Veterans Among Us: Paul Allen

The Navy’s musical signature, “Anchors Aweigh,” was first performed by the Naval Academy Band in 1906. The band first performed the song for the public in the same year when Navy faced off against West Point at Philadelphia’s Franklin Field for the annual football game between the service academies. The Naval Academy’s Class of 1907 became the “Anchors Aweigh” Class.

When I sat down to talk to Oxford resident and retired Naval Commander Paul Allen, he had a multitude of stories about adventures with anchors all around the globe.

Paul was raised in Crete, Illinois, a far south suburb of Chicago. Paul said, “It wasn’t quite a suburb because we had a cornfield across the street from our house.” 

Paul’s family is deeply rooted in Naval tradition, as both his mother and father were Navy veterans. His father served in WWII and stayed in the Naval Reserves for many years after his service. His mother was a member of the Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service (WAVE).

After high school, Paul went to Doane University in, of all places, Crete, Nebraska. In January, 1972 he enlisted in the Navy Reserves. While at Doane, Paul thought about studying music, then political science and then secondary education as a part of Doanes’ Naval ROTC program. He was accepted into the Navy’s Reserve Officer Corp. He graduated from Doane and was then off to Newport, Rhode Island to attend the Officer’s Candidate School (OCS).

He graduated from OCS in May 1973, the same year he married. 

“Keep in mind, I had never seen an ocean up to this point in my life,” he said.

As a newly minted ensign in January 1974, Pual’s first assignment was to the Kitty Hawk class aircraft carrier, the USS Constellation. He was assigned as an external communications watch officer.

The USS Constellation went to the Persian Gulf in 1974. It was the first U.S. carrier in the Gulf since WWII, and it was the ship’s first peacetime deployment in ten years. This deployment was only for six months. 

“Imagine the ‘jitters’ I had when, as a twenty two year old Ensign, for the first time,” he said. “I said, ‘This is Ensign Allen, I have the Conn.’”

“I was with the Constellation through a fifteen month overhaul in Bremerton, Washington and then back at sea with the ship through 1976 as a lieutenant junior class and as a communications officer,” he said. “I was promoted to full lieutenant when I was next assigned to the command ship, Blue Ridge in 1977. I was assistant deck department head and legal officer.”

Paul’s next assignment, between 1979 and 1981, was to Pearl Harbor on shore duty. He was selected for promotion to lieutenant commander while at Pearl Harbor and was officially promoted in October 1982. After this assignment, he was back at Newport, Rhode Island for nine months in the Surface Warfare Officers School.

Paul was next in San Diego on a Frigate, the USS Bagley, as a weapons officer for 20 months. 

This included one deployment to the Western Pacific. He was on the USS Bagley until 1984 when he was assigned to the USS San Bernadino, a tank landing ship (LST). The USS San Bernardino was also assigned to San Diego. Paul served as operations officer aboard the USS San Bernardino for 20 months. While on the San Bernadino, he attended The Royal Australian Naval Staff College in Balmoral, Australia for six months of schooling.

A different ship became Paul’s home in 1986 when he was assigned to the USS Bowen, an ocean escort destroyer. The USS Bowen was designed to locate and destroy submarines. He served on the USS Bowen as the ship’s executive officer until 1988. The USS Bowen’s duty station was Charleston, South Carolina.

In 1988, Paul was introduced to the traffic snarls of Washington, D.C. when he became the head of enlisted bonus programs at the Bureau of Naval Personnel. While on this assignment, he was promoted to commander in February 1989.

Paul was thinking about retirement from the Navy at this point in his career, and an opening came up at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio in the Naval ROTC. In 1992, he became the executive officer in Miami’s NROTC and served in this position until his Navy retirement in 1995. Paul served in various university positions until 2012, when he retired from University service. He has continued to be an active part of the greater Oxford community.

When I asked Paul to define what his naval service had done for him, personally, he didn’t hesitate to say, “My service made me grow up and made me see the world a whole lot differently. My service gave me a tremendous sense of satisfaction in knowing that I did something useful.”

With a tradition of service to his country and community, Paul continues to prove how millions of veterans, past and present, have remained proud by becoming integral parts of something bigger than themselves. Anchors Aweigh to all of them.

Lee Fisher is a Miami graduate, resident of Oxford, Ohio and a Vietnam War Veteran.