NO MATTER HOW FAR AWAY YOU ROAM
Families in Anne Arundel County mentor and take in Naval Academy students, giving them more than a home for the holidays
Come the holidays, some midshipmen at the Naval Academy are left high and dry. Not everyone can get home for the break, but that’s OK, since there are folks like Dave and Sherry Epperson around.
The Eppersons act as sponsors for a number of mids, offering their Annapolis-area home as an oasis, and themselves as mentors, during the rigorous four-year schooling of the sailors-to-be. Most sponsors “adopt” one or two students each year; currently, the Eppersons harbor nine, several of whom likely will share the Yule season with the Crownsville couple.
There, in the family’s 3,500-square-foot home, the midshipmen will be treated like kin, decorating the place, cooking favorite meals for all and tussling with the Eppersons’ Norwegian elkhounds, Bear and Miko. Mostly, the students just chill, soaking in the hot tub or lounging in beanbag chairs before the big-screen TV.
It’s a pattern that’s repeated most weekends during the school year, when as many as 20 of the academy’s finest may show up at the house to unwind and, sometimes, share sensitive thoughts with their surrogate forebears.
“It’s their home away from home, a support system when they don’t feel well, had a tough test or broke up with their girl- or boyfriend,” said Dave Epperson, 57. “[Sponsors] provide some emotional resilience. Sometimes, we give them hard love too, like, ‘Oh yeah, [life] sucks but this, too, will pass.’ ”
“It’s almost like being their uncle.”
That relationship has been a boon both to him and his peers, said Eddie Ramirez, a senior who has clicked with the Eppersons.
“Midshipmen aren’t superhuman, though we’d like to pretend we are. Having a place to go to relax on weekends, to sit on the couch and watch a movie and not worry about the stresses that come with the high pace of life at the academy gives us the opportunity to re-center ourselves and come back that much more focused.”
“There’s a revolving door of [students] around the house at any one time,” said Ramirez, 21, an astrophysics major from Opelousas, Louisiana. “Midshipmen aren’t superhuman, though we’d like to pretend we are. Having a place to go to relax on weekends, to sit on the couch and watch a movie and not worry about the stresses that come with the high pace of life at the academy gives us the opportunity to re-center ourselves and come back that much more focused.”
Started in 1956, the sponsorship program has grown to include 2,500 area families who volunteer to shepherd the midshipmen during their academy years. Sponsors range from shop owners to Secret Service agents to steelworkers, some of whom have participated for 30 years. When Col. James McDonough arrived on campus to take over as commandant of midshipmen in 2021, he slept on his former sponsor’s couch until his own quarters were ready.
West Point and the Air Force Academy have similar arrangements, though not as extensive as that in Annapolis, said Rose Clark, director of Navy’s sponsor program since 2004.
“Life here [for students] isn’t easy,” Clark said. “I’ve heard them say, ‘If not for my sponsors, I never would have graduated.'”
On arrival, every plebe is offered a sponsoring family, matched with similar interests and backgrounds.
This year, of those 1,200 first-year mids, fewer than 10 of them declined off-campus support, Clark said.
Routinely, about 10% also ask to change sponsors, either for a better fit or “because another family has a bigger refrigerator.”
All prospective sponsors are vetted, undergo training and live within 35 miles of campus. Most have children of their own, many of whom see the midshipmen as role models, Clark said.
“We’ve had sponsors whose kids eventually attended the academy, and others whose sons or daughters married the mid they were sponsoring,” she said.
Clark can’t say how many midshipmen stick around town for the holidays, but she has a photo of 10 of them sitting around a sponsor’s table for Yuletide dinner several years ago.
“I’ve had calls from couples who said, ‘My mid is going home for Christmas so, if you have someone who needs a place to stay, tell me now so I know what size turkey to get,’ ” she said.
In the Epperson household, there are holiday traditions to follow. For one, a lowly plebe is tabbed to place the star atop the tree. Also, each student is obliged to prepare a favorite family dish, a custom that has produced regional cuisine like Texas tamales, California wasabi bowls and Alabama biscuits with
Midshipman 1st Class Malia Hart, left, and Juliet Taylor work on dinner inside Taylor’s Chester home.
Naval Academy students Madeline Turner, from left, Ben Negron and Grace Middleton sit with Dave Epperson at a diner in Brooklyn during a weekend trip to New York City.
chocolate gravy (”a game changer,” Epperson said). Students take the ritual to heart.
“They’ll be in the kitchen, on the phone with their mothers doing a walkthrough of a recipe, and I’ll hear [the mom] say, ‘No, no, no! Start over, you’re not going to represent family like that,’ ” Epperson said.
