In 1998, Brett Davenport’s Navy career came to a premature end. His marriage ended and he had sole custody of his two young sons. Unable to go to sea because he didn’t have a working family care program, he was discharged by the Navy.
Davenport had planned to make the Navy his career His ultimate goal was to become a chief petty officer. But with the early end of his career, those dreams seemed to be over.
But when his youngest son Clayton enlisted in the Navy in 2016. Davenport realized he wanted a second chance to serve in the Navy.
“My wife and I went and saw him graduate from boot camp, and that really kind of gave me the itch – just being around it again,” Davenport told Task & Purpose. “I was really nostalgic about the experience that I had in the Navy and wanting to finish my career. So, I went back and started doing a little bit of investigation and found out that because I did almost 10 years on active duty, it wasn’t too late for me to reenlist and finish out my time and be able to retire from the Reserves.”
The road back to the Navy would be neither quick nor easy, Davenport, 55, told Task & Purpose. He said he talked with his wife for nearly a year about wanting to reenlist until she finally told him, “Look, you need to go do it or shut up about it.”
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But Davenport was in his late 40s at the time and weighed more than 290 pounds. Because of his age, he had to report to a Military Entrance Processing Station, or MEPS, for a physical. Although he passed all the medical tests, he was told “you’re too fat,” he said.
“And I said: Ow, that kind of hurt,’” he recalled with a laugh. “Is there any chance for a waiver? He said: Nope. Too fat.”
Navy photo by Cmdr. Cheryl Collins.
Rather than giving up, Davenport decided he would rise to the Navy’s standards. He spent the next 17 months focusing on his diet and exercise to slim down. His workout routine included a lot of cardio, and he eventually lost 57 pounds.
After being weighed and measured again, he was cleared to reenlist at 49 Since his civilian profession closely mirrored his prior work in the Navy, he was not required to go through technical schools again, he said.
However, it had been so long since he had been in the Navy that his son had to teach him how to wear the male enlisted Navy Working Uniform Type III.
“Whenever I got out of the Navy, I was still wearing dungarees,” Davenport said. “One of the first things I learned from him was how to blouse my boots. We actually did a Facetime uniform inspection so he could make sure that my uniform was squared away before the first time I had to wear it.”
Clayton Davenport was recently promoted to petty officer 1st class, said his father, who joked, “I still outrank him, which is nice.”
Davenport is assigned to Navy Reserve Center Houston as part of the SurgeMain program, which provides skilled depot-level maintenance professionals to naval shipyards during peak workload periods. In civilian life, he is co-founder and managing partner of Gibby’s Capital Investments, a real estate investing firm in Houston.
Last year, Davenport reached his longtime goal of becoming a chief petty officer. But the absolute pinnacle of his Navy career has been the opportunity to serve alongside his son, which he describes as “absolutely amazing.”
“Plus, we also have worked really hard together to grow our challenge coin collection,” Davenport said. “I always get two and he always gets two, and we swap them back and forth.”
The two have also learned from each other’s experiences about the Navy. The older Davenport talks to his son about the “old school Navy stuff” that he’s learned, and Clayton Davenport has helped explain to his father how the Navy tracks maintenance requirements digitally now.
Recently, his son called him to say that he was being awarded a Navy Achievement Medal and asked if he could attend the ceremony. When he arrived, his son’s commanding officer asked the older Davenport if he wanted to pin the medal on his son.
“Of course, I said yes, and I got to pin a Navy Achievement Medal on my son in formation with his entire unit there and then stand in formation together,” Davenport said. “It was an emotionally heavyweight-type of moment for both of us.”
Clayton Davenport said he became “ecstatic” when he learned that his father was reenlisting in the Navy, according to a Navy news release. The two men now talk to each with the mutual respect of fellow sailors, and Clayton added that he would not be surprised if his father is eventually promoted to senior chief petty officer.
“It had been an honor and privilege to carry on his name and legacy as a machinist mate, but the reality of him re-enlisting and falling into ranks alongside me gave me the biggest sense of pride and honor I’ve ever felt,” Clayton Davenport said in the news release. “It’s one thing to be able to be empathetic, but the power of sharing the struggle has depth and instills purpose. Father and son, yes, but now, we are fellow Snipes, shipmates, and brothers in arms.”
“Snipes” is Navy slang for engineer rates that generally work deep within a ship’s mechanical sections.
His father echoed that sentiment, saying the connection between him and his son has become closer with both of them in the Navy.
“Father and son is always going to be a special bond, but also to be brothers in arms,” Davenport said. “Wearing the same uniform and sharing that bond as well has brought us just that much closer. For me and I think for him, it’s really just being able to stand side by side knowing in the current geopolitical climate that we could go well beyond just father and son at pretty much any time.”