ROCKPORT — When U.S. Navy Petty Officer Ian Quinn was growing up, his mother used to tell him to get out of town for a while “and go see the world.”
It was advice he was happy to take.
Quinn, a 2003 graduate of Camden Hills Regional High School, is now stationed aboard the USS Nimitz in the Gulf of Oman. In his job as a naval intelligence specialist, he helps to support operations in Afghanistan and Iraq.
“The opportunity to see the world — that appealed to me,” Quinn said recently in a ship-to-shore telephone call from the Nimitz. “I’m definitely glad I joined the Navy.”
Security considerations prevented him from sharing many details about his job, but he did say he toils long nights — often 14 hours at a time — providing “timely, relevant and predictive analysis and research in support of what the ship is doing.” That means Quinn and his colleagues look at information gathered from various intelligence feeds and interpret it to support Operation Enduring Freedom.
The Nimitz is an aircraft carrier, with more than 2,211 aircraft missions launched from its decks using steam catapults since Quinn started his duties there on Sept. 18, 2009. On the way to the Gulf of Oman the ship stopped in Japan and Singapore, among other ports of call, and will return to port in San Diego at the end of March, Quinn said.
The Nimitz is a historic — and gargantuan — vessel, stretching more than 23 stories from the keel to the top of the mast and serving as a floating home to about 4,600 Navy personnel. After it was launched, the aircraft carrier cruised the Mediterranean for several years. The Nimitz was used in 1980 to launch helicopters for an attempted rescue effort during the Iran hostage crisis and relieved the USS Abraham Lincoln in the Persian Gulf in mid-April 2003, among many other deployments.
The ship was featured in a 2005 PBS miniseries called “Carrier.”
“The Nimitz is incredibly impressive,” said Quinn’s mother, Wendy Harrison, who lives in Rockport. “I’m immensely proud of him. I think it’s a wonderful thing.”
She said her son was always interested in the Middle East, and he spent a summer sailing off Newfoundland in the program Ocean Classroom.
In high school, he most enjoyed his history classes and his speech class with teacher Steve Moro before heading south to get his undergraduate degree at Salve Regina University in Newport, R.I.
“I know his high school and college education have served him really well,” Harrison said.
Quinn, who said he enlisted for reasons that include patriotism, the desire to defend the country and the chance to take advantage of some military perks, thinks the Navy is serving him well, too.
“I’m probably going to try to remain in the Navy about as long as I can. It’s a great job,” he said.
The best part for him?
“Hands down, the people that I work with,” he said. “I understood that the Navy was a very diverse community. But seen from the inside, it’s surprising.”