By Scott Graber
It is Monday, early, but I’ve yet to say, “Alexa, play NPR.”
I have my coffee — Breakfast Blend — and I do have my Citadel Class of 67 ring on my aging finger along with my wedding band. That big band of collegiate gold with its symbolic rifle, sword and 50 caliber bullet had gone missing for a couple of days, and that fact focused my mind.
Now, I know what you’re thinking — that Citadel guys bathe in the belief that they “wear the ring” and thus belong to a sacred tribe that entitles them to privileges way beyond the roadway assistance that comes with a AAA rewards card.
If you’ve read Pat Conroy’s “Losing Season”; or Googled his 2001 “I Wear the Ring” speech; you might conclude that a Citadel ring represents baseline guarantees relating to honor, honesty and opens doors that might otherwise remain locked.
Well, yes, I suppose some of that is true.
But usually a ring-inspired conversation veers off to one’s particular Battalion, an infamous cadet known to both graduates; a mess hall “reconnaissance” that ended in disaster.
When I graduated from The Citadel in 1967 I was confused about my experience, believing the plebe system — the first eight months or so — was somewhere south of “Game of Thrones.” I believed that the system was a test of toughness and designed to create men who were not especially curious about literature or the arts. I believed that keeping women out of the Corps made for a lesser, one dimensional graduate who went into the world with a disadvantage.
I did not wear my ring.
As I headed off to law school I still believed the plebe system, its midnight torture, had no real purpose and I didn’t want to explain the bullet, sword, M1 rifle and star — representing the supply ship turned away by cadet artillerists — that were engraved into the ring.
I had great, good friends in law school who were usually from Manhattan and I usually spent my weekends, especially Thanksgiving, with them and their families. For a couple of years after (law school) graduation, Susan and I actually spent most of our time driving up I-95 to Washington, D.C., or Manhattan in an effort to sustain those long distance relationships. But slowly those Mid-Atlantic and New England relationships withered.
I did frame my Citadel diploma — with its cannon balls, fortification maps, rifles and drums — and did hang it amongst the bar certificates, board certifications and the photos of my wife and young son. But I don’t think I was — in the 70s — wearing the ring.
I did, however, notice that my close friends — the enduring friends who I reliably entertained and talked to (at night) when I was troubled — tended to be Citadel classmates.
One of those friends, Pat Conroy, was then living in Atlanta, Rome and San Francisco but was also buying property in Beaufort County. Usually he asked me to help him with these investments — often popping into our home in Port Royal with a brand new, unpublished manuscript.
It was during the early 80s, after I noticed that Pat was now wearing his ring, that I took my own ring off the shelf. I was, by this time, swimming on the Paris Island Swim Team and didn’t like competing with what seemed to be a sea anchor — and so I took off my ring on a daily basis.
Slowly I came to the realization that I had this connection — formed in a long-ago cauldron of screaming, steaming, night-time torture — with these men who had also survived this Hieronymus Bosch-like journey. I realized these men knew me at my worst; when I had no hair; no commendations; no photos of my young family.
And so I would put my ring on in the morning; take it off at night; from time to time forgetting where I left it.
Two days ago I realized that I didn’t have my ring; did not remember where I had left it; and believed that this time it had migrated away from its inconstant owner and into the yard.
Notwithstanding an inconsistent affection, I was profoundly saddened by the prospect of never seeing the rifle or the bullet.
But I’m happy to report that earlier this morning I found my much-abused, often-neglected ring — somehow shoved to the back of my armoire; hidden behind disfavored cuff-links, long-abandoned collar stays and a half-eaten Keebler (shortbread) Sandy.
Scott Graber is a lawyer, novelist, veteran columnist and longtime resident of Port Royal. He can be reached at cscottgraber@gmail.com.
