There are few regrets in Dean Kiess’ life.
“I’ve had a wonderful career,” Kiess said. “In fact, I’ve had a wonderful life.”
That’s how Kiess sees things from his recliner in his retirement community in Silverdale. Slowed by a stroke in 2010, Kiess is coming back from the debilitating and unexpected health trauma. But the memories of his 30-year career in the U.S. Navy are as clear as the sky on the day of a recent visit to hear about his military journey.
“I was 22 when I entered the Navy,” he said. “I was in a Navy ROTC program.”
As a teenager, Kiess always wanted to go to college, but didn’t know if he would be able to afford to do so. He was a good student at Williamsport High in Williamsport, Penn. In fact, so good that the noise and ruckus in his study hall disrupted his studying.
“The study hall teacher wasn’t able to control the kids,” he said. “It was chaos. So I would study in the Dean of Men’s office.”
It just so happened that the Dean of Men was a Navy Reservist and offered Kiess the opportunity to take the introduction to ROTC exam.
“I did it because I thought it would be good practice for the other college entrance exams,” he said. “The next thing I knew I was getting a physical in Philadelphia.”
At the time, Kiess had some 52 schools he could choose from as to where he wanted to attend college before serving in the Navy. He chose Penn State University because it was close to home.
He studied engineering and graduated with a degree in mechanical engineering. He also has a master’s degree in science of mechanical engineering from the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School and an MBA from City University. He was commissioned on June 9, 1962, and spent half his career in the Atlantic and on the East Coast and the other half in the Pacific on the West Coast.
“And there was a lot of back and forth in those 30 years, too,” he said.
How true. If you were to draw a map of his career, the lines would just go back and forth across the United States from Connecticut, to Virginia, to Charleston, South Carolina, to Monterey Calif., to San Diego, to Washington, D.C., to New Hampshire, to Valero, Calif., back to Washington, D.C. and then finally to Bangor Wash. There, he served as the commanding officer of the Strategic Weapons Facility Pacific Command at Bangor from 1985 to 1992, a full seven years, longer than any other commanding officer in Bangor’s history.
“That was my most favorite assignment,” he said of being in charge at Bangor. “Being a commanding officer is what you aspire to do throughout your Navy career. It was a good job at a great new base. It was during the Cold War and our mission was to keep peace. We were the frontline of defense for the country.”
Prior to that, during Keiss’ assignments in Washington, D.C., he was working with others to design the Bangor base.
“All the time I was working to design that base, it was my dream job to come out here and be in command,” he said. He also worked to design the Naval Base Kings Bay which is the east coast equivalent of Bangor.
When he was in charge of Bangor, he had as many as 400 civilian workers, 400 sailors and more than 400 Marines in his command. He said the base at Bangor was different from others in that it was built with all of the infrastructure that was needed to support the submarines of the time and those in the future.
“Everything was planned so well,” he said. “It was a great time. The economy was strong and we had the money to do His longest time spent under the sea was 88 days. While the average was about 77 days, the 88-day trip was a long transit to test systems in the areas of alert, he said.
His wife, Caroline, spent those Navy years keeping the family together on land. But she said, when she married Dean in 1962, she knew what she was in for.
“My father was career Navy,” she said.
The couple has three children, now 42, 46, and 48 years old. Their oldest son, Michael, spent time in the Navy and served in the Peace Corp. He is now in private business in Vermont. Their daughter, Jennifer, is a migratory bird specialist for the U.S. Department of Fish and Wildlife, based in Washington D.C. And son, John, serves on missions with Children of the Nations and is the water quality control manager for the Kitsap Health District. He lives in Bremerton.
When they were young, like most Navy wives, Caroline did everything.
“The hard times were when he was gone for months,” she said. “I could only send three messages to him and each could only be 15 words long. They had his name and my name so that left about 11 words. I would just say, ‘All is well,’”
When a close family friend died, she had to get special permission to notify her husband of that death.
And, if anything had happened to him while he was at sea, she wouldn’t be told until the sub arrived back home.
“There was no email,” she said. “Those were hard times.”
Anyone who plans a military career has to marry the right person, Dean Kiess said.
“They have to know that they’re going to have to be the ‘everything’ most of the time,” he said. During his career, the family moved 17 times, he said, “every two years, until Bangor.”
As for a career in the Navy, he tells anyone thinking about it to “do it.”
“It’s an interesting and important way to spend your life,” he said. “You are serving your country and for me, I got to experience things I never even knew were going on.”
It never bothered him to be underwater for long periods of time although sometimes his family wondered how he did it.
“He was an outdoors kind-of-guy,” Caroline said. “We couldn’t figure out how he stood it.”
But Kiess said it wasn’t hard at all.
“We were busy,” he said. “We had work to do.”
He retired at the rank of captain. Since his stroke, Kiess hasn’t been able to do some of the things he enjoys. He and his wife are world travelers and have been on every continent and to China, North and South Africa and Australia. He’s been in every state except Louisiana.
“It wasn’t on the way to anywhere,” he joked.
He’s gotten back to golf, using one hand to put and chip. But he can’t go running, and he can’t climb. He and one of his sons climbed Mt. Rainier in 1987.
In their retirement home, above the fireplace is a shadowbox filled with Navy memorabilia, including a U.S. Flag that flew over Mt. Rainier, the names of all the places he served engraved on gold plaques and a model of the missile that was aboard the subs where he served.
Today his life is more about reading, playing cribbage and socializing with the others who live in the community. But through his memories he can go anywhere and do anything.
“I’ve traveled the world,” he said. “It’s a beautiful place. People everywhere are good. It’s just a wonderful world out there.”