On Thursday, Sept. 23, Master Chief Petty Officer of the Navy (MCPON)(SS/AW), Terry Scott, paid a visit to the Sailors at Naval Station Everett.

As part of a three-day tour of the naval facilities in the Puget Sound area, Scott made Everett his first stop.

Besides attending a Naval Affairs Meeting at the Everett Events Center and meeting individually with Rear Adm. Len Hering, Commander Navy Region Northwest, Scott also hosted two separate all hands ‘MCPON calls.”

The first call was for the Sailors assigned to the station and its tenant commands; the other took place on board the USS Abraham Lincoln (CVN 72), where he spoke to the carrier’s crew.

During the various question and answer periods, Scott fielded questions on various topics of importance to today’s Sailor.

On higher tenure:

“If I approved every single request, the negative impact it would have on our junior Sailors would create discontent and cause us to lose a lot of good shipmates,” said Scott.

On going to sea with less crewmembers:

“The new classes of ships being built won’t be operated the same way they used to. Where they used to be very labor intensive, now, we’re going to take advantage of the technology available to us.”

On building well-rounded Sailors:

“The more we invest in the education of our Sailors, the more flexibility we offer them to continue to serve. 

“We’re putting them in the position where they’ll never falling behind their civilian counterparts. As that continues, we’ve found that retention is actually increasing. It seems to be counter-intuitive, but we’ve also noticed that the number of college credits these folks are taking is on the up rise and that attrition and disciplinary problems decline dramatically."

On Task Force Uniform:

“More than 49,000 Sailors took the survey and the demographics were seemingly the same for every paygrade on sea and on shore.

“The survey results said that Sailors believe we have too many uniforms in our seabags. They also said the uniforms we have are not practical for the environments we expect them to operate in.

“What they’re telling us is, that they don’t like to wear whites. We are going to change that.”

During Scott’s stop on board the Lincoln, he thanked them for their adaptability.

Less than a month away from an earlier-than-scheduled deployment, he knew Lincoln Sailors were no strangers to change or adversity.

“It’s been two years since I’ve been on board the Lincoln,” he said. “In that time you’ve done some great work. Through a ‘lengthy’ deployment and availability period, you’ve set the tone for what’s going to be required of all Sailors in the Global War on Terrorism.

“You guys have set the standard and there’s a whole lot of people who are appreciative that we have Sailors like those on board the Lincoln.”

(JOSN David Poe, USS Abraham Lincoln public affairs, contributed to this article).