Grandson of Dick O'Kane Bravely Continues Legacy of Service by Performing Staff Work
PENTAGON - LT Charles O'Kane, the grandson of the famed WWII Submarine Captain and Congressional Medal of Honor Recipient Richard 'Dick' O'Kane, is proud to continue his grandfather's legacy of naval service by performing meaningless staff work.
"I wanted to serve," says LT O'Kane, who currently serves as the Assistant Current Operational Officer to the Joint Army/Navy/Airforce/Spaceforce Future Plans and Operations Center (j33.-25a).
LT O'Kane proudly features several photos of his famous relative over his cubicle where he makes as many as seven PowerPoint slides daily. To LT O'Kane, these sides which feature proudly as backup slides in several forgettable briefs, hold the same meaning as his grandfather's famous war flag which flew over the bridge of the USS Tang as it completed several arduous war patrols in Japanese controlled waters.
"We are both warfighters first," says LT O'Kane, who skillfully manages the sensitive egos of insecure senior officers just as his grandfather adroitly piloted the USS Tang past sensitive Japanese anti-submarine mines in the East China Sea.
The parallels don't stop there.
Just as his grandfather ruffled the feathers of higher brass by his use of innovative submarine approach and attach tactics, LT O'Kane bravely draws the ire of admirals and captains alike by subtle changes in font size and line colors on his PowerPoints.
"My director said that this part here should be in 13-point Arial Font and that his arrow should be .9 thickness," says O'Kane pointing to a PowerPoint slide titled 'Ensuring Warfighter Dominance in the Battlespace Awareness Problem - Near Peer Adversaries (1/12),' "but" continues O'Kane, "I changed it to 12-point Arial with 1.1 thickness because I knew it was right. My grandfather and I both know that sometimes officers have to make the bold choices, that’s what separates us from the enlisted man."
"I think he would be proud of me," concludes LT O'Kane, with a single tear running down his brave face.