SEAL EXPERIENCE

Whether they want to test their mettle or they want to get their fire back, men between their teenage years and 69 have been to Don Shipley’s Extreme SEAL Experience to gain confidence and test their mental and physical strength.
Shipley, a retired Navy SEAL senior chief, runs the camp where men test their manhood by learning skills and running through scenarios that a SEAL might face. This week, a group of 24 men from across the country and around the globe joined Shipley at the International Petroleum Museum and Exposition, commonly known as the “Mr. Charlie.”
“Guys come from the four corners. I’ve had them from Shanghai, China to Australia, Norway, all over the world that come. Not all of them aspire to be Navy SEALs,” Shipley said.
Shipley started the course in the 1990s for the U.S. Naval Sea Cadet Corps — a federally chartered non-profit civilian youth organization for ages 11 through 17 — essentially as a recruiting tool, he said.
Participants in this week’s course include a British police officer, a Canadian filming a bucket list campaign for a commercial enterprise, a 50-year-old from New Jersey and a man of 20 whose trip to Morgan City marks the 10th time he has participated in one of Shipley’s courses.
Doug Stebens, 20, of Virginia, plans to enter the Navy in 2015. He began Shipley’s courses at age 16.
“I got down here to see if I want to do this kind of work, and even though the work is hard, you have some of the best comrades in the business with you. You make brothers and friends like you can’t anywhere else. I want be able to depend on them, and I want them to be able to depend on me as well and serve my country as best I can,” Stebens said.
Shipley employs former, active and retired SEALs “to train guys in SEAL things — helicopters, shooting, boat work, long-range navigation,” he said.
He’s had students up to age 69, he said, adding they included Vietnam veterans, the deaf, the near blind, the disabled, the ill, doctors, yoga instructors, graphic designers, martial arts instructors and even a South African carpet maker, to name a few.
“It’s all those Type A personalities, and they’ve run out of mountains to climb,” Shipley said.
Shipley said many of the participants’ reasons for participating is because they get stuck in a rut in life.
“A lot of the older guys, they get stuck in an office cubicle and they lose that college quarterback game face they used to have. They get stuck in a rut. (They’re) guys with failed marriages, bankruptcies, things that they can’t find a way out. The whole SEAL thing … they take it back to the corporate world,” Shipley said.
As for his use of the Mr. Charlie for training, Shipley said “when I was a young SEAL, it was in the mid-’80s, and the Iran-Iraq war was going on. It was all over oil, and oil platforms have always been a big thing for SEALs. It’s just got SEAL written all over it, the water aspect … we’re teaching them how to get on oil platforms,” Shipley said.
The Mr. Charlie is “perfect. They’ve got the water underneath. It’s not out in the Gulf (of Mexico). It’s a rig training area and then we have to clear this thing of bad guys, a hostage situation, weapons of mass destruction, the scenarios (we can do) are endless,” Shipley said
The work at the Mr. Charlie is three days, concluding today.