Churchill County High School 2003 graduate Cmdr. Nicholas “Fester” O’Neill will take command of Navy Talent Acquisition Group Great Lakes on Oct. 15, the latest milestone in an 18-year Navy career that has taken him around the world.
O’Neill lived in Fallon for only two years, but the relationships he formed here proved lasting. He met his future wife, Ashley Smith, at CCHS. They stayed together through high school and college and have built a life together during his nearly two decades in the Navy.
O’Neill arrived in Fallon at 16, moving here with his family the summer before his junior year at CCHS. His father served 24 years in the Navy and retired from Naval Air Station Fallon. O’Neill said his father’s service was an inspiration.
Naval service runs through generations of O’Neill’s family. His great-grandfather, grandfather, father, and uncle all served in the Navy. His mother, an educator who has taught in schools throughout northern Nevada, encouraged him to consider the U.S. Naval Academy, although O’Neill said neither of his parents pushed him toward military service.
In Fallon, he found something different from the places he had lived growing up in a military family: a small community where people knew one another and relationships lasted.
He played soccer at CCHS, worked at Sonic Drive-In and as a lifeguard at the Churchill County pool, and played in a band that performed at Jive and Java.
O’Neill met Ashley in AP U.S. history during their junior year at CCHS. They began dating that September and stayed together through high school and college at the University of Nevada, Reno.
Their first date was a midnight staff movie at the Fallon Theatre, where Ashley worked. O’Neill joked that he “unofficially” worked there, too, spending time at the theater and providing some free labor between movies.
After CCHS, O’Neill attended UNR, earning a bachelor’s degree in criminal justice while considering what he wanted to do next. The Navy eventually became an option.
Ashley’s father, retired Navy Cmdr. John Smith, helped O’Neill explore that possibility. Smith, a Navy helicopter pilot who served three tours in Vietnam and was later stationed at Naval Air Station Fallon as a range officer, introduced O’Neill to retired Navy officers who later wrote recommendations for his commission. Smith also took him to the Tailhook Association’s annual naval aviation symposium shortly before O’Neill left for Officer Candidate School in 2008.
O’Neill was commissioned in Newport, Rhode Island, in December 2008 and became a naval flight officer in the P-3C Orion in 2010.
His assignments over the years took him from Jacksonville, Florida, to California and Japan. He flew the P-3C and P-8A, served aboard the USS Ronald Reagan, and held leadership positions with patrol and reconnaissance commands. He has accumulated more than 1,500 flight hours.
When asked what experience most prepared him for command, O’Neill did not point to one aircraft, deployment, or assignment. He said he took something from each experience.
His first operational tour with Patrol Squadron 5 in Jacksonville taught him what hard work looked like. Later assignments gave him perspective and helped him better understand how decisions are made throughout the Navy.
Aboard the Ronald Reagan, where he was a division officer responsible for about 180 sailors, O’Neill began to understand more fully the effect a leader could have on the people under his command. Although the assignment was not always easy, he said he found it rewarding to see the positive effect he could have on his sailors.
Other assignments reinforced the importance of teaching younger officers, understanding different perspectives and building relationships, lessons that now shape how O’Neill wants to lead.
For more than a year, he has served as executive officer of Navy Talent Acquisition Group Great Lakes, an experience he described as extended on-the-job training before assuming command.
The group oversees Navy recruiting across portions of four states, with 32 recruiting stations and two officer recruiting stations. Two additional officer recruiting stations are being opened.
When he assumes command, O’Neill said his goal will be to push decision-making closer to the people doing the work, empowering them to think, react, and adapt.
Being selected is humbling, he said, and represents the Navy’s confidence in him after years of preparation.
He is equally clear that reaching command was never an individual accomplishment.
Ashley, he said, has been “the one constant through all of this.”
“We’ve made every decision together,” O’Neill said.
During deployments and long hours away, Ashley managed their home and family while he focused on the job he had trained to do.
“She doesn’t wear the uniform or have the rank,” he said, “but she’s sacrificed as much as I have, if not more.”
Their four children have made sacrifices as well. Their oldest daughter, now a high school senior, has attended nine schools in 12 years, repeatedly saying goodbye to friends and becoming the new student somewhere else.
O’Neill knows that experience. He lived it himself growing up in a military family.
O’Neill said taking command also validates the sacrifices his family has made.
After 18 years of assignments, deployments, and moves, his thoughts still return to the Nevada town where he spent only two years.
“It’s crazy how important those two years were,” O’Neill said.
The relationships formed then remain. When he and Ashley return to Fallon, they make a point of seeing people who were part of their lives here. At one point in his career, O’Neill even listed Fallon as his first choice for his next assignment. The Navy sent him back to Japan instead.
He would still like another chance.
“That’s what Fallon is,” O’Neill said. “It’s a small community. People know you and remember you.”
“You can be gone for 20 years and go all over the world and come back, and it still feels like home.”
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