This is awesome!

Friday, August 24, 2007

Chief Cryptologic Technician (Collection) (SW/AW) (sel) Joe Lemanek recently joined the ranks of chief petty officer at just 24 years, eight months of age.

Lemanek, assigned to Navy Information Operations Command at Naval Air Station Whidbey Island, has been in the Navy for five years and five months.

"I feel there is always room to improve and that you cannot possibly be prepared for everything you will encounter," said Lemanek said of his relatively short time in the service. "I’ve seen and done a lot in my short time in, but the biggest thing that helped me is that I’ve always learned something wherever I went and I’ve always succeeded because of the teams that have supported me."

His mother, Laura, 48, a reservist with 19 years combined active and reservist service, currently on a one-month activation to Chinhae, Korea, was also selected to become a chief boatswain’s mate for this cycle. Mom and son have spoken on several occasions about their selections.

"She’s (mother) obviously very proud and a little worried," said Lemanek. "She made sure to point out that she will always be my senior no matter where my career takes me."

"When he told me he made board I was excited, but also knew that with him being in under six years that the odds were going to be against him," said Laura. "When he told me he was selected, it was one of those ‘are you kidding me’ moments, and then I told him how proud I was of him and how excited I was for him. We laughed together, talked about his brothers. We are very supportive of each other."

Lemanek joined the Navy in 2002 as an E-2, was selected for accelerated advancement out of A-school and was frocked to E-4 in May of 2003. He made it to the rank of E-5 as soon as he was eligible and followed it up with early promotes on his evaluations, which allowed him to take both his E-6 and chief tests a year early. He made each of those on the first try. On the chief’s board he was the last of 51 to be selected for advancement

"I’m absolutely stoked," Lemanek said. "I have a lot to learn, but I hope I have a lot to offer to the Navy and Chief’s Mess."

Chief inductions are a deep-rooted, traditional six-week long conversion of Sailors selected to become the Navy’s future leaders. "We’re training them to be our replacements," said NAS Whidbey Island Command Master Chief (AW/SW) Francis Bagarella. "They’ve had grooming earlier in their careers from their leaders and we’re just putting on the finishing touches."

http://www.northwestnavigator.com/index.php/navigator/n...comes_family_affair/

Thanks for sharing this.

You know, about the only thing that could be better would be for them to have gone through Induction and gotten their Anchors together at the same command.

Wow

I'm determined to be a 10 year Chief, but I can't imagine making it practically within my first enlistment! Too cool...

This reminds me of something that happened fairly recently. I was Honor Boatswain in the retirement ceremony of a mustang LCDR. Her son was due to ship out to the Academy within the week. He read The Watch at the ceremony, and ended it with "Mom, you stand relieved. I have the watch." Not a dry eye in the house... Best retirement that I've been a part of so far.

That is a awesome. His way to excel prooves he would be a great Officer candidate.

This was in one of those e-mails that circle around the Navy. It is amazing how many CMC's were pissed off that this guy got it so quickly.

I guess because no one else wants to do it, I will call this a bunch of bull s%8t.

Who is this guys supposed to be some kind of modern day John Paul Jones?

The first question I would have is when did they change the rules about having an "EP" menaing that you could go up for rate early? We had the "new" IE 5.0& EP/MP etc. VS 4.0 with just ranking for about the last 6 years I was in the Navy and as far as I know as of 2001 getting an "EP" rating did not equal getting to take the test early.

I can not see how this guy can have the real world experience to truly function as any kind of LCPO. he was sitting and taking his test with less than five years in the Navy, you have to ask how many years worth of evals has this guy written? Has he written any? being that he was almost always the junior E-5 and then E-6 in any work center/division he was in it is entirely possible he was never responsible to do any. Same thing for writing awards, other than his own and I will bet he has plenty, has he ever done that? I could bring up any number of things that are "normal everyday LCPO stuff" that you only learn by either doing parts them for years at the E-5/E-6 level or by closely watching them be done by hopefully more than one LCPO.

This guy is stationed at Whibley Island, has he been there his entire enlistment or did he just get there, so how much experience of the Navy in general can he have? He has SW/AW so maybe he was staioned on a on a CV, or was it just one of those "I am part of the det. things" ? Even when I was in, CV's, at least some were notorious for pretty much giving AW to any non airdale that whent through the motions of the program and SW pins to any "non-surface" rating, he would benefit from both ends of that mind set especially "if he was just in the det."

Know before you get the idea that I don't know what the H%## I am talking about, I made ETC in a little less than eight and a half years the last three years of which being at joint service mostly Army and Air force command. I had never even been a WCS supervisor in a Navy command. After that command I went and taught A school and then was a tech at FTSCLANT and ran R-4 at a SIMA after that. When I finnally was stationed on a ship and the CE div. LCPO I was clearly not as bad off as this guy might be, I had learned lots of "Navy stuff" IE writing evals, awards etc that I learned on shore duty, but there were clearly "LCPO on a ship things" that I did not know as well as I would have if I had a more "normal" progression. This was in spite of the fact that that the CG I was CE div LCPO on was the same one that I was a plankowner on as an ET2 14 years earlier, so at least "I knew the ship"

It seems to me that this guy was some kind of "golden child" that his COC grabbed on to and made their pet project, promoting him as fast as possible just to see if they could do it, maybe set some kind of record.

