Daniel Holliday Pennington LCdr.(ret.) USCGR
Band Company
Greenbrier Military School Class of 1969

I was living in Thailand with my family in 1966 while my father was in Viet Nam with the Department of State (DoS). As the school year ended my father was anticipating being assigned to Laos with the DoS and knew there was no school above the Ninth grade there at the time. Having once thought of sending my older brother to GMS for boarding school, for basically the same reason, my parents thought again of GMS. Incidentally, my brother did not attend GMS because my grandfather thought it was going to be too much of a hardship for him being away from family. Seeing that Mom and Dad were originally from Fayetteville, WVa., my grandfather having passed away and I still had a maternal grandmother and many cousins in the area my attending GMS turned into a no-brainer.

This was not a really new happening – when we lived in Sri Lanka or what used to be Ceylon – we lived in the jungle “up country” and there was no English speaking school for my brother and I to attend so we were boarded at the Kodiakanal Missionary Boarding School in southern India. Due to seasonal weather and the hold over from the British, we attended school for three months and then had a month off and again attended for three months with a month off. That was the normal cycle so you were off the coldest, the wettest and the hottest months of the year. Those two years of school were my 3rd and 4th grades in school, so I was understanding of what going to boarding school was going to be like.

The family returned to WVa. for leave and DoS training prior to my father's transfer and I was dropped off at GMS for the 1966-67 school year. My father being an old Navy man from WWII helped me make my bunk the first time so the sheets and blanket were “quarter bouncing tight” with crisp hospital corners. They called for formation and my parents had to say good bye. After formation I returned to my room on “A” stoop in the Band and found my rack completely undone by someone who said it “wasn't done like GMS wanted it done”. Such is life and you live and learn and learn I did.

That first year I learned that smart mouthing to those who outranked you, to establish who you were, got you more demerits than a single set of soles on your half boots could out last on the “beat”– point of fact more than two sets. During breaks my Grandmother would come up and pick me up or I would take the bus towards Charleston and get off at “Chimney Corners” where she would pick me up. She still worked as the Postmistress in the community where she lived and being the only employee in the Post Office she couldn't take off as she pleased. I always returned to school with goodies she baked for me and those I cared to share with --- and sometimes those who just heard about the goodies in the “Care Package” shared in that bounty. I detested the first year and did not look fondly at having to return for my Junior year but knew that it was inevitable due to circumstances. I knew that with conditions as they were my parents were doing the best for me they could. I still believe that, am so appreciative of what they did for me.

That first summer vacation I flew to Laos to be with my family and my brother coaxed me into getting dressed in my GMS uniform in the restroom of the Pan American 707 from Hong Kong to Bangkok to meet my parents at the airport – this was the first time I had seen them in 10 months and I had grown from 5'5” at 105 pounds to 5'11” and 145 pounds. Bangkok in the summer is hot and humid and I was in our wool uniform – not the most comfortable environment for wool, but Mom and Dad were beaming with pride as I perspired, just glad to be home again. I enjoyed the summer at home and headed back for my Junior year.

My junior year I was promoted to “Buck” Sargent and I had learned to not smart mouth as much, so life at school was better. Again breaks were spent with my grandmother and cousins in Fayeteville – now the site of the New River Gorge Bridge and the annual “Bridge Day”. The summer of my second year at GMS came and due to budgetary constraints I spent the summer in WVa. and returned to the “Brier” for my senior year, this time as a Sargent First Class for Band Company.

During that Senior year my roommate from my first year, Gary Woody, came back from a date at the girls school, GCW, and asked if I knew a girl by the name of Mary Pappas from Thailand. I said yes and how did he know that name. He said she was at GCW and wanted to see me. One thing led to another and we dated for my last year of GMS.

I looked forward to graduation for a number of reasons – of course graduating high school and starting college, looking forward to joining NROTC and serving in the Navy but most importantly seeing my parents again – I had not seen them from the summer of 1967 till the couple of days before graduation on June 06, 1969. It was a very happy reunion to say the least.

People ask me time and again why I go back to the “Brier” every year and I always answer that the people I see there yearly are as close to me almost as my own family – we shared the same teachers, mentors, values and ethics. We shared our meals, our triumphs and acted as brothers to one another in confidences and commiserations about how “bad” it was. Our instructors taught us the meaning of integrity and at the same time allowed us to “slide” when it really wasn't important. We were taught to give it our best , win or lose, give it your best.

When I didn't make it in Engineering School when I first attended college (Party school with what was purported to be the shortest mini-skirts in the nation) I enlisted in the US Navy as a recruit in the Nuclear Power Training Program. I attended Nuclear Power School and Prototype and was assigned to the USS Enterprise and served on her through the final evacuation of Viet Nam. Upon return to CONUS in San Francisco I requested and received transfer to the pre-commissioning unit of the USS Eisenhower. My last 2+ years active duty was spent ensuring she was built and accepted, as per specification, and I became a “Plank Owner”. Upon Honorable Discharge as an E6 First Class Machinist Mate, I joined the US Coast Guard Reserve to augment the GI Bill and was now better prepared to study. While I completed my Mechanical Engineering Degree I was Commissioned as an Ensign in the USCGR. I retired from the USCGR in 1999 as a Lieutenant Commander after a total of 27 ½ years Active Duty and Reserve service. I credit those things taught to me by my parents and GMS for enabling me to progress from an E1 (Seaman Recruit) to an O4-E (Lieutenant Commander) and a Systems Engineering Manager for the PF-4 Plutonium Production Facility at the Los Alamos National Laboratory. Doing your best, striving to better yourself and the world around you, being true to your integrity and helping others – I feel that is the embodiment of the Creed we were instilled with as Truth, Duty and Honor. Those qualities instilled in us at GMS did much to enable me to excel as I did in my life.