There's no downhill run in the road to becoming a chief petty officer.

And with two weeks left in initiation season — leading to the Sept. 14 pinning of 5,414 new chief petty officers — the Navy’s newest MCPON says becoming a chief means the road will just get tougher.

“This selection is not a reward for what you’ve done throughout your extraordinary career,” Master Chief Petty Officer of the Navy (SW/IW/AW) Russ Smith wrote in his “charge letter” to this year’s crop of new selectees.

These letters are a tradition in the Navy, combining both expectations from senior leaders and advice on how the recipients should act. This year’s MCPON message is no different.

“Earn this every day," Smith wrote. "Be worthy of the sacrifice and love of the many who gave you this exalted opportunity. This is now your job, your sacred duty ... to be ‘The Chief.’

"With your every act as a junior sailor, you prepared yourself for this moment, and we are now calling on that talent and demanding — through your acceptance of this advancement — more from you.

“You will be expected to work longer hours, solve far more difficult problems and challenges, do more to empower your junior sailors, and provide better and more seasoned advice to your officers.”

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It’s the first official correspondence to the mess from Smith since he was pinned as the new MCPON a Aug. 31 while underway in Boston aboard the Navy’s oldest commissioned warship, the frigate Constitution.

Smith’s official advancement to MCPON came at the end of the USS Constitution CPO Heritage Week, an annual event where chief selectees culled from throughout the Navy gather on the Constitution’s wooden decks to learn how America waged war in the age of sail.

Now that he’s the Navy’s top enlisted sailor, Smith said that their key tasks is to help the mess prep deckplate sailors to fight and win future wars.

“There’s a storm on the horizon and we have a job in the chiefs mess to prepare our sailors to face those challenges,” Smith told the sailors aboard the Constitution.

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In his letter, he added that they must work together and focus on building teams without demanding “personal recognition." That starts in the chiefs mess, which must selflessly function as a group.

No sailors made chief on their own, Smith said. The advancement came only after years of mentoring by their superiors and the hard work of the junior shipmates they led.

Smith urged them to never forget where they started and to “earn this advancement to chief petty officer every day ... be the leader that you are and continue to grow by giving more and more to our sailors every day.”

“Humility is key – regardless of how much you feel you’ve earned your salt and proven your own,” he said.

And when sailors err, they should own their failures and learn from them — “when you lose, don’t lose the lesson," he wrote.

Read MCPON Smith’s entire charge letter here.

About Mark D. Faram

Mark D. Faram is a former reporter for Navy Times. He was a senior writer covering personnel, cultural and historical issues. A nine-year active duty Navy veteran, Faram served from 1978 to 1987 as a Navy Diver and photographer.

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