Yeah

... like my ticket from, you know, a nice town.

I grew up in Olympia, Washington.

It was a great place to grow up, but, you know, I knew that there was not a lot of opportunities if you didn't get post-high school education or something, a trade or something.

I looked at the Academy and going to sea, uh, as a, you know, as a result of being a graduate was something I thought was, was right up my alley, so I was very, very excited about that.

And when I got to the Academy, you know, it's like, uh, a lot of things in my generation, it was mostly an all white male institution.

Upper class, there was very few people of color.

Yeah