Eileen and I spent 12 years at the Military Academy and we sponsored cadets each year. Sponsorship is difficult to describe but perhaps the best description is that it is a home away from home for the cadets you sponsor. For some cadets, they don’t need it for a variety of reasons and so you never see them. Some come to the house occasionally. Others are at the house all the time and become an extension of your family and interact with your children as if they are older siblings. Over time, we sponsored about 100 cadets. The cadets we sponsored decided that they would be known as the Carver Clan and the name has stuck over the years.
For the first three years (1993-1996), we lived in Captain’s quarters and we sponsored on a couple of cadets a year. We very much enjoyed our cadets and they enjoyed coming to the house and relaxing. In one notable exchange. Christian Teutsch intentionally crashed our oldest son’s 8 year old birthday party. At some point in the water gun fight, it became Christian versus a literal army of eight years old intent on drowning him and pulling down his shorts. He responded to their water guns with trash cans filled with water in an all out epic battle that left everyone exhausted. Occasionally we would take the cadets off post and go to dinner at the Culinary Institute of America about an hour north of West Point. On one such occasion, our niece Megan (Schreck) Huitt was visiting and took Cadet Ben Ring as a date with Eileen and I. We had a good time at the French restaurant and perhaps too good of a time as they asked us to quiet down. Yes, we were mocking another table but they deserved to be mocked.
When we returned in 2001, we stayed in larger houses and quickly built a reputation as sponsors. Sponsored cadets, their roommates, and friends were over at the house all the time which was fine with us and the kids. The sponsor matching software limited sponsors to ten cadets and we started receiving more by name requests than the software allowed. Fortunately, the Software Engineering Branch worked for me and they made a slight modification to the software which raised our limit from ten sponsored cadets to 15 per year. It’s good to be the boss sometimes.
In the beginning, these sponsors were new and we did not have a connection with them or their family.
Over time, a set of “official” and “unofficial rules developed related to the Carver Clan. In 2006, the Carver Class of 2006 put the official rules on a plaque to be displayed at the house. The four official rules were memorized in a gift from the 2006 graduating class.
These rules have persisted over time although I would note that “Sir” is more of a nickname these days than any reference to authority. Although not on the list, we told the cadets to please not knock on the door. They don’t knock on the door at their home. Just come in and relax. They were our sponsors and they were always welcome at the house.
There were an unofficial set of rules promulgated by the cadets that had the same effect as the official rules. These included:
- If you take the last of something, make more for everyone. Especially tea.
- Sir only allows “good” beer in the house. Yes, we have a list from him.
- Seats in the living room are a combat sport. Except for the dog. Mariah can sit anywhere and often does.
- Clean up after yourself.
The Colonel houses are big enough that there was always somewhere to take a nap, study quietly, find an upperclassman who had already taken a class you were struggling in, or just relax and watch TV. Saturday dinner and a movie became epic events where seats on the sectional were at a premium. If the ladies arrived before the guys, they controlled the remote control and you better settle in for My Big Fat Greek Wedding, Momma Mia, the Incredibles, Pride and Prejudice or whatever captured their interest. We watched the Incredibles so many times that we started watching it in Spanish. If the boys got there first, prepare for the 5th Element or the latest Marvel film. Oscar, the first three Star Wars movies, and My Cousin Vinny were neutral choices.
One of the dynamics of a house filled with West Point cadets was a constant debate of matters of the day. Our children actively engaged in the debates and each established a reputation:
- Curtis: Curtis was gregarious, bold, and beloved by the cadets. He was also the easiest to defeat in a debate. If the cadets needed a win, they would debate Curtis.
- Greg: Greg was an even match for the cadets. He was very quick verbally and bitingly sarcastic. The cadets had a 50-50 chance wining the debate.
- Michelle: Michele was the youngest. She would slay you. She would publicly embarrass you. The cadets knew how to get her back as you can tell in the following picture.
Football games were also cadet favorites. One cadet, Josh White, would stand inches from the 60″ TV yelling at it while gesturing wildly to the delight of all in attendance. It really did not matter who was playing as just sharing a common event was what everyone valued. One of our female sponsors, Rachel, enjoyed asking innocent questions about football I suspect fully knowing the answer and getting a reaction from the boys. For the Super Bowl, all our our cadets would come over and we would have to set up a second viewing area in the dining room to handle the crowd. Perhaps the most football game with our sponsors was the notable Super Bowl XXXVIII in 2004. This was the most exciting football game at our house for two reasons:
- The cooling system in our data center failed which led to all hands on deck to rush fans and open windows to cool the servers. Unfortunately, it was raining outside. For those unfamiliar with why that is unfortunate, data centers need to be cool and with low humidity. It is hard to balance the two when it is raining. We resolved the cooling issue in time to rush home for the Super Bowl but there was a real chance we were going to miss it due to the outage.
