On Sept. 16th, 3,794 sailors will don the coveted rank and anchors of a Navy chief petty officer — a lifetime goal for many.

The chiefs pinning ceremony marks their entrance into the hallowed senior enlisted ranks, whose job it is to run the Navy and who have shaped generations of sailors and Navy leaders.

"It's the marquee event in the U.S. Navy each year," said Vice Adm. Bill Moran, the chief if naval personnel, one of two senior leaders who, as the pinning ceremony neared, recalled the chiefs who molded them. "It celebrates leadership and what's best in the United States Navy — the best navy in the world."

Adm. Bill Gortney, the head of Fleet Forces Command, remembers being a lieutenant j.g. checking into his first command, Attack Squadron 82, and being handed a green "wheelbook" by his division chief, Chief Aviation Fire Controlman Yohe.

" 'Welcome aboard, lieutenant,' " Gortney recalled Yohe saying, as he passed off the book. " 'Here is everybody in the division — there's a page in there about each of them — their families, where they're from and where they are in their professional development and PQS. I'm not going to do it for you again.' "

Gortney said he immediately knew he was in for an education.

"He really taught me a lot about working with sailors and leading sailors and how important they were," said Gortney, who entered the service in 1977. "He also showed me how important chief petty officers are and how they take the crazy ideas young division officers dream up and turn them into executable ideas."

Another of his role models was Master Chief Aviation Structural Mechanic "Spiffy" Srickland, the squadron's maintenance master chief. Gortney credits him with teaching him how to take care of airplanes and the sailors who maintain them.

The future CNP's first encounter with chiefs also came in his first squadron, when he was assigned as the education services officer and met Chief Personnel Specialist Tony Johnson.

"He took me under his wing and taught me everything," Moran recalled. "He had a wonderful way about him, he'd sit down next to me and explain things, and in his own way was showing me who was really in charge."

The chief's role of mentoring junior officers from below is a "fine art," Moran said, picked up over a long career on the deckplates.

Those relationships continue today, as Gortney and Moran listen closely to the counsel of their fleet master chiefs. Gortney says he meets a couple times a week with his adviser, Fleet Master Chief (AW/SW/IDW) Chuck Clarke.

"We flag officers have a way of coming up with some pretty lofty ideas, and the chief petty officers, the goat locker, they really are the backbone of the Navy, the iron keel."

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