THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, May 22, 1996 TAG: 9605210352
SECTION: MILITARY NEWS PAGE: A8 EDITION: FINAL
COLUMN: MY TURN
SOURCE: BY JOHN HENRY DOUCETTE
LENGTH: 71 lines
Adm. Jeremy ``Mike'' Boorda's shadow fell on every man and woman who means it when they put on the uniform. Until Thursday, his seemed a warm and flawless shadow.
Amid our shock, the jokes started Friday morning. I overheard a couple when I was walking up to my office. They were the kind of jokes people told after the space shuttle disaster.
A friend told me one of them and laughed, but saw that I wasn't really chuckling.
He said, ``You really liked him, huh?''
``Yeah,'' I said.
A lot of senior Navy officials didn't like that Boorda was opening doors the way he did - opening doors for women in the military. I had some trouble with the whole women on the carrier thing myself. But I got over it and I'm glad the change is happening.
Some of the admirals and old salts didn't appreciate Adm. Boorda's strides toward growth in the Navy, but these were steps that needed to be taken. Adm. Boorda did his job and implemented policy to help make the transition as smooth as possible. For that he was accused of pandering to politicians.
He told how it was.
``We've got some problems,'' he would say. ``It's no secret. We're going to work on them.''
When my ship was off the coast of Bosnia in 1993, Adm. Boorda was then the Navy's commander in Southern Europe. He came out to our carrier, where he addressed the crew over the ship's TV system, which is run in the journalism shop where I worked. He said he didn't know when we'd get to port, but that he'd drink a beer for us after he flew off the ship that night, evoking a decent laugh from the crew.
I shook his hand moments after he came off the set. I was 19 then and he came up to about my chin. I remember I needed a haircut and was sure he knew it too. He just told me to keep up the good work.
Enlisted guys were calling him ``Admiral Beer-Day'' because we were sure we weren't going to see land anytime soon. The nickname ``Bad News Boorda'' surfaced too.
But we were pretty impressed because he told us how it was going to be without pulling a punch. Not every leader has integrity. Not every leader can communicate with all of his subordinates honestly.
The next year I met him again. He was CNO then, after Adm. Kelso retired. I thought he was just what the Navy needed, a sailor who had been in the trenches in a way most senior officers don't seem to be to enlisted troops.
I was glad he was there. He was the enlisted guy with a tough past who had made it big. That day and the other times I had the pleasure of hearing him speak or interviewing him, I never counted the medals on his chest.
He had the habit of bumping up medals on the spot when he awarded them. He did so more than once while presenting awards on my ship. He'd take a Navy Achievement Medal and make it a Navy Commendation, a higher decoration.
Senior guys usually hated this. A lot complained how this cheapened the medals. Many of them got their awards during the Vietnam years, which I've always understood as a period of inflated medal and ribbon dissemination.
I think the CNO figured that whatever he pinned on a guy's chest couldn't make up for all the hours away from family, friends and household pets. I think the CNO remembered what it's like to go an 18-hour day.
I think enlisted people always will remember, no matter what ugliness comes out surrounding his death, that Adm. Boorda knew what it feels like to be Personnelman Boorda.
Sadly, he let us down while trying to spare us embarrassment. He could tackle Tailhook, but not this ``V'' nonsense? Whatever explanation lies in the note he left the Navy, it is not sufficient to heal the Navy's latest wound. We have suffered cut after cut as a service in the past few years. It seems illogical that our senior man would think a bullet wound would act as a bandage. MEMO: (John Henry Doucette is a freelance writer who served as a Navy
journalist) by CNB