New London — This might be Jim Rooney's last visit to the Coast Guard Academy.

Rooney, 85, a retired Coast Guard captain who lives in Virginia, and 18 of his classmates from the Class of 1956 and their guests have descended upon the academy for homecoming weekend.

Many of them have not seen each other for 10 years, when they last gathered together at the academy for their 50th reunion. Of the 87 men who were in the graduating class, 50 still are living.

"We're getting to be rare," one of Rooney's classmates commented to him.

"This is the way we float to the top of the class, you know," Rooney responded.

New London and the academy were home to Rooney several times throughout his 25-year career with the Coast Guard.

"Everything is different," Rooney remarked of the academy he attended compared with the academy now.

When eating in the wardroom, fourth-class cadets had to sit on the front 3 inches of their seat; now they must sit a fist-distance away from the table.

There were no women in the student body when Rooney was a cadet. In fact, women wouldn't arrive on campus until 20 years after he graduated. This year marks the 40th anniversary of women first being admitted to service academies, and the class of 2020 is made up of 38 percent women.

Rooney recalled cadets being able to smoke in their dorm rooms, where he taught "everybody" how to pitch pennies, "how you bounce them and try to get them into an ash tray ... whoever got the most bounces got the pot."

While eating lunch with current cadets, Rooney threw his head back and laughed when it was announced that drill was still on for that afternoon, and all at once the cadets clanked their silverware on their plates, signaling their disapproval.

"Do you ever get the feeling you wish you went somewhere else? It wouldn't be unusual, you know," he said to the cadets, who quietly smiled and nodded their heads.

His advice to the cadets is to stick it out for two years — that was the turning point during his academy career.

"By then, the spirit of the Coast Guard should be in you," he said. "And then there would be some motivation to make it a career. Now does that come up again? You bet your boots."

Rooney originally was supposed to travel Friday from Montauk, where his daughter lives, to the academy by the fishing vessel Anna Mary, but those plans were scrapped due to the weather.

The Anna Mary was the subject of a 2014 New York Times Magazine article, which The Weinstein Co. acquired the rights to, detailing the improbable rescue by the Coast Guard of a fisherman who fell overboard in the middle of the night and spent nearly 12 hours in the water.

Rooney's daughter is good friends with the two fishermen who own the Montauk-based vessel. One of them, whose father also happens to be retired from the Coast Guard, had offered to take Rooney to the academy.

j.bergman@theday.com