- The secondary reason was the halftime show. There was a raging debate between what did or did not occur during halftime show between Justin Timberlake and Janet Jackson. Our oldest son Curtis remembered that we have Tivo and we could just rewind and confirm or deny what did or did not happen. After several rewinds, Eileen stepped in and there were no more rewinds.
In a similar matter, board games of all forms were commonly played with Apples to Apples, Charades, and Pictionary being sponsor favorites. Certain answers, like Flying Monkeys, became a cadet favorite and we all learned everyone’s tells. It was an uncommon weekend where we did not play a board game of some form.
Christmas and the holidays were a special time of year for cadets. They typically would be taking their finals (called term end exams) until late in the holiday season before they could go home to their families. As such, they would come over to the Carver Clan to help us put up the Christmas tree and seasonal decorations. With everyone adorned in elves’ hats, holiday music playing in the background, and a dozen or more decorating, it was a calm and serene moment in the storm of stress induced from final exams. We would use the TiVo to record the Christmas classics as they aired and they were often replaced on the weekend when the cadets could come over. They would come over also to find a quiet space to study, find a tutor from the upper-class would had already taken a particularly tough class, or just sleep.
When I prepared to deploy to Afghanistan and Iraq, our cadets came over the night before my deployment. This I knew. What I did not know is that the cadets had nominated me for Military Outstanding Volunteer Medal. I was surprised at the number of cadet sponsors who came over. I was really surprised when Brigadier General Finnegan came over, called me to attention, and presented the award. General Finnegan noted that he had never seen the cadets take such initiative to honor a volunteer. He bade me a good night after the ceremony and we settled down to watch a cadet favorite, Oscar. A particularly poignant moment occurred. One of our beloved cadets, Sarah, had apparently worked behind the scenes to coordinate everything. She was exhausted and would periodically fall asleep during the movie and start to fall into Eileen. Eileen would kiss her on her forehead gently, Sarah would go back to sleep, and stay asleep sitting straight up, before starting to fall into Eileen again for another kiss and more sleep every five minutes or so.
Graduation at the US service academies is unlike any other college graduation in the world. While you may be familiar with the hat toss, you might not be familiar with the oath of office ceremony. This ceremony occurred at our house where families and friend would gather to eat, drink, and celebrate the oath of office being administered to their son, daughter or friend.
“I, _____, do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. So help me God.”
Oath of Office for Commissioned Officers
This ritual is very important and powerful. They would form a line and I would approach each one individually. They would raise their right hand, and repeat the oath after me. It was very emotional at times and you could see the tears in everyone’s eyes as they swore the oath. They had worked hard for many years to reach this moment and Eileen and I were delighted to be a part of the ceremony. It was often the last thing the young officer would do at West Point before departing for the myriad of weddings, parties and trips over a 30 or day period before reporting to Officer Basic Training in their branch.
In some cases, Eileen and I provided the setting, mentorship, or ritual that would normally occur with their real parents. A good example was Peter and Megan. Peter and Megan (McQuaig) Hjelmstad dated and fell in love at our house. They stole kisses outside our kitchen window (it was explicitly forbidden between cadets) when they thought no one noticed, watched movies, cooked, played board games and ultimately used our house as a staging area for their wedding in the Cadet Catholic Chapel. You may recall Megan McQuaig is the daughter of Scott and Kathy McQuaig, my company commander when I was with the 3/325th Airborne Combat Team in Italy. It is a small world sometimes.
Cadets continue to visit us and invite us to important moments in their lives since retirement. We continue to follow their lives, celebrate their successes, and cheer them on as they carver their unique path through life. A couple of vignettes:
- We attended both Chad and Aaron Amacker’s weddings. One was at Fort Bragg and one was on a Disney Cruise ship. Both were awesome celebrations of love.
- While visiting our son Curtis in Tacoma, Washington we actually stayed in Sarah Goss’ apartment as she was busy with her medical residency. As it was Washington State, Sarah had a large number of jackets – perhaps 15 or 20. Eileen and I wrote a ton of love notes and stuck them in all of her pockets of all of her jackets. We didn’t tell her. She later told me it took her six months to find them all and each one made her smile.
- When Jasmine had her first child, she asked Eileen to come and assist. Jasmine’s real mother could not attend and Eileen was happy to help. I served as taxi driver before having to return to work.
