THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, January 4, 1996 TAG: 9601040295
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY JACK DORSEY, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 190 lines
It was 4 o'clock Saturday afternoon, a time when many like to settle down for a weekend football game on television, do a little fishing, or even take a snooze.
Instead, Adm. William J. ``Bud'' Flanagan, the commander of the Atlantic Fleet, boarded his plane at the Norfolk Naval Air Station, again, ready for work.
Carrying his dress blue uniform in a hanging bag as he entered the cabin of the 32-year-old P-3 Orion - his globe-trotting taxi - he plopped his briefcase next to a built-in desk and immediately began greeting the eight-member, Florida-based flight crew.
Addressing them by their first names, asking about family, the silver-haired commander seemed more like Dad than the four-star commander-in-chief responsible for 194 ships, 1,300 planes and 136,124 people.
This is his second year in command, a year filled with unique commitments overseas: in Bosnia, the Persian Gulf, Haiti. Budgets are tight. Downsizing continues. He has to keep moving. If he doesn't, he'll lose.
Wearing a brown leather jacket and green flight suit for warmth and utility, Flanagan was headed for Mobile, Ala., and a dinner speech to the Navy League's annual conference. It involved a six-hour flight for the two-hour dinner/reception that Saturday. Flanagan's formal talk would last only 12 minutes.
``I've learned you can't keep anyone's attention much longer than that. Besides, they want to get back to the hospitality suite anyway.''
Sunday, after a few hours sleep at home, he met the same air crew on the same tarmac for an afternoon flight to Newport, R.I., to meet with a group of Naval War College students and war planners. Then it was on to Washington for a series of talks with budget officers before returning to his Atlantic Fleet headquarters in Norfolk to prepare for an 11-day trip to South America the following week.
``How can you not love it?'' asked the 52-year-old who heads the Navy's largest operational command.
``It requires a lot of energy,'' he said. ``There are so many things to do and so little time to get them done.
``My only regret is that the time doesn't go by a little slower.''
Normally, Flanagan's schedule is so airtight it leaves no room for leisure.
That bothers Lt. Cmdr. Adan Gutierrez, the admiral's aide and chief scheduler. But it can't be helped.
``Everybody wants him,'' Gutierrez said.
But Flanagan gives easily.
For example, also aboard for the Saturday evening flight was a second-class petty officer, hitching a ride to Mobile to see his family.
Flanagan, when told the young man was going on leave that weekend, heading for the same destination, invited him to ride along.
``It'll save him money, probably keep him off the road too,'' said Flanagan.
Gutierrez, who joined the staff a year ago, is the officer everyone must go through to get to the admiral. He arrives at work a couple hours before Flanagan and stays a couple hours after the admiral's day officially ends.
``The hours are long but the rewards of working for such a guy are great,'' Gutierrez said.
In October, he had already planned Flanagan's days through February.
Asked if Flanagan was the type to ever show anger, Gutierrez said no, it's not his style.
But, said the aide, just a week earlier, he had given the admiral every reason to get mad at him.
Gutierrez had made a scheduling mistake that fouled up Flanagan's plans. Instead of yelling and spitting out orders, or finding a new scheduler, Flanagan simply told him: ``You ruined my Sunday.''
``That's all he had to say. I felt so bad,'' said Gutierrez.
Flanagan has but one hatred, he said.
``I hate fear in the workplace. It is damaging. There is no reason people should come to work in the morning and their stomach feels like it's full of golf balls.''
For a mariner who began his career wanting to drive merchant ships around the world, Bud Flanagan has changed course drastically since his early years at the Massachusetts Maritime Academy, where he received a bachelor's degree in maritime transportation.
Today the ``CINC'' (for commander in chief), as he is known - also called simply ``the Boss'' - is well on his way to logging more miles in the air than he accumulated on the high seas during his first 25 years of sailing.
The son of a Hyannis, Mass., couple, Flanagan is one of eight children born to William and Eleanor Flanagan.
He is a native of Jesup, Ga., but moved to Cape Cod with his family in the 1940s when his father went to work there as a state trooper.
Flanagan and his siblings grew up on Cape Cod. His father attends Mass daily. His parents knew Rose and Joseph Kennedy well. One brother still sails in the merchant marine as a chief mate.
After graduating from college in 1964, Bud, the second-born, served in the merchant marine fleet for three years, working as a deck officer.
Flanagan switched to the Navy in 1967, accepting a commission as an ensign and serving extensively at sea, aboard the amphibious helicopter landing ship Dubuque and guided missile destroyer Parsons. He later commanded the frigate Bronstein and destroyer Kidd.
