For Adam Aliano, Annapolis Is Not the Average College Experience
ANNAPOLIS, Md., Nov. 3 – On a beautiful autumn day in November, Adam Aliano and his classmates sit through a required government class in their first semester of college.
The professor walks in and begins discussing a bibliography assignment that is part of a thesis paper the students must complete. She announces that the highest score is a 95 but that the class average is a 50.
The students groan in unison. Aliano, a Methuen native, looks over at his friend Jack McCain, smiling but shaking his head. It’s all part of the induction process into the rigors of academia that takes place every year on college campuses across the country.
But little clues reveal this is not a regular college: Aliano wears his dark hair cut short and his shoes spit-polished. He is dressed in a dark blue uniform called “winter working blues.” When the professor, a Navy commander, entered the room a cry of “Attention on deck!” caused the students to jump simultaneously out of their seats and salute.
This is the United States Naval Academy. Nestled on the banks of the Severn River where it empties into the Chesapeake Bay in Annapolis, Maryland, neither the school nor its students are ordinary.
At 19 years of age, Aliano already has a resume full of achievements. At Methuen High School he was the star pitcher, a member of the National Honor Society, and the senior class president who organized a Christmas tree sale to generate funds for class activities.
Since reporting to the academy in June for “plebe summer”-a seven-week program that yanks teenagers out of a world filled with reality television, video games and peer pressure, and prepares them for a schedule of discipline, rigor and military life-Aliano has been awarded the expert medal in firearms training. He has also been assigned as his platoon squad leader and was selected to represent the academy by throwing out the first pitch at a Baltimore Orioles game at Camden Yards earlier this fall.
Aliano shrugs it off and says that the academy is full of students “who are really good at something.” In fact, 82 percent of the class of 2009 were ranked in top 20 percent of their high school class and 85 percent of them earned athletic varsity letters, according to academy figures. The upper range of the average verbal and math SAT scores is 700.
Of the 11,000 students who applied to be a part of Aliano’s class, only 4,300 were nominated by an official source such as a congressman, a requirement for consideration. Aliano received his official nomination from Rep. Martin Meehan of Lowell. From this group of 4,300, the incoming class was whittled down to 1,200 students, including 235 women, based on scholastic and physical merit.
What inspires these men and women at so young an age to bear the responsibility of the Naval mission of developing “in mind and character to assume the highest responsibilities of command, citizenship and government,” especially at a time when the Iraq war weighs heavily on the psyche of the country?
“I wouldn’t have applied if I wasn’t willing to serve,” Aliano says. “I feel it’s something I owe back. In studying other cultures I realized how great we have it.”
Aliano was recruited by other schools to play baseball but chose to come to the academy.
“It says a lot about him,” says Mark Grams, one of Aliano’s baseball coaches in Methuen. “He could have gone anywhere he wanted; made any team he wanted. But he wanted to go the Naval Academy.”
Aliano’s older sister, Lorie, enlisted in the Navy and Aliano recalls watching her march in formation when he was 12 years old. “I was really impacted by their discipline,” he said.
During his junior year, he took an ROTC class offered at high school and he said his interest grew until one day while driving his car he had an epiphany about what he wanted for his life after college-serving his country.
“He chose the academy because he thought it would be a good fit for him,” says Aliano’s father, Samuel, a retired Lawrence police captain.
It’s the lifestyle attracts him, Samuel Aliano says. “There is only one club there and that’s the Navy club. They are teaching him to be a member of a team and he responds to that.”
His father remembers when Adam was a child, about three or four-years-old, playing in the backyard with a friend about the same age. The boys were playing near the family’s pool and the cover gave way as the friend fell in the shallow end. Not strong enough to pull him out, Adam was able to grab his friend and keep his head above water until his parents pulled both children to safety moments later.
“Even as a kid he had a lot of common sense,” Samuel Aliano says.
When Aliano is asked about the incident, he smiles, looks down at his hands and again shrugs. Perhaps what happened foreshadowed a desire to protect. Even when talking about the country’s divide over the Iraq war, he says, “I am here to defend those people’s right to express how they feel. I’m here to protect their opinions.”
“He wanted to be in the big situation,” says Grams, Aliano’s high school coach. “He is a very fierce competitor.”
But even with that responsibility, Aliano is still a kid. He jokes and laughs with his Academy classmates, such as McCain, the son of Arizona Sen. John McCain. Before the government class they rib each other and at one point Aliano gives McCain a noogie.
Even with all of his accomplishments he is self-effacing. “I am not the smartest and the most athletic kid,” he says. “But I know my priorities: being happy and close to those that I love. And as a leader, someone people can confide in.”
When he talks about his aspirations he lights up. Someday he wants to go into politics or law. To prepare, Aliano says he and McCain are planning to run for class office together next year – Aliano for president and McCain as his running mate. And of course, there is the dream of every kid.
“Yes, m’am. I really want to fly planes in the Navy,” he says.
Walking around the Yard of the academy one gets a sense of unity, even if only from students’ homogeneous attire. It is evident the student body, or the brigade as it is called, shares a collective experience and identity.
One such experience is plebe summer. From dawn until long after the day’s end, the first year students, or plebes, fill their time with grueling physical activities and training that prepare them for military life. Shedding their civilian skin, they learn everything from the proper saluting technique to the basics of seamanship and handling small firearms.
The goal of the summer, explains Aliano, is to bond the newcomers together. “You put the benefit of the group before yourself,” he says. “I take care of my men and I know that if there is a chance that I fail, I have the support of everyone else.”
“I can try to explain what [plebe summer] was like to you or my parents” but only the participants really understand, he says.
It’s true. A civilian walking around the Yard feels as though a different language is being spoken. It’s a language anchored with words like commitment, honor and teamwork, and that carry life and death consequences out on the field.
“Although we all may seem the same,” Aliano says, each member of the brigade’s individuality is on the inside. “It’s when you are alone that shapes your individual character. We are all individuals with really strong talents.”
Aliano says he seeks solace in the quiet of the Academy’s chapel every Sunday. And to relax, the self-taught musician strums chords on his acoustic guitar.
Another lifeline is emailing friends back home and daily calls to his mom, Maria, and his girlfriend, a freshman at James Madison University in Harrisonburg, Va. Without his family’s encouragement, Aliano says, he “wouldn’t be successful.”
Although he has their support, it is not without their concern.
“Like every parent,” his father says, “you worry, especially in times of war. But he says to me, ‘Dad, I could be killed walking down the street.’ There are always risks.”
Adam Aliano wears a reminder of that risk. On his wrist is a silver bracelet engraved with the name of a soldier killed in Vietnam. He bought it, he says, to honor those who have served before him.
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