The Nation Needs Broadly Educated Officers with Diverse Backgrounds

I had the opportunity to attend the program on 24 September to celebrate the College of Holy Cross NROTC Unit’s 75^th Anniversary. I received Naval Institute CEO Vice Admiral Peter Daly’s permission to post his abridged remarks here.

* * *

. . . This superb NROTC unit whose 75^th anniversary we salute came into being in 1941.

Pearl Harbor was just 90 days away when the first 115 NROTC students enrolled. J. William Middendorf and Edwin Meyer—here tonight—were in that first group. In those days, Holy Cross enrollment was about 1,200 male students, taught primarily by Jesuit priests. They taught more than the liberal arts; they imparted values. Values that Holy Cross students—and even some notable faculty—would carry with them to war.

The country was preparing for war—total war. And America needed more naval officers than the Naval Academy and NROTC could produce—and fast!

Today, it is hard to imagine the total national commitment required to fight and win World War II. Everyone was involved and, with so many young men going to war, a small school the size of Holy Cross may not have survived without some affiliation with the military.

As an example of the times, my father Joseph Daly was Holy Cross ’43. The Navy came in February 1943 and said: “College is over; consider yourselves graduated.” The Navy ordered my dad to report to V-7 Midshipman School at Columbia University a few days later. Ninety days after that he was Ensign Daly, U.S. Naval Reserve, gunnery officer on a destroyer escort in the North Atlantic.

In the next 24 months, his ship escorted convoys in the North Atlantic nine times. After that, his ship was modified to carry frogmen (to blow up beach obstacles) and sent to the Pacific. First place they went was Okinawa in March of 1945.

The fact Holy Cross already had an NROTC unit played large in the school being selected in 1942/1943 as one of the schools to take part in the V12 program which included course work and training right here on campus. NROTC plus V12 ensured that Holy Cross had enough students! Many also enlisted, and many entered combat.

Chaplain O’Callahan is awarded the Medal of Honor by President Harry Truman at the White House, 23 January 1946

Our O’Callahan Society namesake—Father Joseph T. O’Callahan, S.J.—received the Medal of Honor for his heroic actions on the aircraft carrier USS Franklin (CV-13) in 1945. One of Father O’Callahan’s students, First Lieutenant John V. Powers, U.S. Marine Corps, would also receive the Medal of Honor for courageous actions during the Marshall Islands Campaign. These men combined Holy Cross values with Navy and Marine Corps values such as honor, courage, and commitment and carried them to war.

NROTC and the other officer programs at the school were important for Holy Cross and important to the nation.

After the war, after so many had served and so many died, what was Holy Cross’s relationship with the military going to be? Would it continue? Following the war, the Navy was at a major personnel crossroads. Ninety percent of the officers who had fought in the war were not Naval Academy grads. Three million officers and men had been demobilized.

Rear Admiral James L. Holloway, Jr., led a Navy board to recommend the best system and approach for educating officers in the Navy. They looked at three schemes:

• Following coursework civilian college, channel all career officers through the Naval Academy for one or two years.
• “Double down” on the Naval Academy. They examined whether to build a second Naval Academy and expand the Academy at Annapolis.
• Use both the NROTC and the Naval Academy. Maintain the four-year undergraduate program for each.

The third option—that became known as the “Holloway Plan”—was recommended and adopted because of the proven track record of NROTC, and because of the strategic flexibility it provided in dealing with change.¹ Under this plan, most NROTC grads would now receive regular Navy—not Reserve—commissions.

In the early 1980s, Admiral Holloway, long since retired, reflected in an interview on some of the inner sanctum deliberations of the board. Thinking back, Holloway—said, “I was confident that the four years at Annapolis was the optimum system to create—I don’t like the word ‘dedication’—‘a habit of service’ in people who would stay with you. Some would get out, of course, but in most cases the imprint of those four years of almost Jesuitical preparation would produce a career commitment.”²

“Almost Jesuitical preparation” and “habit of service” are interesting words from a Naval Academy grad like Holloway! Upon commissioning, Holy Cross graduates know the meaning of service and, through the decades, have and are serving with honor and distinction. We rely upon the midshipmen here tonight to continue that tradition of service! When Holloway talked about commitment, he also meant career commitment.

The NROTC unit here at Holy Cross has provided more career flag and general officers (16) per capita than any other NROTC unit in the country. . . .

The Navy includes people of all faiths. As you may know, Roman Catholics have the highest representation as a religious group within the military. In the Navy, the officer corps is skewed even more toward Catholicism. Maybe these two groups—Catholics and Navy—really do go together:

• Hierarchical
• Uniforms
• Lots of rules
• Fear
• Consequences
• Guilt

Or maybe, more seriously, it is the shared values: The notion of the servant leader; empathy and concern for others that arises from a liberal education; and a standard of critical thought and responsible action.

Captain Thomas G. Kelley stands at attention during his retirement ceremony at the United States Navy Memorial, 31 August 1990

Those same values carried then Lieutenant Commander Thomas Gunning Kelley to “disregard his injuries and lead his men to safety” as commander of River Assault Division 152 in Vietnam in June 1969. Tom Kelley was the third leader from Holy Cross to earn the Medal of Honor.

