Lafayette native, Notre Dame grad hopes to continue life of service as U.S. Naval officer

Service has always been a big part of Nicholas Dedo’s life.

He was an altar server at the Cathedral of St. John the Evangelist, a leader on the football team at St. Thomas More, involved in campus ministry and served as a resident assistant while in college.

After graduating from Notre Dame with a business analytics degree and working in data technology consulting for two years, the Lafayette native knew that he wanted to do more.

To continue serving, which has been ingrained in his life, and to be a mentor to others, as so many have been to him, Dedo joined the U.S. Navy with hopes to continue giving back to something larger than himself.

“I felt like this is the type of service that I would be most well equipped to do and something that I really cared about,” Dedo said.

“Ultimately, I made that leap and I’m really happy I did," he added. "I feel like I'm on a career path that I could take a long way and I could put myself into fully.”

Dedo anticipates graduating this week from Officer Candidate School in Rhode Island. The 13-week program tests recruits mentally, physically and academically.

“It's certainly not an easy program,” he said. “But it helps you develop as a person to understand where you need to work on and how to perform under pressure.”

‘Desire for service’

Dedo has always been bright, focused and wanted to understand the why, his parents Dr. William Dedo and Yvonne Dedo said. Nicholas Dedo, their middle child, would often read an opinion column and use it to dig deeper to better grasp why things were happening, a habit his parents encouraged.

“When the kids are younger, I would tell them what I thought about something, but then I tell them that they had to reach their own conclusion,” William Dedo said. “They had to think through it and come up with something that works based on their experience. And (Nicholas) really embraced that about thinking through things.”

While joining in the military wasn’t always a career decision Dedo had talked about with his parents, the decision to pursue something that allowed him to give back didn’t surprise them.

Yvonne Dedo’s father served in the Navy and Army. Nicholas Dedo’s older brother, Christopher Dedo, is a Navy Lieutenant who flies MH-60 Sierra helicopters in San Diego. His sister, Jennifer Dedo, is graduating from LSU in May and wants to pursue a career in the medical field.

“It's just this desire for service, which I'm so incredibly proud of,” Yvonne Dedo said. “(Nicholas) just told us he had this need to do something more meaningful and this was a good path for him.”

Finding opportunity at Officer Candidate School

Nicholas Dedo said Officer Candidate School, which is for joinees who already have a bachelor’s degree, has been challenging but rewarding. It’s a great option for people who want something more out of their careers like Dedo did, he said.

The 24-year-old has been able to relish in shared moments with his cohort, recalling moments when they stayed up to lint roll the floor before the final event of the inductee phase.

“It's stressful and scary but you have people next to you who are in the same boat,” he said, “making friends with those people really quickly because you have to and because they're people that are on the same page in life.”

The program is a place where candidates can prove themselves mentally, physically and academically. But the possibility of failure loomed.

“That fear early on was tough,” he said. “But getting through it, succeeding, was one of the most rewarding things I've ever done. And doing it with people – and partly because of people – who are constantly picking each other up alongside each other, that made it worth it.”

Once Dedo graduates, he’ll go to Virginia Beach for further training and to determine specifically which career path he wants to take with the Navy.

“I'm open to all the opportunities that might come,” he said.

Contact Ashley White at adwhite@theadvertiser.com or on Twitter @AshleyyDi.

This article originally appeared on Lafayette Daily Advertiser: Lafayette native, STM grad finds service by joining U.S. Navy