 Good morning. I'm Commander Jessica Woody, the Director of Officer Development School. On behalf of the Commanding Officer of Officer Training Command Newport, welcome to the graduation ceremony for Class 23040 consisting of 105 officers. Military guests in uniform, this will be a covered ceremony. The order of events for this morning's ceremony are as follows. Captain Everett Alcorn, Commanding Officer of Officer Training Command and Rear Admiral Terry W. Eddinger, Deputy Chief of Chaplains of Reserve Matters, will arrive. The guests and class will rise for the arrival of the official party and remain standing for the playing of the National Anthem and the invocation. Captain Alcorn and Rear Admiral Eddinger will then address the graduating class. Following their remarks, Captain Alcorn will distribute the class awards and graduates will symbolize the completion of their training by returning their respective company guide on to their class Chief Petty Officers. The class will then reaffirm the oath of office and will remain standing for the playing of the service songs and the final dismissal. Please rise for the arrival of the official party and remain standing for the National Anthem and the invocation. Officer Training Command Newport arriving. Rear Admiral, United States Navy arriving. Ladies and gentlemen, our National Anthem. Chaplain Fosnock will now offer the invocation. Let us pray. Eternal Father Strong to say you have called us from the ends of the earth to unite as one body and service to our country. We bring our special skills to make a difference in the life of our most junior sailor or marine. May we never forget we are called to a lifetime of service. We thank you for our friends and families that have supported us through our education and training. Much will be demanded of them in the future. Lord bless them with faith, hope and love. Protect them as they travel home or to a new duty station. Go humbly before us and may we all do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with our God. We pray this in your eternal name. Amen. Please be seated. Ladies and gentlemen, Captain Everett Alcorn, Commanding Officer, Officer Training Command Admiral Edinger, Captain Richie, Distinguished Visitors, Veterans, Officer Training Command Staff, family and friends joining us today and shipmates of Officer Development School Class 23040. Good morning. It is an absolute honor for me to have this opportunity to welcome this class in one of the most prestigious, challenging, and rewarding careers in our nation, that of Naval Officer. Today we will bear witness as 105 officers renew a solemn promise to our nation, reaffirming their oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States. For the families joining us, I want to both thank you and commend you for the performance of your sons and daughters, husbands and wives, brothers and sisters. Your love, support and encouragement have produced the quality individuals seated here. Once who not only chose vocations that helped their fellow human being, but who chose a path of service to their fellow citizens. I can think of no finer group to go forth into the fleet than the officers seated here today. They could not have gotten to this point without the careful guidance and support of family. On behalf of the Navy and a grateful nation, please accept my most sincere thank you to the class. I'm proud of you and all that you've accomplished while here. As you depart for your schools and duty stations, know that you are about to be placed in a position to lead and mentor what are truly one of our most valuable national products, the enlisted men and women of our Navy. Those that volunteer to serve our precious national resource and we must always treat them as such. The foundations we have laid here at ODS are solid. It is now up to you to build upon them as you enter the Naval service. I'm very impressed with the effort that you have expended over the last several weeks and I want to thank you for all that you have done and will do in the service of this great nation of yours. It is my pleasure and distinct honor to welcome you to the Wardroom as professional naval officers in the world's finest Navy. This morning I have the privilege of introducing you to our guest of honor, Rear Admiral Terry Edinger. Admiral Edinger is a native of Thomasville, North Carolina. He earned a bachelor of arts degree from Gardner Webb University in 1988, a master of divinity from Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in 1990, and a doctor of philosophy degree in Old Testament from the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in 1995. Commissioned in the U.S. Navy in 1995, he completed joint professional military education in phase one at the Naval War College and advanced joint professional military education at the Joint Forces Staff College. His reserve assignments have included officer in charge of Marine Expeditionary Force Religious Unit 