THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, May 18, 1996 TAG: 9605180008
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A12 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Editorial
LENGTH: Medium: 55 lines
About a year ago, Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Jeremy ``Mike'' Boorda removed the ``combat V'' symbol affixed to the Navy Commendation Medal and the Navy Achievement Medal awarded him, respectively, in 1965 and 1973. His entitlement to the symbol for valor under fire had been questioned.
On Thursday, after learning that Newsweek would raise the issue of the formerly worn V's during an interview scheduled for that afternoon, Boorda, 57, took his life with a single bullet.
In notes found afterward, the CNO expressed concern that publicity about the vanished V's would further damage the Navy's battered reputation.
The suicide of the popular admiral, the first sailor ever to rise from enlisted status to head the U.S. Navy, stirred shock and grief. Tributes to Boorda's leadership qualities, energy and dedication to the U.S. Navy and the nation flowed quickly from military personnel, members of Congress and President Clinton, who had named Boorda CNO in April 1994.
Defense Secretary William Perry praised Boorda, as did many others, for being ``a sailor's sailor'' who had ``(a)t every stage of his career . . . put the interests of sailors and their families first.''
True as that is, the admiral had been severely criticized for abandoning colleagues who had come under attack for supposedly mishandling cases of alleged discrimination and harassment involving Navy women. Boorda himself had voiced regret at not fighting for the nomination of Adm. Stanley Arthur for command of all U.S. forces in the Pacific.
Arthur had been castigated for upholding the decision to flunk a female helicopter-pilot trainee out of flight school. The trainee said she was washed out because she had filed a sexual-harassment complaint. Arthur said she failed because her performance was substandard. He retired from the Navy rather than go through a contentious congressional confirmation hearing.
Like Adm. Frank Kelso II, his immediate precedessor as CNO, Boorda directed a peacetime Navy whose high degree of professional performance day in and day out is obscured by scandals reaching from the notorious Tailhook convention to criminality at the Naval Academy.
Meanwhile, Boorda had vigorously pressed the placement of women throughout the fleet despite entrenched opposition inside and outside the Navy. His detractors accused him of following a ``politically correct'' course to advance women in the Navy at the expense of readiness and senior officers' careers.
Public questioning of the V's on two of his Vietnam War-era decorations would have embarrassed Boorda personally as well as a Navy burdened by embarrassments. He clearly was pained and needed help that he seemingly did not seek. His lamentable self-inflicted death adds, rather than subtracts, pain all around. by CNB