In the following statement, I will outline the
general milestones of my life and discuss that chronology from the perspective
of the influences, the persons, the places, and the ideas which have guided me,
steered me and propelled me through life.
First, and most significantly, as influences are
my parents, Raymond Robert Maxwell and Sallye Anne Hairston Maxwell, both of
whom are deceased, yet both of whom continue to exert a tremendous influence on
my life, my daily decisions, my hopes and my aspirations.
My mother was the socializer of the pair. She enjoyed parties and balls and relished
giving teas on Saturday evenings and dinner parties after Church on
Sunday. She worked as a secretary but
she found special satisfaction in volunteer work, carrying my sister and I out
with her as she canvassed the neighborhood annually for Easter Seal, Muscular
Dystrophy, the March of Dimes, NAACP membership drives and voter registration. Her dream for me was to become a lawyer, and
she saw law as the loftiest, noblest, and most lucrative profession.
My father was not a grand socializer, church
being the extent of his social life. But
in some respects my father was just as much a people person as was my mother, concerned
with improving the lot of those less fortunate by direct action and on an
individual basis. He was an electrician
by trade, and he brought many families into the twentieth century, wiring, at
low cost, old houses for electricity for the first time, which meant heat
during the winter and light at night and television and access to the use of
modern appliances. He wanted me to
become a preacher and a teacher. The
most enduring lesson I learned from him was that one can’t help large groups of
people collectively to bring about a change in their condition, but small
groups and individuals can be shown how to help themselves, and many small
groups become a large one.
I was born in Greensboro, North Carolina and
attended public schools through junior high.
My elementary school teachers were all friends of my parents, either
through prior association or from my parents’ involvement in PTA and civic
activities, and they all took a special interest in our academic and
intellectual development. Supplementing
our public education was the weekly pilgrimage to the Carnegie Negro Library
with my father, where I developed a love for books and acquiring information
while he developed his lecture for the adult Sunday School class which he
taught. At one point, I decided I would
become a librarian, and eventually, my first real job was as a library
assistant at that library.
At age 11 I joined the Boy Scouts. George Herring, my scoutmaster, was a boyhood
friend of my father’s, but he showed me no favoritism. I learned under his supervision hiking,
camping, map-reading, Morse Code, and self-reliance. But more importantly, I learned from Mr.
Herring that nature and the environment can be very unforgiving, and that there
are no substitutes for gains and achievements that are hard-earned though
diligence, persistence, and directed efforts.
(Here I was thinking about the campfire incident at the Snowflake
Camporee at Camp Wenasa, December, 1968.).
The parallels between my experiences as a Boy Scout and years later as a
naval officer, as I reflect back, are amazing.
Troop #442 presented me with my first exposure to a relatively
heterogeneous group, where I began to develop the ability to deal with a
variety of people with varied interests, from varied backgrounds, and with
varied personalities.
I discontinued my involvement with the Boy
Scouts when, in the eighth grade, my parents gave me permission to go out for
the junior varsity football team. I made
the team as defensive and offensive end, playing both ways, and I was appointed
team captain. Our JV team went
undefeated and unscored upon. We were
ecstatic, and I was certain that I was on the fast track to the NFL. After the eighth grade, I was awarded a
scholarship to a prep school in Virginia, Woodberry Forest, not necessarily to
play football. There my football career
floundered, giving rise instead to a promising future as a middle distance
runner. But other things also happened
at Woodberry Forest.
Woodberry Forest exposed me to society’s upper
crust and a whole new world of perception and expectation. I had a Spanish teacher from Spain, a history
teacher descended from British nobility, and a track coach who told me that
blacks could not run long distances competitively. After a disappointing first quarter
academically, I made the necessary adjustments to my studying habits and my
grades improves substantially.
Athletically, track and cross-country practice provide me the
opportunity to measure personal improvement, and the long afternoon runs enabled
me to do the deep introspective thinking that, daily, nourished my soul. I despised mandatory chapel on Wednesdays and
Sundays, and I resented the conspicuousness of my absence which insured my
punishment (there were only eight of us that first year, so the prefects only
needed to count black heads and issue demerits to the ones not counted…). I utilized extensively the school library,
which was extremely well-stocked, better stocked that any library I had previously
visited, and I especially cherished those long-distance runs, where my thoughts
would take wings and fly. (see endnote
on the Woodberry days.)
