NEWPORT, R.I. — For Charles Wilson, what the future holds for him is sort of like the family business.
His grandparents and great-grandparents were in the Navy.
"And I heard all those stories and I looked at the uniforms in the closet," he said. "I read up on them and their different commands and it just interested me as a young boy and I knew I wanted to go in the military, especially the Navy, given the Hampton Roads heavy Navy area."
Wilson is in week 12 now of the 13-week Officer Candidate School in Newport, Rhode Island. He'll graduate next week and head off for another year and a half of training at the Navy's nuclear power school in Charleston, South Carolina.
If that goes well there, the Ocean Lakes High School Math and Science Academy alumnus and ODU mechanical engineering grad will qualify to serve as an officer on a nuclear-powered submarine.
And he credits his Dad, a nuclear engineer at Norfolk Naval Shipyard, with giving him this idea.
"He definitely from a young age got me interested in the submarine life and the engineering life to begin with. So, he's probably the reason for my degree in mechanical engineering and why I followed suit with the submarine world in the Navy."
As for his time at OCS, Wilson says it was "rigorous"
Annually, the school commissions approximately 1,600 ensigns, of which, next week, Wilson will become one.