During the five years Billy Hurley III spent fulfilling his service commitment following his graduation from the Naval Academy, his duties included guiding a 10,000-ton destroyer through the Suez Canal.
The job was not necessarily on his pay grade.
"The truth is, I was really good at driving the ship," Hurley said Sunday. "And I won two ship handling awards while I was in the Navy. At my position on the ship and in my kind of age, that's not who you would have picked if I was not really good at it. You would have picked somebody a little senior to me.