As a retired U.S. Navy Officer and long-time CSC employee, I am thrilled that CSC is sponsoring Carrier! We’ve enjoyed watching it every night and the series gives my family great insight into what my life was like in the Navy. The blog you are running is a great idea and I love reading about my fellow CSCers’ experience in the Navy.

I joined the Navy in 1972 following high school, received my commission in 1979, and retired as a Lieutenant Commander in 1995. During my 23 years of service, I was stationed overseas for a total of 13 years in Guam, Hawaii, and Iceland. I deployed to forward areas six times aboard U.S. Navy combatant ships in the north Pacific, western Pacific, South China Sea, Gulf of Cambodia, Indian Ocean, Arabian Gulf, Red Sea, the Mediterranean, the Ionian Sea, North Sea, North Atlantic, and Norwegian Sea. I participated in combat support operations in the waters off Vietnam, Cambodia, Iraq, and the former Yugoslavia, and ashore in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, as well as Ramstein Airbase and Headquarters U.S. European Command in Germany. I have been around the world twice, and have also been above the Arctic Circle, and below the Equator. As an enlisted man, I was a sonar technician. My commissioned service involved aviation and intelligence. Sea duty assignments included USS Sample (DE-1048), USS Conquest (MSO-488), USS Myles C. Fox (DD-829), USS Fairfax County (LST-1193), USS Vulcan (AR-5), USS Saratoga (CV-60), and Carrier Air Wing 8 embarked in USS Theodore Roosevelt (CVN-71). All in all, a great and rewarding career.

I am especially fond on my life on board carriers Super Sara and TR, and especially proud of obtaining my designation as a Naval Aviation Observer.

As President John F. Kennedy said on 1 August 1963, in Bancroft Hall at the U. S. Naval Academy: “I can imagine no more rewarding a career. And any man who may be asked in this century what he did to make his life worthwhile, I think can respond with a good deal of pride and satisfaction: ‘I served in the United States Navy.’”

Mike Turok
LCDR US Navy (Ret)
Program Management Principal Leader
Computer Sciences Corporation