Iliana and Ashley - Serving our Country - Navy

June 16, 2010
O'Hare airport

Meet Ashley Taylor (left) and Iliana Romirez (right).  These young women had flown in from San Diego, CA enroute to Great Lakes Naval Station for basic training. They had not met prior to this trip.

Ashley plans to stay in the Navy long-term.  She'd like to get into a medical field, probably nursing - so as you can imagine, we had a great conversation about nursing as a career.

Iliana is also considering some type of medical career but isn't sure what route she will take.

I shared with them that my dad was career Navy and that he was stationed there when I was in kindergarten/first grade. I also told them one of my clearest memories about that location was helping my dad build an 8ft tall snowman....and they said they were happy to be here in the summer, not winter!

Ladies, congratulations on your Navy career.  Thank you for serving our country!!

Side note:  Great Lakes Naval Station is the third largest Naval base, the Navy's largest training base and, in 1994, became the only basic training facility for the Navy.  50,000 recruits pass through Recruit Training Command (RTC aka "boot camp") annually.  At any given time, there are 15,000 recruits on the base for the 9 week RTC. 

If you read this blog, you'll notice that most of my military postings have involved the Army.  I had been a little perplexed that I hadn't encountered anyone from the Navy at O'Hare, knowing the base was near.  I might have discovered why this evening....new recruits, no uniforms.  I will have to develop an alternate approach to finding these new recruits!