A little about ethics
He knew I'd do the right thing by the way he asked me
I was seventeen years old and desperate to find a way to pay for college. A full-ride NROTC scholarship with the US Marine Corps was on the other side of a successful medical exam. The Navy Lt. Commander in charge of my exam sat down in front of me, leveled his eyes into mine and said, “I could pass you, but your eyesight in the left eye is less than 20/20.”
He wanted me to make the ethical choice. He wanted me to choose what was best for a platoon of Marines I would be leading at the end of my education with my commission. He knew I would make the right choice or he would not have asked.
I looked past his eyes and stared at his epaulets which I can see clearly in my mind’s eye to this day. Two full stripes with a half between them, gold stitching. A year of training, testing and hoping was being washed away in a single second, like a hillside in a flash flood. I had no backup plan on how I was going to pay for college.
A million excuses ran through my head. “It was just a little off from perfect” “I need this scholarship” “Nobody would even know, really” “This Navy doctor wouldn’t be asking me what I was going to do if I didn’t have a choice, right”
Only I did have a choice and he knew the way I chose that day would determine the entire trajectory of my military career. He knew it; I knew it.
It took almost nine years for me to complete my undergraduate degree. I still would have made the same choice.
Good for him, true leader, a man of character.