None of that was forgotten Sept. 1 when Pavelka received his 12th Naval promotion and became Commander Jimmy Pavelka in ceremonies held at NATO Headquarters at Norfolk, Va., where he serves as a Cyber staff officer.
In and during the year after high school, “I loved working for Carl Young” at Stocksdale’s restaurant on Springfield’s West Side, where he bused tables, cooked and cleaned up.
“He gave me an opportunity,” Pavelka said.
But after leaving Shawnee, Pavelka found it impossible to juggle full time work he’d started in high school with an art major at then Clark Technical College. For his future’s sake, he said, “I knew I had to make a change.”
He enlisted in the Navy on Oct. 31, 1988, believing the electronics and other technical skills he could pick up while working aboard ship could translate into civilian work when he got out.
A meritorious promotion to E-2 at the end of basic training in San Diego gave him a first taste of success. In his subsequent two-years on the U.S.S. San Jose, he served in Operation Desert Shield/Desert Storm and finished second in the competition for Sailor of the Year.
He moved on to U.S.S. Nimitz – a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier and one of the largest ships in the world. There he had the distinction of being one two sailors on a crew of 5,000 to receive meritorious promotions on board from his ship’s captain.
Becoming a first class petty officer that day was “a milestone for me,” Pavelka said.
When advanced to chief petty officer while serving on the USS Essex in 2000, he starting thinking seriously about becoming an officer. His father, who had risen to master sergeant in a 22-year Army career, had always recommended that path.
But the change from the “blue collar” enlisted ranks to the “white collar” officer ranks wasn’t an automatic.
Pavelka called it “a huge step into the unknown.”
The decision was further complicated by the narrow window in which he had to decide: the final month of his 16th year in the Navy.
At the time he also had attractive options.
“I could have had a pretty good life as an NCO, retired at 20 (years of service) and started my civilian life,” he said.
But having been promoted to senior petty officer in 2003, then recognized as the Naval Personnel Command Facilitator of the Year, he decided to have faith in the force that had help him rise to the top of the enlisted ranks.
“I think when you have a childhood that might not be ideal, you can either go one or two ways. You can stay down and get into a lot of negative or undesirable areas, or there’s a desire to do better and to be better,” he said, a way of “me saying ‘I belong here.’”
“That’s always been the fuel that drove me,” Pavelka said.
Since becoming an officer in 2005, he’s needed every bit of that fuel.
“It’s greater responsibility; it’s greater leadership. It’s not just doing your job but learning how to stand bridge watch and steer the ship,” he said. It also involves shouldering the responsibilities of being in one of the ship’s most consequential stations: the Combat Information Center.
The second segment of his career also involved mastery of varied skills. He has qualified as Officer of the Deck, Tactical Action Officer and Anti-Terrorism Officer.
He also has earned two associate’s degrees, his bachelor’s and master’s degrees with grade points hovering around 4.0 – more reflective of Pavelka and his talent than his high school grades.
Pavelka is also a graduate of Naval War College; has been awarded the Meritorious Service Medal, three Navy Commendation Medals, six Navy achievement medals and various campaign medals and ribbons.
All that while in every area of Naval operations: The Atlantic, Pacific and Indian oceans; the Caribbean, Mediterranean and Red seas; the Persian Gulf; South America, and the Artic Circle.
All this was in a one-page description of his service he was encouraged to write by retired Shawnee High School art teacher Casey Rollins, who, with her husband, Rob, attended Pavelka’s promotion ceremony.
“I really consider her family so much that I invited her down here,” Pavelka said.
“I was always good at art, and she sort of saw my potential as a student at Shawnee,” he said. “I was on the yearbook committee and the school paper as the art editor.”
Pavelka has visited Springfield “a handful of times” over the years; reconnected with Rollins and her husband more recently; and, in part because of that, decided to attend a Shawnee High reunion in early August.
There, he experienced a greater sense of coming home than he had expected for the homecoming at a high school he attended two years while working nearly full time.
“I had more people know me than I thought, and I connected with people I didn’t know,” he said. “That was really special.”
It was what Mrs. Rollins had hoped for.
“He was always a very quiet and unassuming guy. Extremely artistic. You knew he was very, very smart, and it was always brewing in there,” she said.
“But he never aware of himself that way,” she said. “The kids used to look at him and admire him, and he never knew it. He never realized that he fit in.”
Although the two of them in recent years have enjoyed the kind of deep, personal conversations treasured by brothers, sisters and best friends, “He still calls me Mrs. Rollins,” she said.
It’s clearly a sign of his continued respect for her.
And as the Rollinses and others were preparing to celebrate one of the signature moments in Pavelka’s life, she said, the Naval officer who tries to help orient people from NATO nations to the United States was “worrying about showing us the town and granting us a special trip.”
To this “hometown boy does good” story, Mrs. Rollins brings a teacher’s point of view.
Just as she’s come to see her former students as the EMTs that may arrive at her home, teach a new generation of students or “are going to take care of me in the nursing home, I look at him (as) a global-level caretaker and protector.”
He will continue to do that on the NATO High Priority Cyber Adaption Task Force, which is tasked with the alliance’s defenses.
And it’s more than just a job. It’s part of a career he wondered whether he’d ever have – a career that in two months will enter its 35th year.
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