whole thing felt like a maze with no landmarks. I kept thinking, How am I gonna find my way back? Then it was down another hatch and I’m dropped into a room full of all kinds of bunks on top of each other and next to each other, filled with dozens of new shipmates. “This is where you sleep, this is your living quarters, and we’ll see you back up at such-and-such an hour.” That’s it! I felt like I wanted to hide out in my bunk for days; I was so scared I was gonna get lost trying to find my way back out. Of course, asking the rest of the crew won’t get you anywhere. They know you’re a new guy, and they tease you and play with you.

  The hazing, if that’s what you’d call it, was pretty tame in those days, but there were certainly a few traditions. Once I was told by someone of higher rank, “Go drain the I-beam and bring me the bucket of water!” How the heck do you drain an I-beam? I started asking around only to realize it was a joke. It was no different than that “bucket of steam” trick I’d endured back at the power plant. Hardy, har, har. Very funny, guys. Everyone goes through that stuff. Every one of those guys went through it themselves. So in the end, as long as you don’t take it too seriously, it’s harmless. It’s pretty funny actually. It wasn’t the sort of hazing meant to knock guys out and make ’em quit. I never got that sense at all. In fact, the way everyone shared in it added to the sense of camaraderie and support I felt very quickly on that ship.

  Before long I found my way back through the maze and reported to the master at arms for my duty: I joined the maintenance data collections office, where I would basically act as a glorified secretary. There’s a master chief in that office and they control all the maintenance data, which means if there’s maintenance being done anywhere on that ship, it was our job to record it. The navy needed to know how long it’d take a team to do certain jobs, such as how long it would take to pull a certain pump out of commission. I wrote it all down. The point, the way I understood it, was if they ever decided to decommission the ship, they would know approximately how many hours it would take to remove that pump and put a new one in; they could estimate the time and costs, and so on. It was not exactly rocket science but important work nonetheless. And that’s what I did.

  The USS North Hampton was dry-docked in Boston for a solid six months, and that allowed all of us to get a chance to know the city. After our daily duties were done, we were basically allowed to do whatever we wanted. For most guys that meant carousing and partying, but for myself and a few others, it meant a chance to go out and earn some extra money. I wound up finding wo
rk as a dishwasher and bus boy at the Harvard Alumni Club, where the who’s who of that elite, Ivy League school came to mingle and dine with their peers—people like Ted Kennedy, the brother of President John F. Kennedy, and his more recently assassinated brother, Bobby Kennedy. I wound up serving guys like that, although I didn’t really know too much about them, and didn’t really care. The other wait staff would point someone out to me every once in a while and I’d say, “Oh, that’s nice.” I guess if Joe DiMaggio had walked in, it would have been a different story, but the elite academics and politicians didn’t float my boat.

  I have to say, though, exploring Boston was wonderful. Having lived a life of school, home, practice, school, home, church, home . . . only to be followed by a life of work, home, work, home, church, work, and more work—all within two or three miles of my house—it felt fantastic to walk around and see the sites in a new city. It’s a small city and pretty easy to walk from Southie all the way to the Italian restaurants of the North End if you want. We even scored tickets to Red Sox games. I can’t tell you what a thrill it was to see the Yankees play the Red Sox in Fenway Park. A dream come true! To sink my teeth into a Fenway Frank? It was awesome. Truly awesome.

  The thing I quickly felt was that the world was so much bigger than I ever imagined. New possibilities started to open up for me more and more every day, mostly right inside my own head. I started to dream bigger. I started to think about what I might want to do with my life and where I might want to go. I had never really thought about living anywhere other than Joliet, and here I was living in Boston (for the time being). I could live anywhere, couldn’t I? There seemed to be worlds of possibilities around every corner, possibilities that expanded far beyond my father’s point of view, or my mother’s point of view, or my peers’ points of view back in Joliet. Even working at a place like the Harvard Club took down a certain wall I had imagined existed my whole life. It didn’t feel strange to be in that elite company. It was just like anywhere else. I had a job to do. I did it. Didn’t matter if that job was being performed for a Kennedy or Joe Schmo off the street; I did my job, and usually did it well, and that was all that mattered.