Lt. Samuel Rose thought he had been offered a once-in-a-lifetime experience back in 2004 when he was selected as an enlisted sailor to join the elite U.S. Navy Blue Angels flight demonstration team. Eleven years later, Rose had the rare opportunity to serve a second tour with the team, this time as an officer. He jokes that his previous experience has given him a “leg up” on the dozens of young sailors he now supervises in his position as maintenance officer for the team. “I’ve been where they are now and that is helpful,” the Whitehouse, Texas, native said during a recent phone interview. Rose will leave the Blue Angels after the team’s end-of-season homecoming show on Nov. 10-11 and prepare for his new posting on board the aircraft carrier USS George W. Bush. Rose, who enlisted in 1998, hopes to spend 30 years in the Navy. “I like the stability of the military, the pride in our country and the people you get to work with,” he said. Lt. Samuel Rose Growing up in a small town southeast of Dallas, he hadn’t seen the ocean before he joined the Navy. His father is an Army veteran. His many deployments [...]