The Gowrie man got both of those things in a 10-year Navy career in which he sailed in the Atlantic and Pacific oceans and the Mediterranean Sea.

His naval cruises took him above the Arctic Circle and through the Suez Canal.

His days as a sailor also equipped him with the electronic know-how needed in his civilian career.

Fields is a native of Waterloo, but he didn’t stay there very long. His father, John Shields, was a school administrator who took superintendent posts in Webster City, Muscatine and finally, Naperville, Illinois.

Kenneth Fields graduated from high school in Naperville. He then went to Western Illinois University for two years before deciding that going to college was not the right fit for him.

He began considering enlisting in the military. He felt that the Air Force and the Navy had the best educational programs.

“The adventure of going to sea was appealing to me,” he said.

He enlisted in the Navy in 1983, but had to wait nine months for a slot in his desired training program. He was actually inducted into the service on Dec. 26, 1984, and reported to Great Lakes Naval Training Center in Illinois.

Among other things there, he had to learn the Navy lingo. At Great Lakes, the floor was the deck and the walls were bulkheads.

After completing his basic training, he stayed at Great Lakes for basic electronic training and then for what the Navy called fire control school. That school had nothing to do with putting water on blazes. Instead, it was about the electronics that control the firing of various weapons.

Fields said he specifically trained on the Terrier Fire Control Complex, which launched long range surface to air missiles.

On June 22, 1986, he was assigned to the destroyer USS Dahlgren based out of Norfolk, Virginia.

His first assignment on the ship was OpSail 86, which was a celebration of the 100th anniversary of the Statue Of Liberty in New York Harbor.

A six month voyage to and through the Mediterranean Sea followed. Fields recalled that the first few days of the trip were tough because the remnants of Hurricane Charles were still churning up the Atlantic Ocean.

That voyage was followed in 1989 by a trip above the Arctic Circle, where the Dahlgren joined British and Swedish ships in observing the coming and going of Soviet vessels.

Fields served for three and a half years on the USS Dahlgren. During that time, he volunteered for extra duty as a rescue swimmer. He said the only thing he rescued was a missile canister that fell off the aircraft carrier USS Forestal. He said he tied a line around the canister, then bobbed around in the ocean for about 45 minutes while other sailors tried to pull it on board.

Fields later went to the other side of the word and served on the destroyer USS Callahan, which was homeported in San Diego, California. It was a much newer ship than the Dahlgren, he recalled.

He said the Callahan was one of a handful of destroyers that were built for Iran. But when teh revoluntinary movement of Ayatollah Khomiene overthrew the shah of Iran, the United States kept the ships. Fields said the sailors called them the “Ayatollah Class” of destroyers.

Fields served two years aboard the Callahan. Then he finished his Navy career on shore, working as a maintenance technician at the Navy base on mare island, californai.

After being discharged from the Navy, Fields has worked at electronics related jobs in California and Iowa.