CPO Tiffany Lewis

On the flight deck of the USS Midway Museum for a photo shoot, Navy Lt. Commander Lt. Cmdr. Stephen Polk and Chief Petty Officer Tiffany Lewis appropriately complement the 63-year-old decommissioned carrier. While the Midway served its nation proudly during its day, it is the young, talented and superbly trained sailors like these two who represent the face, and future, of the modern Navy.

“I enjoy working with the officers and sailors — the camaraderie — and the sense of pride in serving my country,” says Polk, who will celebrate his 38th birthday on March 28.

“I enjoy the diversity,” says Lewis, 33. “We are blessed (her husband, Robert Lewis, a Navy information technician, is also based in San Diego). It’s a blessing to serve with people of different backgrounds.”

In San Diego, home to nearly 90,000 Navy personnel, Polk and Lewis are leaders in their respective commands. Polk, a native of Topeka, Kan., serves on the Chief of Naval Air Forces staff at Naval Air Station North Island. Lewis, a product of New Orleans, is administrative chief at the Naval Operational Support Command, also at North Island.

Growing up in New Orleans, Lewis was “strongly encouraged” to seek out a military career by her grandfather, an Army veteran who served in Vietnam. He died in 1999, six years after Lewis enlisted in the Navy. This month she celebrates 15 years in service.

“They’re going to have to push us out of the Navy,” Lewis says, speaking for herself and her husband. “But realistically, I can stay up to 24 years.”

Lewis’ assignments have been many and widely scattered from the time she attended recruit training in Orlando, Fla. She graduated at the top of her class in fireman apprentice training in Florida, later served aboard the USS Puget Sound based in Norfolk, Va. and was transferred to a helicopter support squadron in Guam. In 1999, Lewis was assigned to Naval Air Station Atlanta, where she worked two years as the public affairs officer. She came to San Diego in 2001, assigned first to Afloat Training Group Pacific, then to Naval Air Reserve San Diego and transferred to the Helicopter Sea Combat Squadron Three as the administrative leading chief petty officer. She took her present assignment last month.

When not serving the Navy or their two children, Victoria, 13, and Matthew, 11, the Lewises are building a 3,000-square-foot house “from the ground up,” in Dehesa. “We’ll be finished by March 15,” she says optimistically.

The couple met in the Navy and were married in 2000. Lewis says they’ve had no trouble getting the same geographical assignments, but realize the Navy’s needs are paramount. “The Navy is good at keeping families together, especially when you have children,” Lewis says.

Lewis and her husband will retire from the Navy at the same time. “I’m preparing to work afterwards,” she says. “I can’t see myself being a home person.”

Lt. Com. Stephen Polk

The son of a career Air Force tech sergeant, Polk knew early in life what he wanted to do. “It has always been a lifetime dream to fly in the military,” he says, working up to it by joining the Civil Air Patrol at age 13 and getting a private pilot’s license before even a driver’s license.

After completing aviation officer candidate school, Polk was commissioned an ensign in 1993 and designated a naval flight officer the next year following training in Pensacola and San Antonio. His first tour of duty was with the Shadows of Fleet Air Reconaissance Squadron Four. He was a navigator on the E-6A, an aircraft based on the Boeing 707. Besides flying, he worked in operations and maintenance.

The next assignment came in 1998 with the Bureau of Naval Personnel as an aviation detailer. He re-established the bureau at its then new home in Tennessee.

In 2000, Polk reported to the nuclear carrier USS Carl Vinson as assistant strike operations officer. In the month following the terrorist strike of 9/11, the Carl Vinson led a battle group to the North Arabian Sea for what later became Operation Enduring Freedom — the war in Afghanistan. Polk took part in the planning and execution of more than 4,200 combat sorties while the battle group was engaged in 72 days of continuous combat operations.

Polk earned a master’s degree in national security and strategic studies at The Naval War College following his carrier duty and later served in the U.S. Pacific Command Staff in Pearl Harbor, responsible for intelligence “products” in the Pacific theater.

Polk, who accumulated more than 2,400 flight hours in the E-6A and B, joined his present command in December. He says his dreams now are to obtain a command and to fly the FA-18 Hornet. He’s already flown eight different Navy aircraft, including the F-14 off a carrier.

Polk has been living in bachelor’s quarters, awaiting the arrival in May of his wife, Konnie, and children Sarah, 17, Aaron, 12, and Chase, 8, who are in Oklahoma awaiting Sarah’s high school graduation.

The naval officer will have given the Navy 15 years in June. “I’ve not chosen a retirement date,” he says. “I’m still having fun. As long as they want me, I will stay.”

— Manny Cruz