The Good Life – July-August 2017

BY: BRITTNEY GOODMAN
Shane Tibiatowski, U.S. Navy veteran,
has experienced the excitement of
traveling the world on three different
battle tours and even apprehended
several drug running ships. However, for
the last seventeen years, he has served
a somewhat quieter, but satisfying role
as a mortgage lending officer focusing
on helping other veterans. West Fargo
native, Tibiatowski works at Fairway
Independent Mortgage Corporation in
Fargo.
Tibiatowski is an award-winning
specialist helping veterans own homes.
For 2016, Tibiatowski was sixth in
the nation among lending specialists
in the “Homes for Heroes” program.
Through the home loans he facilitated,
he gave back $164,000 to veterans
during 2016. And he proudly displays
the big crystal trophy.
Graduating from West Fargo High
School in 1990, seven days later
he was in boot camp for the Navy in
Orlando, FL. He said, “It sounds like
a vacation spot, but it was not.” After
ten weeks of boot camp during a very
hot summer, he went to A School in
Meridian, Mississippi, a place that he
said “was even hotter than Florida.
There was no cool breeze.”
Tibiatowski then went to San Diego:
“I chose to stay stateside and to be
on the USS Chandler DDG 996 – a
guided missile destroyer. I selected the
Navy because I wanted to travel and,
honestly, it paid the most.” He added,
“Did you know that USS stands for
United States Ship? Many people don’t
know that.”
Stationed out of San Diego,
Tibiatowski went on several Western
Pacific deployments (WESTPACs)
from 1990-1994 on the USS Chandler
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