DON NEVIS – THANK YOU FOR YOUR SERVICE
Don Nevis: Aspirational Promise
In 1970, right after he graduated high school and entered college, Don Nevis was drafted for Vietnam. With a goal to be a research doctor, he was already qualified to operate electron microscopes at 18 due to courses at San Joaquin Delta College during 11th and 12th grade. He had been accepted to UCLA and had a job working for the head professor at the Med School. But America had other plans.
“When I got drafted, I was really irritated to say the least,” Nevis said. “It changed all my plans.”
It was not a good war, as Nevis recalled. Friends who had been in the 1968 Tet Offensive came back and warned him, “Don’t go to Vietnam.” But when he was called for the draft, Nevis didn’t have a choice. When he went to sign on, he initially tried to join the Coast Guard, but it ended up being full. Little did Nevis know that his GPA might have just saved his life. Anyone with a low-grade point average was drafted, but with a 3.85 GPA, he was able to enlist in the US Navy.
“I picked submarine duty, and I picked nuclear power,” Nevis said. The nuclear power training was rigorous, crammed into a single year, which Nevis completed while getting married and welcoming a child. He was stationed in Hawaii. After one year of training, Nevis boarded the USS Robert E. Lee, SSBN-601, a ballistic missile submarine where he spent his service without ever facing combat.
“Once we’re on the submarine, we’re in what they call 3-section duty,” Nevis explained. “Six hours on watch, six hours of sleep, six hours of maintenance study. You do it all over again.” After his first patrol, Nevis brought his family to Hawaii, where his wife stayed while he went out on patrol in Guam. “I spent six years, four months, and 23 days in the Navy. It was vigorous, but it really set me up at a young age.”
Their mission was to stay undetected, prepared to launch nuclear missiles if World War III broke out. Fortunately, that day never came, and Nevis spent the remainder of his time on the submarine. It was during these years that he developed discipline and learned lessons that he would carry on to the rest of his life. “I didn’t realize it until my 40s, but it turned out to be the best thing that ever happened to me,” he said. “I didn’t get shot, and I didn’t have to shoot anybody. The discipline and dedication I learned are how I developed all of my values.”
After leaving the Navy at 26, Nevis was so well-qualified that he landed a job with the Mare Island Naval Shipyard in Vallejo, California, just three days later. He later worked for the Department of Defense, putting together repair packages for minesweeper ships across the U.S. and Hawaii. But at 28, his life took a turn. “From 28 to 32, I lost everything,” Nevis said. “I lost my family, my jobs, and ended up on the streets.” Alcohol, his vice of choice, was behind it all.
One night in 1984, Nevis had a big wake up call. “I woke up after a blackout,” Nevis recalled. “I’m looking at the TV, and there’s an ad for a treatment program. That’s the first thing I saw. I didn’t even know I was crying.” Next to him was a phone book, open to Alcoholics Anonymous. He dialed the number. “I was bawling on the phone,” he said. The root of his struggle, he realized, was surviving a rough childhood. “I didn’t die,” Nevis said. “I had to dig all that out of me to overcome alcoholism.”
He dressed in a three-piece suit and walked into his first AA meeting the next day in Hayward. “Not one person in there batted an eye,” he said. “We come together with a problem, alcohol, and stay together with a solution.” After he relapsed at 90 days, Nevis got serious and started to get his life back on track. As of October 12th, Nevis will be celebrating 40 years of sobriety.
“I didn’t work for three years because I was so afraid I’d drink,” he said. But three years into sobriety, things began to look up. “That was the beginning,” he said. Nevis experienced career success at the VA Hospital in Las Vegas, Nevada with promotions, and moves. “I had to earn everything,” he said.
At 48, with 25 years of service, including military time, he retired with a reduced pension. Despite needing to keep working, Nevis found peace living in a refurbished 1976 motorhome and taking part-time jobs, including delivering donuts in Monterey. He paid off his child support and kept moving forward.
A year and a half later, and at 15 years of sobriety, Nevis moved to Portland and got a job at Fred Meyer, where he met his “sweetie,” Lora, while making conversation with customers as a checker. After their first date, he fell in love and knew that all of the pain in his life had dissipated. “Everything came together,” he said. They’ve now been together for 20 years.
In 2023, he and Lora moved to The Springs at Happy Valley and have loved every minute of it. “I’m happier than I’ve ever been,” he said. “I had a rough childhood, and I’ve never had a family… and the people here, they’re like family.”
Although Nevis faced many hardships and obstacles in his life, he wouldn’t change a thing.
When recalling a moment where he was asked his favorite song, Nevis, choked up with tears in his eyes, doesn’t hesitate: “We Are the Champions” by Queen. “Because I made it through all of that to become the man I am today.” If there is one thing Nevis wants people to know is to never give up, and “go live your life.”
