A mixed fleet of destroyers, cruisers, and lumbering amphibs were making their way home from duty in the Mediterranean. Ahead of PIM (position and intended movement), the admiral in charge decided to take advantage of the extra time available and break the monotony of the transit by conducting a tactical maneuvering drill. Such drills were commonplace for the destroyers and the cruisers, but the amphibious ships were a bit out of their element. The fact that the flotilla was in the middle of the Atlantic where there was nothing to run into (except each other) probably encouraged the admiral's decision. With signal flags flapping in the wind, the drills began. After one particular evolution in which an LST made several rather amazing maneuvers (all of them incorrect), the admiral sent a flashing-light message to the errant ship containing a single word: "Good." He then followed up with another message: "Reference my last message: "GOD!'"
A good sense of humor was not this admiral's only attribute. Samuel L. Gravely's climb to flag rank was an extraordinary one. Enlisting in the Navy as a fireman apprentice in 1942, he was later selected to earn a commission in the Navy's V-12 program. When he first went to sea as an officer in a patrol craft in May 1945, he was one of the first—and very few, at the time—black officers to serve in a combatant ship. How unusual this was back then is illustrated by his arrest while on liberty in Miami. The charge? Impersonating an officer!
Leaving active duty at war's end, he was recalled for a one-year tour of recruiting duty in 1949, when a presidential order integrated the armed services. Fate intervened in the form of the Korean War, and Sam Gravely did not leave the Navy again for nearly 40 more years. Though he preferred to think of himself simply as a Navy man doing the job he loved, he was a trailblazer and was often in the spotlight as he achieved new milestones in America's quest for racial equality. In 1962, he and George Thompson became the first black officers to attend the Naval War College. He was the first African American to command a U.S. Navy warship, the USS Theodore E. Chandler (DD-717); the first to command an American warship under combat conditions, the USS Taussig (DD-746); the first to become an admiral; the first to rise to the rank of vice admiral; and the first to command a U.S. Fleet, the Third Fleet.
In rather stark contrast to all of those momentous achievements, another side of this man is evident in an event that took place in 1994. At the request of the director of the Walbrook Maritime Academy (an experimental school in the inner city area of Baltimore) the long-retired admiral donned his uniform, drove many miles at his own expense, and spent the entire day talking with young cadets, encouraging them to stay in school and take advantage of life's opportunities. Those who knew Sam Gravely well would not doubt that he preferred those few hours as a role model for young people over much of the attention he received while conquering mountains of prejudice and permanently opening new doors at nearly every level of his service.