meet petty officer tony silber
Imagine being in charge of tracking over 10,000 ships via radar in surrounding waters, trying to distinguish between fishing boats and those that could be a potential threat. Imagine having to match up a chart holding a precise map of your location to that of your radar screen, all to keep the strategic picture for command decision makers who have to make split second decisions at a moment’s notice. Be it in the Strait of Malacca, the Philippines or off the coast of Italy, this was Petty Officer Tony Silber’s reality.
Photo Cred: Tony Silber
Tony, a Long Island native, joined the Navy at the young age of 18. It was a decision fueled by the simple desire to get out of the house. His admiration for ships and desire to travel drew him in immediately. He reminisced about his first days in bootcamp — flying to his base and hopping on a bus filled with other 17-20 year olds, anxious and eager to start. The first thing he remembers doing is going into the facility and getting his hair shaved, every single one of them in a row, given uniforms, formed their company and off they went. As he tells his stories, you can see Tony smiling, remembering all the little details. “They call it basic training for a reason, it really is like learning how to fold clothes. It’s like learning how to walk.” Discipline is instilled from the start, and it boils down to how you internalize those values not just for your work, but for your everyday life. Taking the time and care to do things to the best of your ability, always. Needless to say, basic training wasn’t an easy task. It certainly wasn’t for everyone, but Tony never gave up and stayed focused on what was ahead of him.
Photo Cred: Tony Silber
I feel like we can all relate to Tony’s experience in our own ways. Having teachers or role models in our lives, who weren’t necessarily the sweetest, perhaps they were very blunt to a fault, but made a tremendous positive impact on our lives. For Tony Silber that person was Petty Officer Weller, his boot camp drill instructor. Weller was a southern man with a thick southern accent. He was a sharp shooter, and all business, Tony recalls. He was tough on his recruits, but in the end he was able to bring out the best and strongest in each. Sure, we’ve all seen the movies where drill instructors are yelling in people’s faces, but it’s much more than that. It’s being able to identify people’s strengths
(whether you see your own strengths or not) and challenge them to embrace new responsibilities for yourself and your teammates. Even though Petty Officer Weller was a tough nut to crack, in the days together after Tony’s graduation, he remembers Weller being quite friendly. He had done his job, and done it well.
“Really, at their core, it’s about teamwork and camaraderie. About attention to detail. About taking initiative. It’s those kinds of things that you learn as an individual that stay with you, the importance of doing stuff right.”
Tony was deployed to numerous places— such as Japan, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Philippines, Thailand, all the way to Europe - Spain, Italy and Greece. I guess you could say that being in the service in a way, was in part tourism. This brought him to visit places that he would have otherwise never have seen. One time, Tony recalls having gone out on the town with a group of friends they had met from Michigan. They missed the last train to the port city which was about 80 miles from Rome, and had to get picked up by helicopter to take them back! “So, yeah, we got in a lot of trouble for that”, Tony laughs.
Being deployed was tough, but luckily Tony was able to go stay in touch via letters and even go home a few times a year. However, there was something extremely valuable in terms of developing as a person on their own, as an individual, honing in on life skills —lessons that he has now passed on to his daughter, Jessica. It touches me how he speaks of her. “She’s pretty cool”, he says smiling. In fact, Jessica took it upon herself to recreate old photographs of her Dad, following his travels as now her own and finding the exact spots her father stood. From Mombasa, Kenya, to Hong Kong, to Waikiki.
Photo Cred: Tony Silber
Photo Cred: Tony Silber
Photo Cred: Tony Silber
Photo Cred: Tony Silber
Photo Cred: Tony Silber
Photo Cred: Tony Silber
At age 22, Tony decided he had other dreams to fulfill. He left the military and set his sights on earning his college degree. He followed a career as a journalist working at the Connecticut Post right after college. After five years he moved on to join the magazine industry, and eventually started up his own business, Red Seven Media, becoming the “commander and chief of his own ship”. Life has taken Tony on a wild ride, most recently working as a full time Editorial Director of a startup brand focused on workplace wellness. “Making a difference in the lives of your audience or your customer is the thing that is really rewarding. It could be writing a really impactful story or producing a great brochure or making a big sale”.
It’s funny where life takes you. The things that you experience that you never expected, or discovering things that you’re great at. So Tony leaves us with this: “Challenge yourself, you’ll learn a lot about who you are.”