I am sure that there were other CT's in his command that were equally well qualified. who had more experience that for whatever reason they did not choose to "groom"

I would say that his only real future is an an LDO or as a "normal" officer, which most people will think he is any way if it weren't for the warfare pins.

He has only two more paygrades to make in the next 14 years

quote:

Originally posted by ETCPJ:
I guess because no one else wants to do it, I will call this a bunch of bull s%8t.

Who is this guys supposed to be some kind of modern day John Paul Jones?

Actually, it makes me wonder what the selection board was thinking about.

My feeling is that the selection board bought in to the "golden child/lets make history aspect of it all and did it just for the novelty of it all.

They also probably justify it in their own minds by saying to themselves "well he is probably going to make LDO anyway so we will get the slot back.

We used to see it a lot with ET's in the 80's when the LDO board was later in the same year than the CPO board, they would see some guy that had already put in an LDO package, had a good enough record that they figured he was going to make it so they would selct him for ETC, selecting him for ETC would be that added little extra that put him over the top and he would be selected for LDO, by the next year he would be an LDO and they would be able to fill his ETC slot all over again.

I'm with ya PJ. The Navy is selling themselves short by bypassing the time in grade/time in service requirements. Sure, that pushbutton 2nd who makes 1st first time up and takes the Chief's test the next January may be s**thot at his current command, but he has not developed his necessary leadership skills to be an effective leader in the Chief's Mess. Then the rest of the Chiefs, being the brotherhood that we are, will take extra time from their divisions/duties to give him the mentoring he now needs to survive...at his second command.

It's one thing for a snot-nosed Ensign or jg to need extra time for mentoring, but damnit, it shouldn't be a snot-nosed Chief who needs to learn how to write an eval or post a WQSB or any other myriad tasks that a Chief should already know.

The board should have been strong enough to stand up and say "Wait a second here, are we promoting a Chief or grooming an Ensign?" Last I checked, the only officer ascension program that required promotion to Chief before being selected was CWO.

quote:

Originally posted by TMC_SW_Ret:

The board should have been strong enough to stand up and say "Wait a second here, are we promoting a Chief or grooming an Ensign?" Last I checked, the only officer ascension program that required promotion to Chief before being selected was CWO.

Concur 100% tubes.

He not only needs more time in the Navy (preferably at sea), but he needs to have at least three tours of duty at different types of commands to make a well rounded Chief.

I have nothing against the sailor, but I just think our Chiefs, now more than ever, should be "seasoned" before being promoted.

ETCPJ,

I agree 100 percent, Airborne.

I pulled four years in the Navy before switching over to the Coast Guard, so I’m a little fuzzy with regard to this whole “must promote/early promote” thing. When I was serving on the USS Biddle many moons ago, evaluations were based on the old 4.0 scale and at the end you’d find out if you had been recommended for advancement and retention. Adjectives could and would be used of course (e.g. “highly” or “enthusiastically” recommended for advancement and retention), but in the final analysis what really mattered were the numbers. The TIG requirements were sacrosanct though. I was surprised when I enlisted in the Coast Guard and I discovered that there was only one year TIG required between E5 and E6 as well as E6 and E7, but various “catches” were built into the process that would help slow things down a bit (required rated sea time being one of those mechanisms). The point I guess was this…it takes about a good ten to fifteen years before a Coastie can put on anchors. That’s not to say that there aren’t exceptions to the rule. I have met 7 and 8 year wonders, but that’s not “ordinary” by any stretch of the imagination and as the churn from some of our rating mergers begins to smooth out, normalcy will begin to be restored in a very big way. So how does this “early promote” thing work? Is that used to circumvent TIG requirements altogether? What’s the purported gain? Now, to be fair, I don’t know anything about this guy and as far as I’m concerned, he’s a Chief and a member of the Mess (or will be following initiation, induction or whatever it’s being called this week), but to me, the Chief was always something of a father figure. The first class was “Mom,” the one who’d handle the day to day hassles. But the Chief, well, he was the one who dealt with the heavy duty issues. I’m just curious how a 24 year old, given all of his maturity and worldliness, will handle something like, let’s say, OS3 Jones (an otherwise squared away 4.0 sailor) coming up to him one day and blurting out “I knocked up my girlfriend, her parents are kicking her out of the house and we’re deploying next week…what do I do?” I’ve no doubt that this guy is probably super smart, but half the battle of being an effective Chief is being able to shrewdly employ street smarts. And street smarts don’t come out of a book. That comes with a little bit of age and having done time in the school of hard knocks. I’m not going to get into arguments over whether this guy putting on anchors within six years is “right” or “wrong.” Indeed, I wish him luck and I’m rooting for his success. It’s just the fact that the Chiefs that I’ve learned the most from were always the crusty older guys (well, they seemed crusty and older back then…not that I'd call myself "old" since I'm only in my, er, mid-40's).