USMMA Acceptance Day - 1998

Some video from Acceptance Day at the Merchant Marine Academy. As I think I mentioned before, this is the day when the Plebe Candidates are formally accepted into the regiment, and take their Oath of Office United States Maritime Service, and United States Naval Reserve. It's one of the bigger milestones of Plebe year, there are some additional perks granted, and the class is let out of school on liberty for the first time. The next big milestone is Recognition, where the 4th Class is recognized by the rest of the regiment, and they are no longer plebes.

Amazingly, the first minute or so of the video is the most fascinating part for me. The reason being it's a few moments of footage of the plebe class photo being taken. This large panoramic photo has been on my wall at my parents house, my apartment after graduation, and my house for almost 12 years. For some reason it was like stepping into a time machine to see video of the photo being taken.

Beat Retreat 2000

We had a copy of the USMMA Beat Retreat from 2000. This performance took place on Sept 15th, this was the Beat Retreat scheduled for parents weekend and Acceptance Day, when the Plebe Class is accepted into the Regiment of Midshipmen.

I performed in eight of these events while I was at the academy, the best ones were always the parents weekend performances, as they also featured the Nassau County Police Pipe and Drum Corps, with the third act being a great performance of both the Regimental Band from the academy, and the Pipe band together.

Posted is the first segment, I'll come back and edit this post later when I get the second segment up tomorrow night. The transfer cut out during the fundraising speech by the Academies Public Affairs Officer at the time, Capt. Safarik.



and now the second part...



This is really just the last act with a few speeches thrown in. It features the Academy Band playing together with the Pipers, and what was always my favorite part of the show, and great arrangement of Highland Cathedral.

I transferred a few home videos of the 99 and 2001 Beat Retreats last night as well, and I'll post them at some point. Its mostly just bits and pieces though, not the nice professional recording I am able to share here.

Dad

Here is my father's baby picture.

Stephen K. Trynosky as a wee lad... every thing I know about playing the trumpet I learned from him. 

Christmas Card from the Trynosky Family age 1

Dad a little older posing with the other Nick

Mom

Here's my mother's baby picture.

Denise Trynosky as a cute little baby

Inexplicably, Gregory Peck was also in the frame that this photo came from. I suppose they sold frames with pictures of famous actor's back in the day. That's probably a lot better than random people, my guess is that licensing fees and the SAG are the reasons this is no longer done.

Gregory Peck doing what he does best... sell frames

Gun-Decking

Ahh... an accountability chit from college. I remember these well, though I wasn't often the class leader taking accountability. In fact I can't remember ever being the official "section leader" for any one of the many classes I took. I filled in a bunch of times, when the class leader was absent.

This form was the response to an incredibly lackadaisical academic policy that existing prior to and during my plebe year. For example, a close friend attended maybe three physics classes, not including tests and labs, which he showed up for an entire semester. He ended up with a B+, I attended every class and would up with D... In a way, it speaks to his ability to learn physics, and my inability to grasp some of the material at the time. It also speaks to the fact that a number of students, being given a free ride by the tax payers, never showed up to class. It also speaks to the fact that a lot of instructors didn't particularly care if their students showed up, didn't show up, or were napping in the engineering lounge (a story for another day perhaps?)

So, sometime during my plebe year it was decided to have attendance taken not only, by the instructors for their grading purposes, but for regimental purposes. Being absent from class with no valid excuse, subjected you to an automatic 26/2 Class II violation, 26 demerits and two weeks of restriction. I can't remember the policy, but I'm guessing that gun-decking, or falsifying accountability reports, was also frowned upon. My brain tells me it probably would be an honor code violation, but I believe it just carried another mandatory Class II sentence, in this case for some reason it fell into one of those gray areas like having information pre-programmed into the memory of a graphing calculator. If you did it for watch, restriction, or some other regimental type function you'd be in big trouble, but for classes... a slap on the wrists.

The system was never taken seriously, and I'm pretty sure it was more or less abandoned by the time I graduated, though attendance in class at least to my knowledge improved (or perhaps, folks who did well in High School physics needed to pay attention in advanced navigation, or engineering classes) so they were induced to attend.

The question I guess I have for myself is that if I was never an official "Section Leader"... (perhaps I was, it was such a nothing assignment I may just not remember)... and I was filling in for someone who was absent... why is the form filled out "ALL PRESENT"

Very curious!

An Honorable Discharge

Grandpa Joe

Here is a baby picture of My grandfather Joseph O'Donnell

Grandma Julia

Here is a photo of Grandma Julia as a baby.

A mystery photo?

We are trying to figure out when this photo was taken, but here is a picture of Grandpa Nick during WWII. I suppose we'll come back and edit this post when the mystery is solved.

Grandma Paula and Grandpa Nick

Here is  a  picture of my Father's parents together.

 

 and here is a picture of my Grandma Paula by herself. 

Grandma Julia and Grandpa Joe

We're sitting here testing out the scanner, and trying to get this thing started. Here is an old photo of my Mom's parents.

And below is a picture of them at a wedding... not their wedding mind you, but somebody's.  I think it's the closest we have to a wedding picture of the two of them.

First Post

My intentions for this second blog that I am starting are to periodically post interesting pictures, stories, video clips, from the past. Sort of a web based history of the Trynosky family through the generations. I have nothing to add right now, but we have tons of content that needs to be converted and shared. Old family newsletters, home videos, tons of pictures from my childhood.... my hope is to extend this to the get histories, stories, pictures, anecdotes of the extended families as well.

Time to experiment!