SACRIFICE & DEDICATION
The Story of CPO Robin Hamilton - USN – Desert Storm
By Shannon Robinson
Yeomen Chief Petty Officer Robin D. Hamilton comes from the small town of Danville, Virginia. She isn’t from the richest of families, and after graduating from Rockingham County Senior High School, Robin wasn’t sure what she wanted to do. She completed the ASVAB and mulled over several ideas for her future, including the Air Force and becoming a State Trooper. However, when a mentor of a hers, a State Trooper, was killed, she decided she didn’t want to pursue that route. Exploring her options, she went out with some high school friends that summer and decided to enroll at Rockingham County Community College in Wentworth, NC.
“My first year was horrific,” she stated. She had a realization that college was nothing like high school. It got to the point that her mom and step-dad had to sit her down and talk to her about getting serious. She pulled herself together and ended up graduating with her Associate Degree in Business Administration in 1983. “If I start something, I’m going to finish it.”
It was because of one of her friends from college that Robin joined the Navy.
When asked for a name of someone who might be suited to the Navy, her friend gave the officer’s Robin’s name. Thus began the relentless calls from the recruiter, the dinners and conversations about Navy service.
“Suddenly, it got serious,” Robin said. She realized a life working retail wouldn’t fulfill her potential. So, she enlisted in the Navy’s Sea and Air Mariner Program on April 9, 1984.
She attended Bootcamp at the Naval Training Center in Orlando, Florida, and because of her interest in communication, Robin went on to Cryptologic Technician Administration “A” School in Pensacola, graduating as the Honor Graduate. This gave her a top-secret clearance and the skills to gather information to help troops in the air and on the ground do their jobs.
After “A” School, she returned to Greensboro, North Carolina to begin her Navy Reserve Duty at the Armed Forces Reserve Center, where she started drilling with the Naval Reserve Security Group two days a month. Robin worked as an administrative/training Petty Officer (PO) and Lead PO, and she also began working at Squibb & Sons (now Bristol-Myers Squibb) in 1988.
During the events of Desert Shield and Desert Storm, Robin says her unit wasn’t called into active duty; however, she played a supporting role during the War, earning her first National Defense Service Medal. She was named Junior Sailor of the Quarter and of the Year in 1993. She went on to earn her Bachelor’s Degree in Business Administration from High Point University in 1997.
Then, the fateful date September 11th, 2001, called Robin into active duty. 21 days after the 9/11 attacks, Hamilton was called to emergency orders to Camp Park and Pearl Harbor, HI for 45 days. She couldn’t say anything about her work there, but Robin remarked that the Global War on Terrorism changed the game for warfare.
She then had to quickly reenlist on January 9, 2002, to ship off to Menwith Hill Station with the Royal Air Force in Harrogate, England. Once there, she worked as a Communication Technician in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom/Global War on Terrorism. She said the buildings looked like 17 enormous golf balls where you could listen to everything going on all over the world.
Robin remembers working the second shift from 3 – 11. At her desk, she was listening in both ears, scanning the airwaves for anything exceptional, out of the ordinary, or important for intel. Suddenly, she heard the faintest “Mayday! Mayday!” out of one ear. “I could hardly hear it,” she described, so she fiddled with the frequency to try and get a clearer sound. She called her supervisor to listen. Nobody else heard it. For over an hour, Robin listened and didn’t hear anything.
Robin begged to go in an hour early for her next shift to see what happened to her mysterious Mayday. As it turns out, it was an American ejecting from a plane, and because Robin had his longitude and latitude, he was rescued. When asked how that impacted her, Robin said honestly “I never thought about it. I was just doing my job.” Although, she says that she would give anything to meet him one day.
Part of the day-to-day life at Menwith Hill included constant rioting. There was one woman who, every Thursday, would protest with her group outside the gate to the base. One week, she actually cut the fence and got on base. Robin says it was annoying more than anything because the base was always on high alert.
While at Menwith Hill, Hamilton was asked to travel to Stuttgart, Germany on temporary Duty Assignment to head up a 2-man mission for 36 days, working Communication Operations to support Noble Eagle Operations, returning to Menwith Hill on June 4, 2002 to complete her original orders.
On September 11, 2002, Hamilton received orders to report to Washington, DC to work for the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence, Communications, Command, Control and Intelligence in the Pentagon.
Initially, she did not want to work in the Pentagon because she thought it would be like the non-stop activity she witnessed at the NSA. However, the Pentagon ended up being one of the best times of Robin’s life. She lived in Rosland, Virginia and didn’t have to travel far for work. She got tickets to everything and saw several shows, games, and events in the city.
Every day at work she would drive her golf cart along the long hallways for various administrative duties, and every day she would make a point to stop by the rebuild site from the September 11th terror attack. She said the rebuild was one of the most beautiful things she witnessed, and she loved seeing it come together while she worked there. “Every day was amazing at the Pentagon.”
At the same time, Hamilton worked at the FBI Headquarters, where she worked for the National Infrastructure Protection Center, or an early development of the Department of Homeland Security.
Chief Hamilton took orders next to Joint Interagency Task Force South in Key West, Florida. There, she was be the Lead PO for the Special Security Office. She handled security clearances, determining whether people could retain their clearance or not. Most frequently, she said people lost their clearances because of financial issues. Most notably, however, while in Key West, Hamilton underwent training to become a Chief Petty Officer. For 45 days, from 5am to midnight each day, she underwent training. Finally, on September 16, 2005, Robin was pinned Chief Petty Officer.
Robin remained in Key West for another month until her Active Duty was complete. She left with no car, no job, no house, and had to start all over at 40 years old. She returned to Greensboro and got her old job back at Squibb and Son and worked as the Lead Chief Petty Officer for the Administrative and Training Departments, Navy Information Operations Command, Georgia. From there she was selected as the Officer-in-Charge/Senior Enlisted Leader for the Personnel Support Detachment in 2006. She got to be in complete control of the unit, sending families everywhere.
In 2010, she was transferred to the Volunteer Training Unit as the Senior Enlisted Leader and later that year was promoted to Officer-in-Charge.
On 9 April 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, Chief Hamilton stepped in as the Command Senior Enlisted Leader for NOSC Greensboro, filling a gap until the Active Duty SEL could arrive. She didn’t have a handbook or any kind of guide to run the reserves during a pandemic, but she didn’t hesitate. “Sure, I can do it!” she agreed. She worked every day of the pandemic.
One way Chief Hamilton honors her fellow servicemen and women is as a Lead member of the Funeral Honors Team performing almost 200 funerals a year, covering Tennessee, Virginia, South Carolina, and North Carolina. She considers this one of the highest honors of her career.
Over the course of her Navy service, Chief Hamilton has learned to take the good with the bad. “From bootcamp to long deployments, sailors conquer them all through hard work, continuous sacrifice, and dedication.”
One thing Robin continuously asked herself throughout her career is “how did I get here?” A little girl from North Carolina, she never imagined that her life would take the circuitous route that it did. All because of an offhand recommendation and a persistent recruiter, Robin’s life in the Navy has been an adventure.
Chief Hamilton currently resides in High Point, North Carolina. She retired from Bristol-Myers Squibb after 29 years of service as a Quality Lead. She will be retiring from the Navy on April 9, 2022—38 years to the day of her enlistment.