Islip Town board member to retire from Navy

After 30 years in the U.S. Navy, Islip Town Councilman John Cochrane plans to don his Navy regalia for the last time as an enlisted sailor Saturday for his formal military retirement.

"It's bittersweet," Cochrane said of the ceremony planned at the Navy Operational Support Center in Farmingdale. "I enjoyed my time with my fellow sailors and officers."

Cochrane, who was born and raised in the Bay Shore-Brightwaters area, joined the Naval Reserve Officers Training Corps during college at Jacksonville University in Florida. After graduating, he was commissioned through the Naval ROTC as an officer in 1982.

"I followed in my father's footsteps, and my grandma's," Cochrane said, adding that his grandmother was one of the first female Navy chiefs in World War I. "My father is a retired captain, so I grew up with the love of water and the love of the Navy."

As a naval officer, Cochrane said he spent up to seven months at sea at a time. He entered the Naval Reserves in 1989. "I wanted to serve the nation," he said. "It sounds hokey, but it was a strange time to join the military in the late '70s after Vietnam. But I didn't look at it that way, I just wanted to see the world."

While he expects to miss the camaraderie of military life, Cochrane said he is "ready to hang up my black shoes. I'm happy to retire, because now I've gone from citizen sailor to citizen statesman," he said.

Islip Town Supervisor Tom Croci, also a Navy Reservist, said he "could not be prouder to serve side-by-side with John on the town board . . . Town residents love the idea of someone who's wearing the uniform also serving them in town hall."