Kurt Schmidt

Trying to Be Brave

I once wrapped my arms around my drunk, enraged father from behind to prevent him from beating my mother again. When his mistress, who had come with him, convinced him they should leave, I released him. But I don’t want to write about trauma again.

I once boarded a plane from New York to Luxembourg without knowing where I would spend the night once I arrived. I lugged my heavy suitcase along the main street and found an English-speaking hotel. But that vagabond trip was something I’ve already written about.

I once confronted the aide in my senator’s Washington office to get him to reveal “secret” information concerning my alternate status as an Annapolis candidate. 

While driving my mother and my sisters toward Washington, D. C., early on a September morning, I hit a dog that walked out of the woods in front of our old Chevy as if it hadn’t heard us coming. Its owners emerged from a house nearby and said the dog was old and deaf and didn’t blame me for its death. But the incident shook me. Then the car’s transmission began slipping on the George Washington Bridge and failed completely one block before reaching my mother’s Aunt Ruth in Philadelphia. This made me think the curse on my parents was now extended to my impending time at Columbian Preparatory School.

Mom had spent her last penny just to cover the fall term and cobbled together a $200 inheritance from a deceased aunt and a loan from the ball-bearing factory, where she still got paid next to nothing to run their mailroom. I’d added a school loan from the Rotary Club, graduation money gifts from my grandparents, and summer earnings from tending a hardware store. I would also perform kitchen duties at the school, which Columbian Prep called a working scholarship. Mom’s dream that I would go to college had seemed dead. My College Board scores were mediocre, and my senior grades had tanked. But Mom knew the emotional toll I’d experienced this past year of home turmoil and the impending divorce. She was relieved when my grandfather sent her the name of the prep school.

The difference between Columbian Prep and high school was that the new school was focused on the College Boards. Columbian Prep didn’t care about Shakespeare and Latin. This school stuffed vocabulary lists, American history, and math problems into your head until you were so tired of words and historical dates and math that you wanted to catch the next trolley downtown to a jazz joint and beer. The school had accumulated copies of old College Board exams. I did problems from these exams over and over. 

At the end of November, I rode the trolley downtown and took Senator Bridge’s Civil Service exam to determine if I could be one of his candidates for Annapolis. I thought I was ready for any test. But at 5’3½”, I was still not tall enough for Annapolis. I had only a few months to grow that last half inch. 

Senator Bridge’s telegram arrived on January 25th, stating that I would be his THIRD ALTERNATE to Annapolis. Bad luck. The senator’s principal appointment and first two alternates would have to fail the Annapolis cutoffs on the College Boards for me to go. I thought there was no chance of three intelligent guys failing. Either I had to be satisfied to give up the Annapolis dream or find another congressman to make me his principal appointment.

All along I thought I’d had the inside track with Senator Bridges because of my previous Boys Nation trip to Washington and my lunch with him and Senator Cotton. But school rumor had it that congressional appointments to the academies were really made on a political basis and went to the sons of prominent businessmen and state politicians. I was disillusioned. The only good news was that Annapolis often accepted alternates who scored high on the College Boards. But how high was high? My confidence was down, and I felt I had to do something to overcome this problem.

So after class on a February afternoon, with considerable anxiety, I rode the trolley down to Congress and walked to the House of Representatives Office Building. Inside I chose a corridor at random, read a congressman’s name on an office door, and stepped inside. I told the secretary my name, and that I was looking for an Annapolis appointment higher than a third alternate. School rumor said if a congressman thought you were a good candidate, he didn’t care what state you were from, preferring to fill his appointment with an out-of-state kid rather than have the appointment go unfilled. The secretary smiled at me and said she was sorry that all the congressman’s appointments were filled. The same story repeated itself in every office and on each afternoon that I followed this path of persistence. Finally, one secretary suggested that I return after the College Board exams, when the congressman would know then whether his candidates made it or not.

The College Board results came to me at school. My scores were in the 600s in everything except Math Achievement. On that test, my grade was 738, a ridiculous score for a kid better with vocabulary than math. In deference to my roommates, who didn’t do as well, I didn’t brag about my scores. But when the headmaster congratulated me and said those scores should get me into Annapolis, I was as happy as a kid at a Sophia Loren movie. He said the Annapolis cutoffs were normally around 575. I told him I was still a third alternate. He said Annapolis would certainly take an alternate with scores like mine.

