We are the Steffensens. Kirk, Leslie, Greg, Henry, and Charlotte. We currently live in Springfield, Virginia, with our dog Mandy, and two Leopard Geckos “Missy G” and “Strike”.
Kirk grew up in Tulsa, Oklahoma and graduated from Edison High School in 1985. He then went to the University of Texas during the school’s worst 4 years of football ever, graduating in 1989.
Leslie grew up as Leslie Nunez in Lakeland, Florida and went to high school at Phillips Exeter Academy in Exeter, New Hampshire graduating in 1985. While she was at Exeter, she went to Barcelona, Spain, for her Junior year in the Student Year Abroad (SYA) program. She then attended Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, graduating in 1988.
We met at the Navy’s Officer Candidate School in the summer of 1989 in Newport, Rhode Island, where we were both in Kilo Company of Class 89005. We got married right after OCS on October 2, 1989 so that we could get orders together, having known each other for the extremely long time of 4 months. After 17 years and three kids, it seems to have worked out well.
Kirk went to Nuclear Power School in Orlando, Florida, while Leslie was at the Navy-Marine Corps Intelligence Training Center in Dam Neck, Virginia. Leslie’s operational assignment was as the Air-Intelligence Officer for VP-47 at Moffett Field, in Mountain View, California. Kirk’s first operational assignment was as Machinery Division Officer and Main Propulsion Assistant in USS ARKANSAS (CGN-41) . Leslie finished her four-year commitment a month before Greg was born on November 1, 1993 at Oakland Naval Hospital.
After Kirk’s second deployment to the Persian Gulf, we moved in June of 1994 to Ballston Spa, New York, where Kirk was a Shift Engineer at D1G Nuclear Prototype. While we were there, Henry was born at Saratoga Springs Hospital on April 30, 1995.
We moved back to Newport for the last six months of 1996 where Kirk attended Surface Warfare Department Head School and then moved to Norfolk in December 1996. Kirk was the Weapons Officer and Combat Systems Officer in USS MONTEREY (CG-61). Charlotte was born at DePaul Medical Center in Norfolk on July 3, 1997. Kirk went on two deployments in MONTERERY, one to the Mediterranean and one to the Persian Gulf.
After returning from his last deployment, Kirk left active duty and we moved to Springfield, Virginia, in the suburbs of Washington, DC, where we have lived ever since.
