The Fitch Senior High graduation was on June 22, 1983, and it was shortly thereafter, on a beautiful early summer morning, that family members were gathered in the front yard of my sister Patty’s house on Pearl Street in Noank. It wasn’t going to be a picnic, though we had enjoyed many of those at that home, but was going to be the enlistment ceremony of my nephew David T. Dunn, better known to family and friends as Davey.

Davey’s father, David H., had died when Davey was 16. My nephew decided that after his high school graduation, he was going to enlist – in the Marine Corps, no less!

Since his father, a former Naval officer, couldn’t see him take the oath, he wanted his grandfather, Tom Dunn, to witness the ceremony. Unfortunately, Tom’s health precluded a trip to the Armed Forces Entrance and Examining Station in New Haven, the location where the majority of area young people at that time began their military service.

Somehow Davey was able to convince the recruiters to allow him to enlist at home, and I was asked if I would be willing to administer the oath.

I had enlisted in the Navy in 1969, and after my active duty service at various locations, including aboard the aircraft carrier USS Kitty Hawk in the Gulf of Tonkin, joined a Naval Reserve unit in New Haven, where I later was commissioned.

As a commissioned officer I had the authority and privilege to administer the oath of enlistment or reenlistment to personnel in any of the branches of the armed forces. A couple of weeks before the date of Davey’s enlistment, I spoke on the phone with the Marine recruiter and provided him with the requisite name, rank, and serial number, so that he could have the paperwork ready to be signed after the brief ceremony.

That morning, standing in the front yard in Noank wearing my tropical white uniform, with my wife, my sister, who was ten years my senior, and Tom, we watched the Marine recruiters pull up and park opposite the house. They crossed the street, came through the gate, and as they approached us, saluted. I returned the salute.

One of the Marines looked at my shirt and noticed the enlisted good conduct award and the Vietnam service ribbon. He said, “Former enlisted? Vietnam?” to which I replied in the affirmative and shook hands with both the sergeants.

My sister was a little surprised at what she had seen.

“You just saluted my baby brother!” she exclaimed.

“Yes ma’am,” replied the sergeant, with a barely concealed sense of amusement. “Your ‘baby brother’ is a lieutenant in the United States Navy. It’s tradition.”

Robert F. Welt of Mystic is a retired longtime Groton Public Schools teacher.