109, District Chaplain District 5 U.S. Coast Guard, Deputy Fleet Chaplain Commander Pacific Fleet, Deputy Area Chaplain U.S. Coast Guard Atlantic Area, Officer in Charge Marine Expeditionary Force Religious Unit 107, Group Chaplain, Fourth Marine Logistics Group, Force Chaplain Commander Naval Installations Command, and Fleet Chaplain Commander U.S. Six Fleet. His mobilizations include Division Officer on the USS John F. Kennedy with a six-month Persian Gulf deployment in support of Operation Southern Watch, Command Chaplain Naval Mobile Construction Battalion 26, deployed to road to Spain in support of Operation Noble Eagle, and his Command Chaplain Marine Aircraft Group 26, deployed to Iraq in Operation Iraqi Freedom, as well as Command Chaplain Marine Corps Air Base New River, Command Chaplain Joint Task Force Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and Deputy Force Chaplain Marine Forces Reserve. As a civilian, Admiral Andrews serves as a Humanitarian Assistance Advisor to the Military at the Bureau of Humanitarian Assistance and the U.S. Agency for International Development. His leadership is essential to the continued success of the world's greatest Navy, and we are fortunate to have him here with us today to share his thoughts. Ladies and gentlemen, please join me in welcoming our guest of honor today, Deputy Chief of Chaplains for Reserve Matters, Rear Admiral Terry W. Ettinger. Congratulations for finishing your, for some of you, your first Navy school. And I see looking around the room that some of you must be prior service, or either you went to the uniform shop and bought a lot of ribbons. So I'm going to assume your prior service. So congratulations on a job well done. Now this speech this morning, as you can see, I'm not reading it out of the book, I'm going to talk to you. It's going to be interactive, which means you're going to have to participate. Okay? Everybody good? That's amazing. I like that. All right. All right. I'm going to talk to you only about three things. Okay? We're going to keep it simple. They told me I could only speak for an hour and a half. Right? So we're going to keep it simple. Three things. All right. Now this is the first part where you participate. You got me? Now listen up before you do what I say. I want you to, if you have family in the room, I want you to point to the family, but not yet. Okay? Now if you don't have family in the room and you have family out somewhere, California is that way. Florida is that way. Okay? Michigan is kind of there and Maine is that way. Point to where your family is. If you don't have family, but you have a partner or you have friends that support you, you can point to them. And where's our chaplain candidates in here? Raise your hand. There's one. Okay. For you guys, if you want to point up, that's okay too. All right. Where's your support? Where is your support? Point. Point. All right. Thank you. Put your fingers down. Now you had somebody in mind when you did that or a group of somebody's in mind. That is your support system. I want you to tell them thank you today for supporting you. They're going to be behind you throughout your career. They're going to be the ones silently sitting at home while you're deployed wondering how you're doing, saying prayers for you and sending wonderful thoughts of you and wondering, you know, what's happening in your life and you'll be busy doing your job. And it's easy to take them for granted. So my first point today is do not take your support system for granted. And by the way, families, thank you so much for being here today. Thank you so much. This means a lot. It means a lot to your sailor, your officer. Thank you. Thank you for being here and taking the time. So first point. Do not ever take for granted your support system. Whether it be your mom, your dad, your brother, your sister, your spouse, your partner, very close friends, never take them for granted. Okay? Are we good on that? All right. Now, time to go to number two, right? Lieutenant, I'm going to demonstrate this. All right. What I want you to do now is you're going to turn to the person to your right. All right, not yet. And I want you to pat them on the shoulder. Only on the shoulder. Okay. You're going to pat them on the shoulder and you're going to say, good job or well done or something to that effect. I'll leave it up to you. I give you a little bit of personal freedom here. Okay. You're going to pat them on the shoulder and say, good job, well done person to your right. Everybody know what the right is. In your case, it's going to be this way. And for you folks on the end, you're just going to have to hang out for a minute. Okay. All right. You ready? Go. All right. Now, the next job. Turn to your left and do the same thing. Ready? Go. All right. You just patted your shipmate on the shoulder and said, well done. What I want you to remember is we're all shipmates. Okay. Your shipmates with each other. Your