Other assignments included duty in the Pacific as commander of Destroyer Squadron Five and in the Atlantic as 2nd Fleet commander.
It was shortly after President Bush nominated him to the 2nd Fleet post that Flanagan began to gain ground in the running for one of the Navy's few four-star posts.
He credits his parents with the successes he has achieved.
``My father and mother, like so many other Cape residents, taught their children the values of honesty, integrity and hard work,'' he said. ``The principles they instilled in us have served me very well as a naval officer.''
An avid sportsman who enjoys fishing and hunting, Flanagan said his love of the outdoors was inherited from his father.
``I think that is why I like to go to sea.''
But in the air, the admiral seems just as excited.
``Come up front for the take-off,'' he gestured, taking his wife, Barbara, by the hand toward the cockpit as the four-engine turboprop taxied to the east end of the runway.
Perched on a cushioned bench behind the two pilots and engineer, the couple watched in silence as the crew prepared for flight.
He asked only about the weather en route to Mobile, then remained quiet until the big plane lifted off, heading over the Navy's Norfolk waterfront, where about half the fleet he commands is based.
It's a $10 billion a year Fortune 500 company, he says of the Atlantic Fleet. That's how he sees this huge infrastructure. He tries to operate it as if it was a business that has all the problems and profits and losses of any other firm, despite its military complexities.
There's a lot to learn from the nation's successful companies, he said.
``Who has restructured themselves in the last 10 years?'' he asked. ``Major industries in the U.S,'' he responds.
Flanagan regularly talks to Fortune 500 CEOs who come to his headquarters to discuss their successes and failures.
``We talk about how they run their business, what they found to be their advantages, from cash flow, capitalization, reorganizing.
``I think that is part of my job. I deal in real money. What I want to do when I finish is be the best.''
Flanagan and his counterpart, Pacific Fleet Commander Adm. Ronald J. Zlatoper, are fully involved in more than a dozen major studies involving fleet reorganization. They also are wrestling with a mammoth budget project looking at the two fleets over the next five years.
Together, they have weathered the base-closing process, moving aircraft and commands back and forth across the nation to achieve the best economy. Now Flanagan is taking major strides to tear down base fences, as he has done from Maine to Florida, and to open the facilities to the public.
``We're looking at how we can make the area, Hampton Roads, better,'' he said. ``We have been together for a long time and I am hopeful we can develop whatever our future is going to be here.''
Midway on the flight to Mobile, the flight crew produced a birthday cake for Barbara, complete with candles that, once lighted, threatened to set off the smoke detectors aboard.
The dinner and reception at the Navy League's annual conference in Mobile called for her presence, too.
The crew also gave her an olive green flight suit as a gift, embossed with her name in yellow stitching. It was in anticipation of an 11-day trip to South America later in the month, where the flight time would stretch to 12 hours. The trip was later canceled because of the federal budget impasse on Capitol Hill.
Barbara passed around kisses to each, then hurried to see how the flight suit fit.
Returning to the passenger area, she talked about the admiral, his love of the outdoors, their infrequent time together, and his love for the job.
Their last planned vacation was in August when they were to visit family in Cape Cod for 10 days.
But Hurricane Felix threatened the Eastern Seaboard and Flanagan stayed in Norfolk to get the fleet to sea to avoid the storm.
``We spent the vacation at Missouri House (their government quarters on Admiral's Row) taking the carpet off the floor to upstairs. We were worried about flooding,'' she said.
The admiral has a propensity for inviting friends along whenever they go anyplace, said Barbara.
On the rare days they can get away, they try to sneak off to the Eastern Shore, where they've recently bought a farm.
``But he's always asking people along,'' she said. `` `Why don't you come with us,' '' she mimicked, giving him a disgruntled look, but in jest.
A decent cook and hunter, Flanagan has been known to haul ice coolers aboard his plane containing food he has prepared for trips. It beats some of the frozen chicken dinners he's had in the past, he said.
Most of the time he dislikes the banquet food he's served and most likely will let it sit.
That's what he did with the meal in Mobile late Saturday.
On the ride back he munched on cheese and crackers before landing in Norfolk just after 1 a.m., the beginning of another workday. ILLUSTRATION: Color photo
MARTIN SMITH-RODDEN/The Virginian-Pilot
``I hate fear in the workplace,'' says Adm. William J. ``Bud''
Flanagan, commander of the Atlantic Fleet. ``It is damaging. There
is no reason people should come to work in the morning and their
stomach feels like it's full of golf balls.''
KEYWORDS: PROFILE BIOGRAPHY U.S. NAVY U.S.
ATLANTIC FLEET by CNB