Annapolis

  In 1971 our family was complete with three daughters (9, 7, and 1) and we were living in San Diego. I was just finishing 3 years at sea on the USS ROGERS (DD 876) and I was due for shore duty. To my surprise I received orders to the Mathematics Department of the Naval Academy. After 14 years of service I had learned that there were (unofficially) three tiers of officers: the top tier were the Naval Academy graduates, next were those who were commissioned through NROTC, and then the rest were former enlisted sailors who had been commissioned through OCS. And I was in that bottom tier! I had enlisted in 1957 as a “weekend warrior” while I was in college and I had gone to OCS. But luck was with me since my prior shore duty had been teaching gunnery and naval history at the University of Idaho, and I took advantage of taking courses leading to an MS in Math at no cost. Since I was considered a faculty member both Donna and I did not have to pay tuition.

   So we packed up and headed east. We had quarters on the academy grounds, between the cemetery and the hospital. The married faculty members who were mostly Lieutenants and Lieutenant Commanders lived in old but well-kept houses which were clustered together, and almost all of us had young children. There was an international flavor because there were several foreign exchange officers and their families. I remember well the French, Japanese and Mexican officers in particular. The Japanese officer held an informal Japanese class for the other officers, and the Mexican officer and I studied Japanese together. I taught calculus, complex variables and probability; each class had 20 midshipmen (+ or -) and each class had an appointed leader. At the beginning of each class I would enter the classroom and the leader would call the class to attention. I would say “Seats, gentlemen” and class began.

   We had Saturday classes, but we could usually arrange classes so that we would have one weekday off. I often used the day off to exercise or ride my bike. We joined the local bike organization, the Ann Arundel Wheelers, and Donna, I, and the two older girls all had bikes and our toddler rode in a seat on my bike. The country roads around Annapolis were good riding and we would typically ride a few miles and stop at a seafood house for crabs and beer. Donna became a potter, and we bought a potter’s wheel and a kiln from the Baltimore school system and set them up in our garage. Donna did fine work until her back gave out - so she gave up potting and moved to watercolor.

 Our girls made friends with the other kids in the neighborhood, and our nine year old became a close friend to the nine year old boy next door. Now, 50 years later, they are still close. He “came out” as gay, and now lives with his husband in Texas. But at the time the biggest domestic problem was in the public schools. Maryland is a southern state in most ways, and the schools were racially segregated. The Annapolis school district took a sledgehammer approach to integration by adjusting boundaries so that all children living on the Naval Academy would be sent to one of the urban schools (which were largely black) and some of the displaced black children would be bussed to one of the suburban schools which were largely white. The rationale was that the “Navy brats” were used to changing schools frequently, so they wouldn’t be troubled. There was a grain of truth to the plan but it was obvious that the urban schools were run down physically and had suffered for years from insufficient funding and the suburban schools had flourished, and there was no apparent effort to increase funding for the urban schools. 

   Meanwhile there was turmoil at the federal level. The Vietnam war was clearly not going to be won; the Watergate scandal forced Nixon to resign; and the Naval Academy was preparing to admit women midshipmen! In 1972 I was elected Chairman of the Faculty Forum. This was a job that had no significant power, but could make recommendations from the faculty to the Admiral. The faculty was half active duty officers (like myself) and half civilian government employees. The first woman officer faculty member in 1972 was LCDR Georgia Clark, and almost all of our business was making recommendations about preparing for the first group of women midshipmen to be admitted in 1976.

   By 1973 I finished my year as Chairman of the Faculty Forum without any major problems and looked forward to a quiet final year teaching. I expected to go back to sea duty in another year (which I did). But the integration of the local public schools was still an issue. So I ended up as President of the local PTA for my last year in Annapolis. Of course I did not solve all the school’s problems. However I made it clear that I strongly supported both racial integration and better funding for the schools. Not everyone agreed with me but at least at the end of the year parents and teachers were talking constructively with each other. And then we moved to Norfolk, Virginia for my next sea duty.