Four years after Tom Kelley’s actions, when I was a new midshipman fourth class in early September 1973, I was looking around the NROTC unit spaces in O’Kane Hall and wandered into the large, old NROTC lecture room—wood slat construction, tin ceiling. I am sure many here can picture it. At the base of the room were several large tables. Each was piled high with textbooks. I was curious and started checking out all these books, each stamped “property of NROTC.”

As I looked, I realized each table represented a different school . . . all the first table said, “property of NROTCU Harvard.” The next was all books from NROTCU Dartmouth . . . next Yale, then Brown. . . .

In 1969, in protest to the Vietnam War, those Ivy League schools decided NROTC had to leave. No new midshipmen entered those schools, and the number of NROTC students dwindled through the spring of 1973. I remember wondering about all the students who used those books. I knew how important having a NROTC scholarship was to my family and my opportunity to attend Holy Cross and become a naval officer.

Now, at these schools, the program was banned. Their books were now collected and stacked high on those tables. So in the fall of 1973, Holy Cross was the last full-up NROTC school in New England. The fact it was still standing is testament to College President Father John Brooks, S.J., who could have accepted the political trend and the recommendation of a report from the “Ad Hoc Committee for the Study of ROTC.”

It was almost his first order of business as president when he took over in 1970. He decided to reach out to the officer who led the NROTC unit: Captain Harry Moore, U.S. Navy. Father Brooks started a dialogue and invested himself in it. John Brooks and Harry Moore worked over the ensuing months to engage students and faculty on the critical need for an officer corps with a diverse set of values and a strong moral compass.

Less than six months after a campus-wide strike and demonstration, the majority of students participating in a student body referendum voted in favor of retaining ROTC. A bit after that, Father Brooks convinced the faculty to do the same.

The year 1973 was a turning point for the country and military overall.

The majority of troops were pulled out from Vietnam. The national draft ended in early 1973. The draft—which had ensured at least a basic measure of diversity across layers of society—was now gone.

With an all-volunteer force, what would it mean if certain parts of society completely abandoned the idea of military service? Father Brooks was a strong advocate for the need for a professional officer corps that was exposed to a broad diversity of academic thought and underpinned with a solid grounding in Judeo-Christian ethics. He knew we needed to a bridge between the nation and the military.

That bridge extended to a broader consortium of schools in Worcester. By January 1979, the unit enrolled ten scholarship students from Worcester Polytechnic Institute and included other students from Clark University, Assumption College, and Worcester State. Currently included are Worcester Polytechnic and Worcester State and now, Brown University.

Just two years ago, an emissary from the Navy visited the Dean and outlined a Navy proposal to modify to the NROTC program to reduce the Navy’s scholarship commitment to liberal arts grads. Under this scheme, only technical/STEM majors would receive the full scholarship. Non-technical, liberal arts grads would get a significantly lower tuition stipend. The “draft” STEM program already was baked into the Navy’s budget!

Concerned members of the O’Callahan Society saw this as a call to action. In a team effort, the Society collected its points and wrote to the Navy to make the case for all NROTC students at Holy Cross and throughout the country. The key points made by the O’Callahan Society were:

• Holy Cross consistently has produced quality officers who can succeed in the Navy’s technical programs.
• For example, Holy Cross grads performed very well in nuclear power training.
• Under the proposed scheme, liberal arts disciplines would be priced out by tech majors and tech grads.
• Liberal arts institutions would be adversely affected.
• The Society made the point that, just as diversity of race, color, and creed are valued, so too should diversity of thinking.

Happily, the O’Callahan Society’s letter caused the Secretary of the Navy to reconsider the proposal, and it was stopped at his desk at the 12^th hour . . . .

The NROTC units at Holy Cross, at Worcester, and units across the land bring the Navy to the nation. In that regard alone, NROTC is important. Through this program students, parents, neighbors, educators, influencers —side-by-side—develop a greater understanding, appreciation, and respect for each other.

The officers commissioned through NROTC units across the land bring a diversity of knowledge, talents, expertise, and backgrounds. They provide a far stronger and more capable Navy and Marine Corps, than if the ranks were filled from Annapolis alone. . . .

Simply stated, we need more than specialists to man today’s Navy and Marine Corps. We need broadly educated officers with diverse backgrounds, who possess sound character and a strong moral compass.

That is why Father Brooks supported ROTC at Holy Cross. He saw this need. He knew that bringing together all facets of society—serving one another—was and is to key to strengthening the nation.

Whether it is on the Navy’s side or the college’s side we have to work at this relationship. We can never stop building that bridge, and we can never take this very special relationship for granted! For 75 years Holy Cross has epitomized the spirit and faith that have served our Navy and Nation, and it will continue to do so for our future.

1. Rear Admiral James L. Holloway, Jr., U.S. Navy, “The Holloway Plan – A Summary View and Commentary,” U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings, vol. 73, no. 11 (November 1947).
2. Admiral James L. Holloway, Jr., U.S. Navy (Ret.) with Jack Sweetman, “A Gentleman’s Agreement,” U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings, vol. 106, no. 9 (September 1980).