On a meeting with Captain William Floyd Bringle during a period of low academic performances in his first year at Annapolis, in which he was told he would improve his them within 10 days or face another counseling session with him, as quoted in Afterburner : Naval Aviators and the Vietnam War (2004) by John Darrell Sherwood, Ch. 20 : Leighton Warren Smith and the Fall of Thanh Hoa, p. 274
Context: I didn't realize it at the time, but it became apparent to me later, that I had just experienced the most incredible lesson in leadership that I would ever experience: a Navy captain, who was in charge of the entire day-to-day operations of the Naval Academy, took the time to reach down deep into that organization and drag an individual up who was having trouble and try to instill in that individual a little bit of self-discipline and self-confidence. He knew my uncle, obviously, but I felt he would have done this for anyone in my predicament regardless of who his relatives were.
