USS Milius Sailor realizes childhood dream

Leaning against a bulkhead on the forecastle aboard the Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer USS Milius (DDG 69), soaked to the skin in sweat from hours spent under the scorching sun, Personnel Specialist 3rd Class Abdul Mohammed took a short break from line handling during the ship’s fifth underway replenishment in less than a month.

“It’s a great day to be serving my country,” said Mohammed, wiping the sweat from his eyes, not dissuaded by the sweltering heat and humidity of the tropical Western Pacific. “It’s not always easy and it never lets up, but it’s truly one of the noblest pursuits one can dedicate themselves to.”

Standing 6 feet 3 inches tall and built like a professional athlete, the 42-year-old Ghana native has the strength and physique of someone half his age. He’s a rugged looking character who wears the stern glare of someone who has worked long and hard through the years. It’s the look of someone who is no stranger to adversity.

For Mohammed, toughness is more than a just a look, it’s a biography. Hard work and perseverance are the CliffsNotes of a story that has taken him from humble beginnings as a street hustler in Ghana, to serving as an American citizen and Sailor in the United States Navy.

Mohammed was born in Kumasi, Ghana, in 1980 and grew up in a family with eight brothers and sisters. His father was a farmer and finding work meant living outside the city, but the family moved back and forth so the kids were closer to school during the school year. Mohammed was an exceptional student and graduated high school in 2000 with aspirations for college, but quickly realized it wasn’t financially possible and a few months later found himself in the capital city of Accra.

“I went to Accra to hustle,” said Mohammed. “In Ghana, there are so many things we do that we don’t really do in the United States, like shining peoples’ shoes and fixing torn out shoes and sandals for money. You go around in the mornings and on Sundays. Sometimes in the afternoons people will let us shine their shoes at work. That’s what I was doing.”

He had been in Accra about six months when he found a second source of income. A friend of a friend owned a local garage and needed someone to wash cars, so he continued shining shoes during the day and washing cars at night.

“I used that garage as my home,” said Mohammed. “I would sleep in one of the cars, get up and go around and wash the cars, then come back and sleep. In the morning, I would go and pray, pick up my shoe shine box and go.”

Mohammed worked and slept at the garage for about a year. During that time he learned the city and met many people, some of which would have an unexpected and profound influence on the course of his life.

“After a year, I knew the city more and I had friends and contacts,” he said. “There was one woman in the community who became close with me because I was steadfast with my prayers and she took me as her son. Up until this day, I am part of her family.”

That woman’s name was Halima Ismail, and it was her daughter, Zeena, who encouraged Mohammed to pursue a career in radio because, according to Mohammed, she knew him well enough to know sports radio was a passion of his.

“She was reading a newspaper and saw an advertisement for radio presentation and journalism programs and showed it to me,” said Mohammed. “She knew me well enough to know I love sports and commentating and she said, ‘look, you can do this, because you love it.’ So, I said, ‘okay, I will.’ By that time, I had saved up some money, so I called the number and submitted an application the next day.”

Mohammed completed the six-month program and went on to complete another two years of study at Dard Professional Institute in Accra New Town. He would eventually find work at an Accra radio station called Peace FM in 2006. He didn’t know it at the time, but it would be the last job he would ever hold in Ghana.

Peace FM wasn’t immediately interested in his services, but with some persistence, they let Mohammed take part in some live sports programs, and after impressing the station’s program director, he started working full time. During his two years at the station, he met yet another person who would help influence his path in life and become a life-long friend.

Julian Beale, a guest sports analyst at Peace FM preparing to travel to the Michigan for graduate school, convinced Mohammed to submit an application to the U.S. Diversity Visa Immigrant Program.

Mohammed was no stranger to the program, which awards 55,000 immigrant visas annually to applicants from countries with low numbers of immigrants in the previous five years in an effort to promote diversity. He had been filling out applications every year since 2001, but never actually submitted any of them.

“Coming to America is a dream in Ghana,” said Mohammed. “Everyone knows about the visa lottery and every year I would fill out the forms, but I would never send them in. How was I going to be picked out of millions of applicants around the world?”

Mohammed actually submitted his “green card lottery” application for the first time ever in 2006, then went work the next day like it never happened. He continued to do the same thing every day until he walked into the station one Saturday morning in March 2007 to find a large white envelope addressed to him from U.S. Citizenship & Immigration Services that read, “Congratulations, you have been selected for the Diversity Immigrant Visa Program.”

“I can’t tell you how happy I was at that moment,” he said. “I went to the room where we seat the guests before shows and just sat for like 10 minutes thinking about how lucky one can be. I thought I was dreaming, but I looked at it again and it was real. This is something I had been dreaming about since I was a child. I thought, ‘thank god for this.’”

After entering the U.S. in 2008, Mohammed spent a number of years working in New York and going to school at Manhattan Community College. He applied for and became a U.S. citizen in 2018, but throughout the years endured several tough times, including the death of his father in 2010 and a major shoulder injury that limited his work capabilities from 2013-2017.

Despite the adversity, he persevered and eventually started a successful travel company, and later a car sales company on the side. By 2018, Mohammed was better off financially than he had been at any point in his life, but that didn’t stop him from making good on a promise he made to himself a long time ago.

“Serving one’s country is one of the most dignified things someone can do and I was always going to serve the United States at some point in time,” he said. “In Ghana, we learn about the history of the United States and I’ve always had such a great respect for what I know as the greatest military in the world, so I take tremendous pride in serving. It’s also very much about giving back to the country that has given me an opportunity that I never expected to have.”

Mohammed has served aboard Milius since November 2022 and is not sure what his military future holds, but he said there is one specific duty he has in mind.

“My personal wish is to be a recruiter in New York, where I was recruited,” he said. “When I look at the way everything happened in my case, I probably hesitated to join the military because I didn’t know a lot about it. I know there are so many others in the same shoes, who are potentially great service men or women and don’t know they are capable or that they qualify. It would be an honor to recruit young men and women who can serve their country just as I am.”

In the long term, Mohammed is focused on community service, something he was already doing in New York long before joining the Navy. In 2013, he started a program called The First Time, which encourages Bronx youths to avoid destructive “first time” experiences, such as a first cigarette or first drug use. He said his prior military experience might help drive this kind of community effort.

“With a military background, I can now confidently talk to congressmen, mayors, lawmakers and other civic leaders and show them what I want to do in an effort to get their support,” said Mohammed. “There’s a lot of things happening out there that are not good for our society and a lot of young people in the Bronx living lives of hopelessness. That’s what we need to confront and we need to do give our very best toward changing that.”

Despite such a strong commitment to helping his newfound community and country, Mohammed has still not forgotten where he came from.

“It’s a great opportunity to feel and experience both sides of the coin,” he said. “Coming from very humble beginnings, life was hard, and now I have the privilege of being an American, but any time I go to Ghana, it’s a homecoming with friends and family. Ghana is always going to be there with me until the last breath of my life, which is a gift in itself.”

Milius is assigned to Commander, Task Force 71/Destroyer Squadron (DESRON) 15, the Navy’s largest forward-deployed DESRON and the U.S. 7th Fleet’s principal surface force.

U.S. 7th Fleet is the U.S. Navy’s largest forward-deployed numbered fleet, and routinely interacts and operates with allies and partners in preserving a free and open Indo-Pacific region.