I was still skeptical. I considered going to Congress again to see about a principal appointment from another state when a classmate suggested that I check Senator Bridges’ office first to see if his candidates ahead of me flunked or passed. When I called the Senator’s office, a secretary said they couldn’t give me that information. I asked why not, and she said it was the Senator’s policy not to release the information. I was pissed off. I needed to find enough courage to go down there to face them in person.

It was a warm day, and I was on the trolley to Congress and the Senate Office Building. I was with a friend who was Senator Lyndon Johnson’s principal appointee to West Point. We were joking on the trolley about what I could do to force Senator Bridges’ office to give me the information I needed. I said how about if I told them I had a violent temper. My friend said in his Texas drawl, “No offense intended, but you’re too small to look violent. Just tell them Senator Johnson will appoint you if they won’t.” I told him he’d given me a good idea.

At Senator Bridges’ office, my friend waited in the corridor while I entered. I introduced myself to the Senator’s secretary, and I could see from her face that she had no idea I was the irritated New Hampshire kid who’d called on the phone.

I said, “I’m Senator Bridges’ third alternate to Annapolis, and I’ve passed the College Board tests for Annapolis. I’d like to know if the candidates ahead of me passed or not.”

She told me I’d have to wait a minute and disappeared into an inner office. She returned and told me to have a seat. Minutes later, a slick-suited man in his late twenties approached me. Perhaps he was the Senator’s aide. I stood and introduced myself. He nodded but didn’t shake my hand. He was tall, looking down at me, seeming unfriendly. I started to explain what information I needed, but he cut me off. “I know what you want, but we can’t give you that information.”

I said, “I was hoping you could. If I knew the candidates ahead of me didn’t make it, then I wouldn’t have to solicit a principal appointment from another congressman.”

His stare didn’t indicate if he was impressed with my use of the word solicit, or if he didn’t like my phrase another congressman, or if he just wanted to get me out of his hair. Finally, he said, “If you pass your Annapolis physical, I think you’ll be just fine.”

I was savvy enough by now to know his statement could mean anything he wanted it to mean. I said, “Does that mean the guys ahead of me flunked the test?”

He smiled finally. “If you pass your Annapolis physical, I think you’ll be just fine.”

Was he amused at my persistence? Was he amused because he was taller and important and thought he could intimidate me? I said, “Are you saying if I pass the Annapolis physical, I’m in?”

I could almost hear his brain churning. Cannot be outfoxed by a gap-toothed runt who has just turned eighteen. But then I heard his sigh of resignation. I thought he’d decided I wouldn’t go away without a legitimate answer. He said, “I think I can say that.”

“You’re saying I’m in?”

“Yes.”

For giving me a hard time, I wanted to say “Kiss my ass,” but knew you didn’t say that to someone who was tall and important. “Thank you,” I said. “Give my regards to Senator Bridges.” 

Out in the corridor, I grinned at my friend. He knew without asking and congratulated me. 

I said, “Would you believe it?” All his political appointees went down the tubes. I think the Senator’s aide was too embarrassed to tell me they all flunked. But he finally said, "If I passed the physical, I’m in.”

I worried then whether the overseers of the Annapolis physical would grant me a waiver on the height requirement. I was still missing half an inch. And would they disregard the heart murmur that they’d discovered at the physical examination for Air Force Academy?

But despite my worries on the day of the physical exam, the Navy examiners ignored the missing half-inch (marking me 5’4”) and the heart murmur.

That evening, I called my mother and told her I’d soon be entering Annapolis. I heard her crying on the phone. I could picture her sitting on the steps in our living room where she had cried so many times in the past during painful phone rants from my father. 

She had never expressed an opinion about a program that produced naval officers. I suspected her joy about my receiving a free education from a prestigious institution suppressed any thought about whether my becoming a modern warrior was my true destiny. I didn’t think she saw me launching missiles from a nuclear submarine or dropping bombs from a jet. There was no war except the internal one in which I fought the ghosts of my father, and if she’d known about that one, she would have said, “You’ve just got to forget the past.”

Kurt Schmidt’s work has appeared in the Boston Globe Magazine, Bacopa Literary Review, The Avenue, Discretionary Love, Eclectica Magazine, the Adelaide Literary Award Anthology, and others. He is the author of the novel Annapolis Misfit (Crown). Kurt lives with his wife in New Hampshire and recently flew in a small plane piloted by his son, although he was anxious that his son was newly licensed and inexperienced. He is currently finishing a thirty-year chronicle about parenting a risk-taker. www.kurtgschmidt.com