Tom Murray Arnold
, California
Early in his Navy career, Tom Murray Arnold wrote many long letters home to his mother. In one of those letters, Tom explained something he had discovered about his new life that mattered enormously to him:“In the Navy, the rules are the same for everyone.”Tom could work with that.And he did.Tom was born January 20, 1940, in Shafter, California, to Tom Murray Arnold Sr. and Melba Morgan Arnold. Although he had begun life as Tom Arnold Jr., Tom deliberately stopped using the “Jr.” himself so that his own son could use it rather than becoming “the Third” — a designation Tom considered altogether too pretentious.That was Tom.In 1958, at seventeen and shortly before his eighteenth birthday, Tom enlisted in the United States Navy.He entered the Navy as a rebellious teenager — unhappy with school, often angry, and anxious to make his own way in the world.Thirty years later, Tom retired…