shipmates with us. Your shipmates with the band back there. Your shipmates with those people on ships in Norfolk or in San Diego or in Japan or Pearl Harbor or out on the ocean. We're all shipmates. We take care of each other. We do not hurt each other. Do you have you heard the phrase, I got your back or I've got your six? You can answer that. Thank you. To say I've got your back. Skipper, would you mind standing up here? Turn your back to me. He can't see me patting him on the back, right? This is his most vulnerable spot. To say somebody I got your back means I'm going to look after your most vulnerable spot. Sit down. Thank you. I'm going to take care of you. I'm not going to let something happen to you because you can't see it yourself that's going to happen. Okay. I'm going to take care of you. I'm going to protect you while you're out here protecting yourself in the front. I'm going to protect your vulnerable side. That's what that means. Now the skipper read off my resume there and in the bottom line of my resume, my history, it means I've been around a lot and I'm old. Okay, got it. Right. It just means I've been around a lot. I was in Iraq in 2005 with the Marines. Okay. We had combat action going on. 13 times a commander rocket attack. Another time I was up on the Al-Qa'im border. I was within earshot of the battles going on. Now, do I carry a weapon? You can answer that. Do I carry a weapon? You may or may not know. Chaplains. Where are you? Do I carry a weapon? I do not carry a weapon, which means I had to depend on my Marines and my religious program specialist for protection. Absolutely had to trust them, literally for my life. What I need for you to do is do the same for your shipmates. Trust them even to the point of saving their lives, to the point of looking out for them. And by the way, shipmates do not let other shipmates harm themselves. Keep them from harm. All right. So let's go back and review point number one was what? Take care and be appreciative of your support system. Point number two, take care of your shipmate. Okay. So that brings us to point number three, right? Thank you. Thank you. We can try that again if you like. I like hearing you all in unison. Point number three. You ready? All right. Here we go. Now I know you folks have been to either a barber or a beauty shop and you sit there and they cut your hair and you talk about fishing or I don't, women, I don't know what you guys talk about when you're getting your hair done, but for guys, we talk about fishing or whatever. And when they're finished, they give you a handheld mirror, right? And they say, how does that look? You know, do I need to take a little more off the top or whatever? So what I want you to do, I want you to put up your mirror. Go ahead. Everybody put up your mirror. Now, you don't have to answer this one, but think about who do you see in that mirror? Who do you see? You see yourself, right? Okay. You put your hands down. I'll give you a break. You see yourself. What I need for you to do is be sure you take care of yourself. That means being resilient, knowing that days ahead, there's going to be some hard days. When I first came in, I was a Lieutenant JG and my first CEO told me some really good advice. He said, some days you're going to eat the bear and some days the bear is going to eat you. And what that means is some days are going to be good and some days are going to be bad. And believe me, I've had both. I've had both and at levels that I had never expected before. But what you need to do now as you're looking into your mirror is tell yourself, no matter what I face today or tomorrow or the rest of my career, I will face it with honor and integrity. Our core values, right? Honor, courage, commitment. I will face it with honor and integrity with high moral agility and make the best decisions I can given my circumstances. Okay. Every day, every day, where's our dentist? We have dentists in here? Okay. We've got a dentist. All right. Every day, you should twice a day look in the mirror probably brushing your teeth. The dentist would really appreciate it, by the way, if you would do that. Okay. In the mornings, when you brush your teeth, say, I'm going to be the best officer I can be today. And I'm going to exemplify honor, courage, and commitment. And then in the afternoon or in the evening at night when you're flossing and before you go to bed and you're brushing, ask yourself, how did I do? And if you slipped a little bit, that's okay. Just do better the next day because we all are going to have our failures. Everybody's going to have your failures. The goal is, is being able to survive them. And by the way, three or four of you will do something that you will not survive. It will ruin your career. That's just statistically the way it goes. Okay. Now, I'm going to ask for a response. This is the last negative thing I'm going to say to you, but Starward fans, what was that little robot that looked