After two years, I returned home and enrolled at
Dudley Senior High. The adjustment to
public school was difficult, and I never made the adjustment. Unfortunately, my track career ended at
Dudley; I worked during the afternoons, evenings and weekends to help out with
family expenses. Those part-time jobs,
at a library and a bakery, reading books and baking pies, convinced me that my
future was in the understanding of economic theory and development. The following summer, I was selected to
attend the Governor’s School of North Carolina, a summer enrichment program for
the state’s top performing high school juniors.
There I learned more about economics, the economic impact of current and
international events, and the interrelationship of various disciplines of
knowledge. We also watched daily
telecasts of the Watergate hearings. At
Governor’s School I met and studied with the brightest and best high school
students in the state, some of whom I have kept in touch with over the years.
Going back to Dudley in the fall was analogous
to a college basketball player who, in the summer between his junior and senior
year, made the Olympic Team, traveled to Munich, and overcame great odds to win
the gold medal, only to return to a mediocre team in the fall, or so I
imagined. Impatient, adolescently
immature and foolish, and against my parents wishes, I left Greensboro and
moved to Washington, DC. There I got a
job at a larger bakery, and spent my off hours at a larger library, the Library
of Congress.
Washington provided me my first exposure to an
international city, and I took full advantage of that opportunity, visiting
embassies and consulates and talking with people from foreign countries and
cultures. The Arab oil embargo was in
full swing at the time, and I was especially interested in Arab cultures and
cultures. Being of African descent, I
also spent a lot of time reading about and talking with African nationals. Shortly, however, the price of sugar
skyrocketed, driving our bakery operation bankrupt. We tried several remedies, such as decreasing
sugar content in our products, substituting honey for sugar, and concentrating
on bread sales (low profit margin) as opposed to cakes and pies which required
large amounts of sugar (high profit margin).
But none of these measures were successful. I found a part-time job at a restaurant, and
started looking into enrolling in school, concentrating my efforts on American
University. My mother’s unexpected death
resulted in my return to Greensboro, where I enrolled in electrical engineering
at North Carolina A&T State University.
Grief-stricken and perplexed, I made several
false starts over the next two years, my performance roller-coastering between
excellence and failure. I worked for a
year as a coop student at Farmer’s Home Administration in Reidsville, NC, and,
everyday, walking back and forth to work, I passed a Navy recruiting
office. One day I stopped in to check
things out, and the rest is history: I
enlisted in the Navy Nuclear Power Program.
After many months of intensive training, I
reported to my first sea-going command, the USS Hammerhead (SSN-663), a
fast-attack submarine. My greatest
achievement there was in becoming battlestations and special evolutions
helmsman, where I became known for my ability to sense changes in the depth and
course of the ship before those changes showed up on the indicators, and
applying the proper correction. That gift,
in abstraction, of finding and solving potential problems before they became
actual problems, has been a tremendous asset for me in life. After fifteen months, I was encouraged to
re-enlist for reassignment to the commissioning crew of one of the new Trident
submarines, the USS Michigan (SSBN-727 (B)), serving under then Captain Wayne
Rickman. Captain Rickman was (and still
is) an outstanding naval officer whose abilities and example of command I
viewed as the highest expression of leadership.
The next three years passed quickly; I made several deterrent patrols
and maintained my equipment in top-notch working condition. As I approached rotation to shore duty, my
supervisors encouraged me to apply for a program that would enable me to return
to college to complete my undergraduate degree in preparation for a naval
commission. I applied and was selected
to attend Florida A&M University (FAMU).
At FAMU, I majored in economics and took courses in international studies, mathematics, and ROTC courses in naval science. I did very well there, graduating at the top
of my class. Two of my professors became
best friends and confidants. Upon graduation,
I returned to the fleet as an Ensign, to the destroyer USS LUCE (DDG-38).
Within a month of reporting aboard, we deployed
to the Mediterranean, conducted operations with NATO navies, and visited ports
in Spain, France, Italy, Turkey and Israel.
The remainder of my time aboard LUCE was spent in shipyards and
maintenance periods, on short underway periods in the Caribbean, and managing a
large number of inspections, examinations and assist visits.
As I approach the end of the period of my military obligation, I am involved in the decommissioning of a great ship, the USS LUCE. I am optimistic and excited about the challenges of the future.