CAMAS — Liz Stanton’s mom and dad are Navy veterans. Both of her grandfathers served in the Navy during World War II. A great-grandfather was in the Navy during World War I.
So when she was in high school, it was reasonable for Stanton to consider a future in uniform. Which meant that a local Navy recruiting office was …
Actually, it was the fourth place Stanton and her parents visited. Ed and Marie Stanton weren’t going to use their own pasts to influence their daughter’s path.
“They never pushed it,” the 31-year-old sailor said.
“The decision was hers,” Ed Stanton confirmed.
It turned out to be a pretty good decision.
“I absolutely fell in love with the job,” the 2002 Camas High grad said.
Now Stanton is earning recognition as a mentor and leader on the command ship of the U.S. Navy’s 7th Fleet. Stanton is an electronic warfare specialist on the USS Blue Ridge, which is home-ported in Yokosuka, Japan.
She is in the running for the fleet’s “Senior Sailor of the Year” award. After a couple of steps in the competition, Stanton described the number of sailors between her and fleet-wide honors as “lots.”
Award plaques she’s already received tag Stanton as a CTT1 — technical cryptologic (technical branch), petty officer first class. The closest civilian equivalent might be a shift manager who is in charge of about 50 people, she said.
Much of her job includes training junior sailors, Stanton said during holiday leave at home. As part of the daily routine, “I do a morning briefing for the intelligence officer, and he briefs the admiral,” she said.
The Blue Ridge is the third ship in her 12-year Navy career. The first two were aircraft carriers, including the USS Abraham Lincoln, which was at a Puget Sound shipyard when she came aboard.
“I joined the Navy to see the world,” she said with a smile, “and they sent me to Everett.”
On the USS George Washington, she honed her electronic warfare skills during training exercises held every two years with the Australian military.
“We all know it’s an exercise, but we take it seriously. The Navy does a good job of making it realistic.”
The scenarios can generate enough of a white-knuckle effect that “Everybody in the room is thinking, ‘If I don’t do my job, we can die.’ ”
Stanton’s career also has included humanitarian aid missions, when the U.S. Navy responded to three recent tsunamis.
“It’s been an interesting 12 years,” she observed.
Stanton expects to re-enlist in 2019 and is planning on a 20-year Navy career. So, yeah, it’s looking as though Stanton made a pretty good decision in 2002.
Not that her parents didn’t help narrow down the field. Liz and her folks never did visit a Marine recruiter. That’s because her mom, Marie, had a unique perspective on that service branch.
As a female sailor stationed in California, “I lived in a barracks with female Marines,” Marie said. “They did calisthenics at 4 a.m.”