like a trash can? What was it? Good job. R2-D2. Well, we're not going to do R2-D2. We're going to do D2-S2. Okay. Can you say that D2-S2? Okay. It means don't do stupid stuff. I say that, but I see it. People do. Don't do stupid stuff. Share that with your sailors. So what do we've learned today? We've learned that we're going to appreciate and we're not going to take for granted our support system, right? Yes, sir. Okay. We're going to take care of our shipmates. And by the way, let me just drop on that for just a second. You're going to be in charge of sailors. And for some of those sailors, you're going to be the only person that's going to be taking care of them. Okay. We're going to take care of our shipmates. And third, we're going to take care of ourselves. And we're going to be people of honor, courage, and commitment. Okay, go ahead. Sorry I cut you off on that one. Hey, it's been my privilege to be with you today. It's an honor for me to be here and to share a few thoughts with you. I wish you the best as you go out and go to your community schools. And you're going to make us proud. You're going to make the Navy proud, and you're going to make our country proud. Thank you for what you do. God bless you. Thank you, Kat and Al, Cornemere, Rad, and Will Edinger. At the conclusion of each ODS class, several students are recognized by their fellow classmates as well as the OTCN staff for outstanding achievement during the five-week course of instruction. Ensign Matthew Najjar, Front and Center. The Honor Student Award is presented to the officer who best demonstrates an overall excellence in the areas of academics, physical fitness, and military bearing. Consistently setting the example for his or her peers through the many challenges faced at Officer Training Command. The Honor Student Award goes to Ensign Matthew Najjar. Ensign Justin Navity, Front and Center. The Alfred Award is given to the officer who achieves the highest military grade derived from personnel inspections, room inspections, and general military bearing. This award is named for the Continental Slope of War, the Alfred. Commissioned in 1775, the Alfred served as the flagship for native Rhode Islander, Eesa Hopkins, and is regarded as the birthplace of Navy medicine as it was the first ship to appoint a dedicated ship surgeon, serving as a role model of Navy pride and professionalism, maintaining the highest military standards, and providing inspiration to all. The Alfred award goes to Ensign Justin Navity. Ensign Gabriel White, Front and Center. The Arlie Burke Leadership Award is presented to the officer who personifies the highest standards of personal example, good leadership practices, and moral responsibilities. Officers were nominated by their peers and selected by the Officer Training Command staff. The Arlie Burke Leadership Award goes to Ensign Gabriel White. Ensign Jessica Wald, Front and Center. The Edie Award, named for Lieutenant Thomas Edie, United States Navy, recognizes the highest achievement in academic and military performance. Lieutenant Thomas Edie, who emigrated from Scotland and settled in Rhode Island, was awarded the Navy Cross and the Medal of Honor for his courageous efforts as a diver during the salvage of submarines SS-4 and SS-51 off the coast of Massachusetts. He was a member of the Southeastern New England Chapter of the Retired Officers Association at the time of his death in 1974. In recognition of this achievement, in addition to the Certificate of Achievement, the Military Officers Association of America has also provided a three-year membership to the Edie Award winner, Lieutenant J.G. Jessica Wald. For the past five weeks, the company guide on has been a symbol of spirit, dedication and teamwork, and unit identity. To symbolize the fact that these officers seated before you have completed their training, they will now return their guide-ons to their class Chief Petty Officers, Senior Chief Electronics Technician Michael Lewis, and Chief Fire Controlman Daniel Thomas. Lieutenant Fick will now deliver the reaffirmation of the Oath of Office. Would all military personnel in uniform please come to the position of attention. The commanding officer of officer training command would like to present to you your newly reaffirmed naval officers. Please rise for the playing of the service songs and the final dismissal. Officer Development School, Class 23040, upon graduation from Officer Development School, you are ordered to detach and report to your duty stations where you will assume your duties and responsibilities by order of Captain Everett Alcorn, Captain, United States Navy, Commanding Officer of Officer Training Command Newport. Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes our ceremony. On behalf of the Commanding Officer of Officer Training Command, thank you for attending today's graduation. Will the award winners please come to the front of the stairs for a photo with the official party.