One of the fascinating aspects of interviewing retired Navy men and women is discovering what sorts of personalities they have long after the conclusion of their active service. For some, the persona is the same or nearly so; for others, there is a change.
One example came to mind recently with the death of Vice Admiral Jerome H. King Jr. at age 88 on 13 June 2008. His reputation as an active naval officer was that of someone who was exacting and demanding. Captain Al Bowen commanded the guided missile frigate USS Preble (DLG-15) in the mid-1960s when King was embarked as Commander Destroyer Squadron One. He described King as "hard as nails but just the sort of man you want on board your ship in wartime."
My own encounter with Admiral King came in 1988 when I went to interview him in the condominium in southern California that he and his wife, Annette, shared. The retired warrior I met then had evidently mellowed considerably following his shipboard days. Both he and Annette were friendly and gracious. They welcomed me warmly, and our four days together proved a real bonding experience. It was soon a case of "Call me Jerry."
Among many other things, he told me about his command of the destroyer Bache (DD-470) during a deployment to the Sixth Fleet in 1954. The ship happened to be in port in St. Raphael, France, on 14 July, which the French celebrate as a national holiday—Bastille Day—and which also happened to be King's 35th birthday. King decided the ship needed to be robust in her celebration of both the holiday and his birthday, so he got the crew to shoot off star shells and Very pistols to produce fireworks. Virtually every year after hearing the story, I called him on 14 July to wish him a happy Bastille Day, and, "Oh, by the way, happy birthday."
A major milestone in King's career came in 1970 when the Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral Thomas H. Moorer, selected him for promotion to three stars and as commander of U.S. Naval Forces Vietnam. As a result, King became one of the first Naval ROTC graduates to achieve the rank of vice admiral. As King told the story in our first interview, he had arrived at Yale University in 1937 as a bursary student, one who had to work his way through school.
His explanation of what happened after he arrived in New Haven, Connecticut, was in keeping with the relaxed tone of the interviews: "I had promised to send my parents a postcard reporting my safe arrival, so I went to the post office at Yale Station, which was just a short distance from the room I was assigned in a freshman dormitory. I got in the wrong line, and before I knew it, I was signed up in the Naval ROTC." He laughed heartily after delivering that recollection.
In 1958, a few years after the Bache, King was ordered to the staff of commander Carrier Division Six. As someone who had successfully commanded a destroyer, he hated the prospect of being on board an aircraft carrier. He tried to avoid the duty but couldn't. As he later acknowledged, it turned out to be a great break. Each of the admirals whom he served, Vice Admiral George Anderson and Vice Admiral Moorer, became CNO in later years. The demanding approach that was sometimes a bane to King's juniors made a positive impression on the admirals he served. Moorer later asked for King to join his Seventh Fleet staff, and in the mid-1960s King was executive assistant for CNOs David McDonald and Moorer. He demonstrated the same mettle in sorting out Pentagon crises as he had on board ship.
That led to his assignment as commander of Antisubmarine Warfare Group One in 1968 and '69. That was another case in which the demanding shipboard persona emerged. During deployments it is customary for juniors to put on skits or roasts that gently make fun of their seniors. One group on board the flagship Kearsarge (CVS-33) did a parody of a song from the musical Camelot. Their version began, "I wonder what the King is doing tonight; I wonder whose ass he's chewing tonight."
That tour of duty also brought out the diplomatic side of King. In the spring of 1969 the Australian carrier Melbourne collided with the U.S. destroyer Frank E. Evans (DD-754), cutting her in two. King presided over an international inquiry to determine the causes of the accident. He said in our interview that he had to be extremely careful to be fair to all concerned, and he felt constantly under the gun because the wife of the Melbourne's skipper covered the proceeding as a journalist and criticized King for virtually everything he did.
In 1972, by which time Moorer was Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, he called on his protege once again and made King the director of operations, J-3, on the Joint Staff. It was the swan song for the officer who claimed to have gotten in the wrong line at the post office in New Haven all those years earlier. Both Moorer and King retired on the same day, 1 July 1974.
I felt fortunate that the former warrior I met in the autumn of his life had mellowed in the years since he had been his most difficult, because I truly enjoyed the friendship that was formed during our time together.