In other words, Adam was a truly good person, and universally loved in our BUD/S class. Somehow, in the process, he never lost his purity of soul, nor his fundamental decency. He had somehow lost his way, hit rock bottom, nearly went to jail and died, and then found his way back. He had been through some shit in his life. And he was in no way naive, as we learned over time. He not only had the accent, which came with an “aww shucks” demeanor that was in no way short of endearing and charming, but he was also a gentleman polite, respectful, and well-mannered. He was a bona fide hillbilly, sure, but in the best possible sense of the word. It was like he was that Alabama/Kentucky/Mississippi kid ever-present in all the World War II movies - seemingly naive, backwoods, and a fish thoroughly out of water.īut as I quickly got to know him in the intimate pressure cooker that is BUD/S, I realized that Adam was the real deal.
“Surely this guy is putting on an act,” I initially thought upon first meeting him in Second Phase when he rolled into our class. He came from Arkansas and, while in BUD/S, spoke with a drawl that even I, as a southerner myself, found thick-to-the-point-of-parody. Ultimately, though, back to the casting decision, it was not really Adam’s physical appearance that compelled one to think, “Nah, this is not the guy we are looking for to play a no-nonsense, action-oriented, take-no-prisoners Navy SEAL.” It was his personality that would have thrown them off. He was on a second chance he knew it, and he lived like it. Not many in BUD/S maintain that kind of positive attitude in the darkest days of the training, but Adam did. Adam thought the same damn thing, counting his blessings near daily. We–his fellow trainees–had the sense that Adam was lucky to be there, in the Navy, let alone at BUD/S. But, man, were they funny, rendered in his Arkansas drawl, with no scatological or otherwise embarrassing detail left out. In other words, he told his stories more as cautionary tales than as impressive boasts. The emphasis was always on what dumb-ass thing he had done, and how he was lost and in a world of trouble before finding Jesus and his future wife, Kelly. By the Third Phase of BUD/S, we all knew about Adam’s past issues with drugs and crime, though we never prodded him for specifics, and he never really provided them beyond the occasional, usually hilariously-told anecdote about one of his drug or alcohol-fueled escapades.
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