The Fourth of July in the US is more than parades, cookouts and fireworks. For veterans and active-duty military, it is about serving and protecting this country and its rights. Novus partner Sam Kartalis tells us his four years in the Navy helped him mature and made him a better person. He was the officer on deck aboard the USS Hammerberg destroyer escort (pictured) and sailing off the coast of Chile looking for enemy submarines to destroy in 1962 when this photograph was taken. For years, he searched for this photo and it wasn’t until Memorial Day of this year that CBRE’s David Glasscock found it (on Wikipedia, of all places) and shared it with Sam. He tells us the Weapon Alpha rocket (being fired in the picture) had a nuclear depth charge for destroying submarines at a distance not capable of being reached by depth charges at the time.

The “tin cans” were popularized in movies and always in the thick of action, so that’s where young Sam wanted to be. And, he wasn’t bored. He was aboard ship, navigating around South America and heading home to Newport when the ship encountered a terrible hurricane and—even on a ship that large—Sam wasn’t sure he’d make it home alive. He was soon to be discharged from the Navy upon return when President Kennedy froze the military and turned the Hammerberg around to head to the coast of Cuba, where the sailors were ready to engage in the Cuban Missile Crisis, Sam tells us. He’s approaching his one-year anniversary with Robert Grunnah (another veteran) at Novus, after years at Henry S. Miller, and is still building a team of specialists to help clients on a very local basis, he tells us.