Subscribe
PACIFIC OCEAN – For Sailors, not all battles are fought on open seas. With long days in port and even longer stretches underway, sometimes the battles are fought in the mind. Whenever Chief Aviation Ordnanceman Ray Hardy, a leading chief petty officer in the weapons department aboard Nimitz-class nuclear aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson (CVN 70), finds a strategy for winning these battles, he makes sure to pass it onto his fellow Sailors.
“The way I look at life is, it’s bigger than just now,” said Hardy. “It’s always about the next step; we do this work now so that we can get to our next goal.”
But Hardy didn’t always see things that way. Throughout his naval career, Hardy said his personal leadership style has developed by observing and assessing the leadership of his superiors, then incorporating the traits he likes while leaving the ones he does not agree with behind.
“Some people have come and dropped knowledge on me that I wasn’t expecting, and I just soak it all up like a sponge,” said Hardy. “I try my best to make sure I pass it on to the junior Sailors that I talk to because, when I grew up, a lot of knowledge wasn’t passed on to us.”
Hardy grew up in Americus, Georgia. He played football and basketball in school and joined the Army Junior Reserve Officers Training Corps program at Americus High School, eventually rising to the position of command sergeant major in the program.
In looking back on his youth, Hardy said he did not really have a role model to look up to, but that does not mean he had no one to learn from.
“The people around me at the time were making bad decisions and huge mistakes, so I took it upon myself to not go down those roads,” said Hardy.
His older brother, who had been arrested multiple times for selling drugs, was sentenced to life in prison for violating Georgia’s “three-strikes” law.
“[My brother] would always tell me, ‘you’ve got to be better than me,’” said Hardy, “‘I want you to get out of Georgia. I want you to go live your life.’ I took those words with me onto the basketball court and football field. Those words kept me motivated to live a better life.”
After graduating from high school in 2002, Hardy attempted to join the Air Force but was turned down because of a knee injury he sustained during a football game. Instead, he went to a Navy recruiter who told him that not only could they get a waiver for his knee injury but he could also play basketball for the Navy. Hardy accepted the offer.
Hardy has been in the Navy for 19 years. He has been stationed at Naval Support Facility Diego Garcia and aboard Nimitz-class nuclear aircraft carriers USS Harry S. Truman(CVN 75) and USS Dwight D. Eisenhower(CVN 69), where he played basketball for both ships. He reported to Vinson in February 2019.
No matter the command, Hardy always kept his eyes and ears open to his peers and leaders, gleaning what lessons he could from them along the way. He often found that these lessons held more than just a military value.
“My time at Diego Garcia taught me that you’re in a place for a reason, and people cross your path in life for a reason,” said Hardy. “Some are just a page in your book of life, some can be a chapter, and some can be with you throughout your entire life.”
When Hardy was aboard Truman, he met the woman who would become his wife. They have been married for 15 years. He also experienced his first deployment.
“That was my first time actually going overseas and experiencing different cultures,” said Hardy, “I’ve seen some beautiful things and places that I never would have seen if I hadn’t joined the military.”
While he was stationed aboard Truman, one of his chiefs sat him down and had him make a five-year plan, something he had not put much thought into before then. The goals he wrote down were to make second class petty officer, get his air warfare pin, buy a car and buy a house.
“I achieved all those goals, but I also added a wife to that, and a baby,” said Hardy. “I’ve got no complaints. None at all.”
Hardy tries to impart that same future-forward, goal-oriented outlook to his junior Sailors in weapons department. He does this by maintaining an easy-to-talk-to mentality and checking up on his Sailors frequently to make sure they are doing okay.
He often tells his Sailors to “control your controls.” By that, he means for them to focus on the matters they have control over while not dwelling on the things that are out of their control.
Hardy can appreciate when someone is going through a rough spot, because he went through one himself a couple of years ago. The combined stressors of being at a new command in a higher position of authority and familial pressures back home put Hardy in a negative headspace.
“I felt like the world was against me,” said Hardy.
A concerned shipmate reached out to him and recommended a self-help. Hardy took his shipmate’s advice and looked into it.
“I realized the people who I felt were against me actually had my back the whole time,” said Hardy. “They were just trying to keep me motivated and keep my spirits up by focusing on something else to get me out of my funk.”
Since then, Hardy maintains a much more positive outlook. In the same way that he passes on his knowledge to his fellow Sailors, he spreads this positivity around in hopes that it will pull Sailors away from negative modes of thinking.
“What you put out into the universe comes back to you,” said Hardy. “If you put out negative energy, that negative energy will come back to you. If you put out positive energy, then that energy will also come back to you. That’s how I look at life.”
| Date Taken: | 02.10.2021 |
| Date Posted: | 12.31.2021 00:52 |
| Story ID: | 412200 |
| Location: | PACIFIC OCEAN |
| Web Views: | 80 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
This work, Leading The Way Through Positivity, by PO2 Jeffrey Kempton, identified by DVIDS, must comply with the restrictions shown on https://www.dvidshub.net/about/copyright.
