I Wanted to be...

I was a third-class Petty Officer serving at U.S. Coast Guard Air Station Elizabeth City, North Carolina in July 1990. My military career was going great, but there was something missing. I had been doing a lot of writing, and I really wanted to be a military journalist.

I talked with my command to see if I could change rates. In the Coast Guard, that means changing jobs. In April of 1990, I was awarded a Golden Poet Award for my poetry and attended the ceremony in Washington, D.C. It was claimed this was the same as an actor winning an Oscar. The award itself was made of Lucite and was clear and shaped like the Washington Monument. It was very unique.

So, I used this as a springboard for my command to justify my writing as a military journalist. The command agreed and I was given orders to attend the Defense Information School (DINFOS) in Indianapolis, Indiana.

The school was not always located in Indiana. The Army Information School was founded in 1946 at Carlisle Barracks in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. Soon, other branches of the military merged with the Army Information School and in 1948 it was changed to the Armed Forces Information School and moved to Fort Slocum, New York.

When Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs Arthur Sylvester chartered DINFOS, it was moved to Fort Benjamin Harrison, Indianapolis, Indiana, in 1965. It remained there until 1995 when it was moved to Fort George Meade, Maryland. That is where it is located today.

I reported to DINFOS at Indianapolis, Indiana, on August 2, 1990, the date the Iraqi War started. The journalism course is very intensive. You learn as much in six months as a college student would learn in a year. The school teaches all military branches and government civilians as well as international students.

The journalism classes taught basic writing skills that included a headline style known as “headline-ese,” a style for writing and developing headlines. Students are taught a variety of writing styles and formats such as hard news, soft news, sports and feature writing.

However, Coast Guard students had to attend a three-week English class before starting the journalism classes. I never understood why the Coast Guard was the only branch that had to do this, but we did.

During this English class we had to do a spelling test every day of the 200 most difficult words to spell. We had to spell 10 words every day, and the test was graded and entered into our military record. At the end of every test, we were given one extra bonus word to spell to help our grade should you misspell a word.

I went through the class and never misspelled a word. I was told at the time that I was the only person who had ever done that. However, on the very last day of that class I spelled all my words correctly, but I decided to do the bonus word, and it was Armageddon! I misspelled it. However, it did not count because I had already got all the words correct. I was always very good at spelling in school.

So, then we advanced into the journalism school where we learned journalism. During the school we were also taught Photojournalism courses that focused on composition, exposures, and general camera operation skills. Flash photography was also taught in the basic photography course.

The DINFOS school had a very high dropout rate of 64 percent! You had to learn quickly and move to the next course. If you could not keep up, you were removed from the school.

The school teaches many different classes from basic journalism, basic photography, advanced writing, advanced photography, and digital photography. There is a six-month Mass Communication Fundamentals Course and a Broadcast Communication Specialist Course for those entering the broadcast world.

I attended the Basic Journalism Course in August 1990, at Fort Benjamin Harrison. I went back in February 1995, to attend the Intermediate Photojournalism Course.

In June of 1997, I attended the Electronic Imaging Course at Fort Meade, Maryland. And in August of 1998, I attended the Joint Public Affairs Supervisor Course for advanced public affairs training in the field.

I was able to graduate from each course and move on to advanced public affairs in the Coast Guard. I wrote many stories that were published in newspapers and magazines across the country. I published feature stories as well as poetry. Most of my stories featured Coast Guard personnel performing their jobs or achieving something unique.

I truly loved learning how to write feature stories and that has always been my favorite kind of writing. I owe DINFOS for teaching me how to do that and for giving me a career in writing.

The school has many well-known alumni. Some include

J.D. Vance, vice president of the United States

Walter F. Mondale, former vice-president of the United States

Rob Riggle, actor and comedian

Dale Dye, actor

Adrian Cronauer, American Forces Vietnam Network disc jockey, and movie author of “Good Morning, Vietnam.”

Gene Siskel, Chicago movie reviewer

Tony Dow, actor, Leave it to Beaver

And many others who graduated from DINFOS.