Bravo Fleet
Summary
Ben started out his career later in life, starting out as an rural veterinarian before going back to school to treat people when he finally got tired of spending half of each day with a hand up livestock’s rears. Joining Starfleet came after that. The Lafeyette is his second posting. He’s been fighting retirement with fervor.
Appearance
Ben has longer than regulation black hair that is still thick with not a single white hair. His skin is well weathered from a life lived mostly in the desert sun. He has dark brown eyes that always seem a little mischievous and a lopsided grin to match it. There’s a ghost of a mustache on his upper lip that sadly never gets any thicker. He calls it his project piece. Ben’s build is solid and tall, standing 5’11” and made of mostly lean muscle.
Personality
There’s a certain air of boyishness to Ben that he’s never outgrown. He’s never married, never settled (except for dogs. He’s always had a dog no matter where he’s been. The current one is Junior: an older bloodhound who spends most of the day sleeping). He’s a dreamer and a doer that will bend, but not break for anyone or anything. So long as you can think, there’s always a way out or up.
Ben doesn’t have vices. An occasional drink is good for the nerves. That every so often cigar is a part of self care. He’ll talk circles around anyone who tries to argue the fact just to be a pest. Very active and will take any chance to be out in the sun, he’s a true outdoorsman.
History
As a child Ben grew up in a group home after his parents died in a fire when he was very young. He was trained from very young to value hard work and productivity, then steered towards staying on the farm, then the area, then surrounding farms because that’s what people like him did. He never saw past it, or thought that he’d do anything more than that until he started stitching up sliced hands and setting broken arms while he was out there. It dawned on him that new babies and baby animals weren’t that different. Or that the same sturdy muscle lining a horse’s legs were there in humans, too.
Starting medicine was a new chapter of his life that he thought would be an improvement, but it wasn’t the answer, just the question. Studying wasn’t hard because he was the type to throw his all into whatever he did, but the tidy little sterile office that he was renting in Show Low was more like a prison. It just wasn’t it.
About 40 he found himself sitting in the desert at 2 AM looking up in the stars and really questioning if he needed to start over again when it came to him. He was already looking at it. There was a lot of pushback to him joining Starfleet, but he worked his way around it and proved that he was a sly fox and worth the shot.
Space turned out to be a lot more his speed. On ship it was still sterile and tidy, but there was a dirt, a grit, a darkness that appealed to him. Out there, there was something to strive for. Odds to beat. Gambles to be made. That was where he belonged.