Veteran Akins did not set out to be a firefighter

Posted 8/23/20

Special to the Lake Okeechobee News Jarrod Akins joined the Navy right out of high school in 2003. OKEECHOBEE — Born and raised in Okeechobee, veteran Jarrod Akins graduated from Okeechobee High …

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Veteran Akins did not set out to be a firefighter

Posted
Special to the Lake Okeechobee News
Jarrod Akins joined the Navy right out of high school in 2003.

OKEECHOBEE — Born and raised in Okeechobee, veteran Jarrod Akins graduated from Okeechobee High School in 2003 and left for basic training soon after. He had signed up for the delayed entry program, which means he signed a letter of intent. You are not bound to join at that point, but you do your physicals and are ready to go as soon as you graduate, he explained. This is also a way to make rank. When you join, you are either an E-1, E-2 or E-3 or O-1 through O-9. The E stands for enlisted, and the O stands for officer. To join as an officer, you have to have at least a bachelor’s degree. In the delayed entry program, if you recruit more people to join, you can earn points, which can move you up to the next rank. There are other ways to earn points as well. Akins joined as an E-1. To move from E-1 to E-2 to E-3, it is just a matter of time, but once you reach E-3, you have to take a test to advance to E-4.

Special to the Lake Okeechobee News
Aboard an aircraft carrier, they use a Ouija Board (no, not the spirit board) to help with moving the aircraft. This board is built to scale and helps to determine whether an aircraft will fit in the space they want to move it.

Akins was assigned to the aircraft carrier the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower after he finished basic training at Great Lakes Naval Training Center in Chicago.

In the Navy, your job is referred to as your rate. Akins’ rate was aviation boatswain’s mate-handler (ABH). He moved aircraft around on the hangar bay and on the flight deck. “If you’ve ever seen a movie like Top Gun, the Skittle rainbow-colored people all across the deck, I was one of those,” he said. “Each color means a certain job.” He went on to explain that you can’t communicate by talking on the flight deck, because no one would be able to hear what you said. To make it easy to identify people in the distance, every job has a shirt color attached to it. An ABH would wear red, blue or yellow. ABFs, who are the fuel guys, wear purple. ABEs wear green and are in charge of equipment.

Special to the Lake Okeechobee News
After a long deployment, sailors, in their dress uniforms, line the deck as it comes into port. This practice is called “manning the rails.” It is to pay respect to sailors who came before you.
Special to the Lake Okeechobee News
Every person on a ship is trained as a firefighter, because when you are out at sea, you are the fire team.

When you start out in the aviation world, you begin as a blue shirt. They are the grunts. These are the new people, and they will be getting dirty and greasy all day. They have the least amount of responsibility, but they have one of the hardest jobs, physically, that there is. Any time an aircraft moves, the grunts have to carry a chock, weighing 30-35 pounds. When the aircraft stops, they have to chock the wheels and chain the aircraft down, so it doesn’t move when the ship moves.

Planes are moved in one of two ways. On the flight deck, the pilot could be inside the aircraft moving the aircraft using the motor. The pilot would listen to whatever the yellow shirt tells him, because if he doesn’t there is a chance the aircraft could fall over the side of the boat or blow people off the side of the boat with their jet exhaust. The other way they might move is to be hooked to a tractor. This is not a typical tractor you normally think of, he said. If they move the plane this way, there would still be a person inside, but their only job would be to hit the brake. In the hangar bay, aircraft are only moved with a person inside pushing the brake on or off. Since there is much less room in there, the aircraft are moved with a spotting dolly, a three-wheeled apparatus that is flat on the top. You sit on the back wheel, lie down and drive it with a joy stick. Then, the dolly goes up under the aircraft. You need a lot of qualifications to perform this job.

Special to the Lake Okeechobee News
Yellow shirts are responsible for the movement of aircraft aboard an aircraft carrier.

On board the ship, there are handlers, who are officers. This person is in charge any time an aircraft moves aboard the ship. The handler would tell the air boss, who is in charge of all aircrafts in flight. The handler would let the captain of the ship know they have flight operations and will need a certain number of knots of wind across the deck. They don’t have to worry about turning the ship into the wind, because when they need wind, they make their own, he said.

When an aircraft lands on the ship, it is at full power, in case it misses the catch wire. This way, they can take back off again and circle around for another try. One downfall to this is that sometimes the catch wire breaks. It is a 3-inch braided steel cable, and when it breaks, it can do some damage when it snaps back if you are not paying attention. “It has hurt people. It has taken off legs,” he said. “Some people jump it. Some people don’t see it, and it catches them.”
An aircraft carrier is like a floating city, with 5,000 to 6,000 people on it. It’s the biggest and fastest ship in the Navy and can travel at speeds up to 50 knots, he said. “It’s so big, there were people on the boat at the same time I was and I never saw them until we worked in a different area and met.”

Special to the Lake Okeechobee News
Veteran Jarrod Akins is pictured (back left) with some friends aboard the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower.

Akins was one of three people who made yellow shirt as an E-3, which is a big accomplishment. It is a very time-consuming endeavor.

Once you make yellow shirt, you are in charge of everything that happens in or around the aircraft. “Nobody is to walk in front of a yellow shirt directing an aircraft. It doesn’t matter if it is on the flight deck or in the hangar bay. By any means necessary, you are to stop someone who crosses between the yellow shirt directing the aircraft and the aircraft.” If there is ever a break in the line of sight, no matter how short the time is, the aircraft must stop immediately and be chocked and chained down. Everyone involved in moving the aircraft has a whistle in his mouth to be used in case they see anything at all out of order. They can blow it and immediately chock and chain the aircraft.

On the flight deck, if two aircrafts get within 6 feet of each other, they would blow the whistle, because that is too close. In the hangar bay, they stop when the planes are inches apart. They use a Ouija Board (no, not the spirit board) to help with moving the aircraft. This board is built to scale and helps to ensure that an aircraft will fit in the space they want to move it. Any time they move an aircraft, they move it on the Ouija Board first. “If it fits and moves on the Ouija Board, it will fit and move in the hangar bay,” he said.

Special to the Lake Okeechobee News
The aircraft carrier Jarrod Akins served aboard, the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower, was commissioned in 1977.

They worked hard on the ship, but they had some fun, too. The Harlem Globe Trotters paid them a visit. They held talent shows. Montel Williams, who is a former Navy man, came out to the ship for a visit. They had their own sports teams that competed with the locals when they went to other countries. They even had the opportunity to do community service when they went to other countries. They used the hangar bay for a gym and did aerobics classes twice a day. “Great for the crew. Horrible for us, because we had to move all the aircrafts out of the bay so they could do it,” he said. There are also three gyms on board.

Akins chose the Navy because when recruiters came to his school, he noticed the Coast Guard recruiters were his parents’ age, and the Navy recruiter was in his early 30s. He figured a younger man would have a better understanding of what an 18-year-old would want to do, so he talked to him.

He left the Navy after his tour was up, because he didn’t agree with a lot of the things he saw happening. Hard workers did not seem to be appreciated. “Higher-ups would shake your hand and stab you in the back at the same time. They were out to make themselves look better so they would be recognized and make rank, and they didn’t pass the recognition on to the people who actually did the work.”

Akins is now a lieutenant for Okeechobee County Fire Rescue, and he uses what he learned to try to be a better example for the younger men in the department. “I tell them I may get onto them sometimes, but I also tell them when they are doing good.” He has worked with the county for eight years. When he first went into the Navy, he thought firefighters were crazy, running into burning buildings. During basic training, he was trained as a firefighter, and he was hooked!

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