Since becoming Navy sponsors four years ago, the Eppersons have seen their food bills spike, their washing machine taxed (30 loads each weekend) and their fuel costs rise from ferrying underclassmen to and from “The Yard” in Annapolis. But the couple stands by their commitment.
“I learn something from these mids every flippin’ day, and I hope they learn something from me,” said Epperson, a former noncommissioned Army officer. “Not having kids of our own, this is more to our
benefit than theirs.
“These young people are the reason our world will be OK; their lights are on, they have common sense and a work ethic. At 8 a.m., during the week, I’ll send them text messages saying that I’m rolling over for another hour of sleep, knowing they’ve probably been up since 4.”
Graduation, he said, won’t end their rapport.
“When they leave, I tell them, ‘No matter where you go in this world, you better have a comfortable couch, because when I come to visit, I’m taking the bed and you’ll sleep on [the sofa].”
‘This is home for them’
For 20 years, René and Mike Edmonds have taken midshipmen under their wing. Adding a fifth and sixth bedroom to their two-story colonial home
has eased the space crunch for the Crownsville couple who, this year, are sponsoring six future officers.
It wouldn’t be Christmas without a mid in the house so, when all of the current brood chose to go home for the holidays, a few of the Edmonds’ former charges have offered to fill the breach. Four academy alumni, including a Marine Corps major, will visit their former sponsors for a reunion of sorts.
“They feel this is home for them,” René Edmonds said.
Sadly, one midshipman in the family’s entourage will not return. Luke Bird, 21, died in a hiking accident in Chile in July 2022. A junior from New Braunfels, Texas, Bird slipped and fell over a waterfall.
The Edmondses attended his funeral service in Texas, where they stayed with Bird’s family. In turn, his parents chose to stay with
their son’s sponsors for his burial at the Naval Academy Cemetery.
Recently, René Edmonds, a photographer, sent Bird’s parents a video she’d found of him playing with the Edmonds’ three young grandchildren.
“This is such a comfort to me,” the midshipman’s mother wrote back. “I’m so glad that Luke had a mom in Annapolis, too.”
Lifetime bonds
Three years ago, after her husband’s death from a lingering illness, Juliet Taylor just rattled around in her four-bedroom waterfront home on Kent Island. The kids were grown. The dog seemed bored. The place craved wit, warmth and banter. So Taylor, who knew of the Navy program, applied to sponsor several students.
“I’ll take two,” she told the director.
Her act proved a godsend. Now, her home is a haven for midshipmen, who come to crash at water’s edge. Many weekends find a dozen upperclassmen milling about, cooking enchiladas, paddling kayaks and horsing around with Sailor, a yellow lab who slurps them all.
“They bring life and laughter to my house, sidesplitting laughter,” said Taylor, 54, a retired marketing director. “I feel like I’m back in college with a group of friends. It’s a joy to have deep conversations with them. My goal is to listen, provide perspective and help them navigate these years through the lens of my life. It’s mutually beneficial, but I get more out of this than they do.”
Last summer, one of her mids built Taylor a backyard patio, a highlight of which is a rock garden filled with at least one pebble painted by every Navy student who has come to visit.
The first to arrive, in 2020, was Malia Hart, then a plebe from Nashville, Tennessee.
“Here I was, a scared [freshman], set to embark on this big new thing for four years and not knowing anyone,” Hart said. “Off the bat, Julie was like sunshine. Her husband had just passed, and I’d had some family trauma too, so we healed together.”
Later, as Hart, a political science major, weathered “a rough patch” at the academy, her sponsor intervened.
“She knows I love animals, so she took me to a petting zoo. It worked,” Hart said. “Julie listens, understands and comes up with a plan to make you feel better. I tell her everything; she has showed me what family stability means.”
This Christmas, Hart plans to spend time with Taylor to mark her final year at the academy. There’s a tree to trim, cookies to bake, gifts to share.
“It’s so comfortable there,” Hart said. “Once, I brought friends to the house, made dinner and we watched [the movie] ‘Steel Magnolias.’ I fell asleep, sitting up, which I never, ever do. It was a very sweet night.”
Such bonds are forged for a lifetime.
“I expect to be in their lives forever,” Taylor said of her current mids, both of whom graduate in spring. “I miss them already, and they aren’t even gone yet.”
She knows others will follow.
“I’ll start over from scratch,” Taylor said of her sponsorship plans. “It’s rewarding to help someone go through such a significant time in their lives.”