July 4, 1960 wasn’t a particularly hot day—for Annapolis in the summer. Natives were used to the heat and the humidity. Ted Smolen was not. “It was like stepping into a furnace,” he remembers. Ted’s parents had put him on a bus from Cleveland and sent him on his way. A Catholic kid whose dad was a merchant mariner in World War II and now worked as a mechanic to support his family, Ted was the first in his family to go to college, and he had never before traveled alone. He transferred buses in downtown Washington, D.C., and arrived in Annapolis after dark.

He had been told he would be able to get a room at Bancroft Hall, the Naval Academy’s dormitory, for the night before his class’s official swearing in on July 5, but when he arrived, all the prepared rooms were taken. An upperclassman gave him a cot and a thin blanket instead. The next morning, he assembled in front of Bancroft Hall and reported for duty. It was the first day of four years of challenge—a crucible that 1,276 other young men from all over the country faced with him.

This book is the story of the thirty-seven men from the Naval Academy’s Class of 1964’s 24th Company and the paths their lives have taken over the last fifty years: Vietnam, submarine operations in support of the Cold War, Desert Storm, law practice, private industry, service in the federal government, being husbands, being uncles, being fathers, and being grandfathers. These men—really a microcosm of the generation of men who were just a bit older than Baby Boomers—were inspired by their fathers, uncles, and cousins who served in World War II. Motivated to serve and bonded by their common experience at the Naval Academy, this group of men still counts each other as their brothers in uniform and their brothers in life.

This book was written and published exclusively for U.S. Naval Academy’s Class of 1964’s 24th company members and their families. It is not available for sale.