Juan Garcia worked for me as a lieutenant aboard USS Constellation. Whip smart, and an exceptionally hard worker, he was one of those kinds of officers that every senior leader hopes to have on board when the work is hard and often thankless. The kind of guy you could point, shoot and then get out of his way. He finished off his active career as an instructor pilot in Corpus Christi and served one term as a Texas legislator while a drilling reservist before losing a hard-fought campaign last fall.
His political views – although not dogmatic – were rather alternate to my own, which led to a lot of great discussions until late into the night, with wardroom formality and the customs of the service being set aside as the rest of the ship bedded down for the evening. I don’t know that I always kept up my end, but he always let me down gracefully and with self-deprecating humor. Which is not, in my experience, the kind of thing one often finds in UCLA valedictorians with Harvard law degrees.
Juan has been nominated as an Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Manpower and Reserve Affairs. He’s a great choice, and I very much doubt that we’ve heard the last of him.
How weird is that? Graduates, gets commission, reports to Harvard for 3 years maybe a fourth to finish the Masters Degree and then on to flight training. Tell me he was the colateral legal officer at least.:)
One, and perhaps the best, of the many benefits I associate with being part of the Chief’s Mess is watching a Seabee I trained make good and go on to eclipse my meager accomplishments. Feels good, don’t it? (Not that I think anything about your stellar career was meager!)
I’m confident that you had no small part in molding the young LT Garcia into the man he is today, and so I look forward to working for him. Thanks, Cap’n.
Yup,
If he has Lex’s support, that’s good enough for me. Anytime.
No quibble about Lex’s endorsement or his educational background…obviously a good man…of course the fact that he’s also Hispanic doesn’t hurt…verdad??. Best
He was a “legendary” instructor down in Corpus and he ran a great campaign last fall. His opponent had much deeper pockets and seemingly no limit to his sleaziness and dirt-mongering.
I know some folks who flew with him. Not the most popular, well spoken, or effective flight instructor from what I’m told.
Capt, thanks for sharing your personal recollections. Mr. Garcia’s name has been bandied about some of the milblogs for a few months now, but it’s been hard to get much sense of who he is.
After running an absurd campaign to be nominated as SECNAV, they had to give him something — so they gave him this.
This is a classic case of having more ambition than ability.
I hope he puts as much time into this position as he does whipping up press releases and obvious fake blog posts.