BATAVIA, N.Y. – Navy training is a great American tradition happening in communities across the country, but at a training session in Batavia Wednesday, there was something you don’t see every day: Three of the recruits are siblings.
“The Navy’s a family, so joining as a family, it’ll be nice to be a part of something,” said Cadi Herman of Pavilion.
Eighteen-year-old Cadi first had the idea and encouraged her 21-year-old twin brothers, Maveric and Dominic, to enlist.
“They were telling me about all the opportunities, and places they’d visit, and I kind of didn’t want to miss out either,” Dominic said.
Some have reacted with curiosity.
“They’re like, ‘Oh, wow, this is kind of interesting,’” Maveric said. “‘I’ve never seen that before.’”
However, some have expressed concern, especially for the future sailors’ mother, Annie Newton.
“Their mouths drop when they’re like – all three of your children are leaving?” said Newton. “They’re scared for me, they think that, you know, I’m going to have very many tearful days and nights – which I will, but I’m really excited for all of them.”
They will overlap at boot camp and then be shipped out within weeks of each other, but they have different specialties: Maveric will be an aircrewman, Cadi a cryptologic technician and Dominic an information systems technician. They will not be deployed together.
“They don’t allow siblings to be together in deployments and stuff like that where you could possibly end up dying,” Cadi said.
Still, it will be a big change for mom; a change she embraces.
“I didn’t picture this,” Newtown said. “But I’m not upset by it, either. I think it turned out the way it was supposed to turn out. I’m extremely proud of all three of them. And a little scared. But I’m excited to see what their future holds.”