Polk, who lives in Hubbard and is attending Iowa Central Community College’s auto body collision program, retired after 39 years in the Navy in 2016 at the rank of O-6 captain.

In 1977, when he enlisted, he didn’t necessarily intend to make a career out of it.

“I decided to go into the Navy because I was not long out of high school, I had worked in a factory for a little bit and really didn’t know a trade, so I wanted to learn a trade,” he said. “I went in as an interior communications electrician.”

He spend the next nine years working on submarines, both fast-attack subs and ballistic missile subs, as an electrician. By that point, he was a chief petty officer and was growing restless.

-Submitted photo
Retired Navy Capt. Ricks Polk, of Hubbard, is pictured here in the No. 3 engine room of the Battleship New Jersey around 1988.

“I kind of decided if I stayed, I’d be doing that same thing over and over again and I wanted to do new stuff,” he said.

Polk applied for the Navy’s limited duty officer program and commissioned as an ensign.

“When I was on the Battleship New Jersey in Long Beach, California, my commanding officer encouraged me to become a regular line officer,” he said. “I was a little reluctant because I didn’t have a college degree.”

He’d be competing with sailors who did have college degrees and reserve officer training corps graduates. Still, his commander pushed him and he was able to become a regular line officer with the rank of lieutenant. That gave him the opportunity do the degree completion program and get a degree in industrial technology from the University of West Florida.

Polk continued his career as an officer, eventually commanding his own ships.

-Submitted photo
The U.S.S. Ingraham was one of the ships retired Navy Capt. Ricks Polk, of Hubbard, served on.

While he was commanding officer of a minesweeper stationed at Ingleside, Texas, Polk had a young sailor who was getting into a lot of trouble and had been sent to Polk’s office several times for things he had been doing wrong.

“I just never thought I got through to him,” Polk said. “I tried all kinds of things.”

Eventually, that sailor got out of the Navy and went back home to Michigan. It took a few years, but Polk finally learned that he had made an impact on that sailor when out of the blue, he received an email from the young man, thanking him for his guidance and helping him mature. The young man was married, had a child on the way and was in his second year of college.

“All that help you gave me, it’s not for naught,” the email read.

In his decades-long career, Polk said he didn’t see much battle action, but one incident when he was commanding officer of the U.S.S. Ingraham frigate near Somalia around 2006 and 2007 came to mind.

“Somali pirates were taking commercial ships hostage so they can get the ransom,” he said. “The closest we got to firing weapons was a couple of those boats came out in our direction. We never engaged, but we went to battle stations and did those kinds of things and got everybody ready, but they actually sailed back in when they found out it was a Navy frigate and not something else.”

Before he retired, Polk spent several years as the commanding officer of the Navy ROTC unit at Iowa State University, where he helped train, shape and lead future Navy officers.

Polk is spending his retirement learning about auto restoration and collision repair at Iowa Central Community College and remains proud of the nearly four decades he spent wearing the U.S. Navy uniform.

“To wear the cloth of this nation is just a great honor,” he said.