Club Meeting - August 18

After welcoming familiar visiting Rotarians Bill Nielsen from St. Paul and Ron Hughes from Excelsior, we heard from today's guest speaker, Tim "Oz" Oswalt - commanding officer for the Midwest Regional Naval Recruiting Station here in the Twin Cities.  Oswalt enlisted in the Navy following his graduation from college, which allowed him to become commissioned as a naval pilot.  Following a number of years and deployments in that capacity, he moved into the recruiting role he now has.  Given our landlocked status in Minnesota, many of us are not as familiar with the Navy as with the other military branches and Oswalt gave a good high level overview of the functions the U.S. Navy fulfills in the world - protecting shipping lanes thereby ensuring global free trade, providing disaster aid in situations like the recent earthquakes/tsunamis in Nepal, Haiti and Japan, work here at home to detect and break up narcotics smuggling, and - most familiar - providing power from the sea in the form of long range missiles, attack aircraft from carrier vessels, Navy Seal Teams, and unmanned aircraft.  The Navy's enlistment requirements include certain physical fitness and body fat standards, limits around some body tattoos, and absence of significant legal issues.  Sadly, only about 1/3 of young people meet all requirements, therefore recruiting is an important and challenging aspect to mantaining naval ranks.