Admiral McNitt was a class act, widely admired. During World War II, he met his future wife, Barbara MacMurray, while he was executive officer of the submarine USS Barb (SS-220). He later served as Superintendent of the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California, from 1967 to 1971. Following is an edited excerpt from an interview by the Naval Institute’s Paul Stillwell on 9 March 1998.
Barbara led the officer students’ wives in a major project to rehabilitate the marvelous dining room in Herrmann Hall at the Naval Postgraduate School. We were shocked to see that the great arched windows had been fitted with Venetian blinds and that the floor was scuffed and in bad shape. The ceiling was deteriorated. That was the most famous dining room in the Western United States at one time. Before the Navy took over the building, the Del Monte Hotel was famous for this beautiful room. Barbara gathered the wives together and organized a series of benefits that raised enough money to refinish the room. Included were mirrors and proper draperies on these great big windows to bring it back to its former elegance. I think it made a huge difference.
The whole area was a center of gracious living. Our quarters were great, and we used them as a gathering place for the officer students and their wives, as well as for official entertaining. Barb had an immediate rapport with the officers’ wives. She had married me when I was in my first year at PG School [Naval Postgraduate School]. She knew what it was like to have a husband who was buried in the books all the time. We had young children, and so did the students and their wives.
We entertained senior guests constantly. We eventually had four stewards, so we could handle almost anything. We had the Assistant Secretary of the Navy there once for an evening dinner. All of a sudden, the door opened, and two of our kids, Douglas and Katy, came out all covered in ink. They had been in the playroom, and somehow they had spilled a bottle of ink. They tried to clean it up, but they got it all over themselves. They came in and stood next to Barbara. She just smiled, took them by the hand, threw them in the tub, and returned. So there was hardly any pause in the dinner, but that was our life.
As our time in Monterey approached my transfer date, we had a wonderful sendoff with a hilarious party as the finale. Then, on 27 April 1971, we headed south to Palmdale for a visit with Barbara’s cousin. Our car was towing a trailer behind us. Barbara was driving down a grade about eight miles west of Mojave. I was asleep and riding in the front seat, two boys in the middle seat, and little Katy in the back. I was awakened by Barbara saying, “I’m having trouble steering,” and a moment later the rig flipped. The trailer jackknifed, and the whole works turned over. The trailer was demolished, and we were upside down. The police report said there was a high wind at the time.
Barbara was thrown out of the car, and Katy was thrown out of the back. For our safety I had been careful to get a station wagon, the last one made that had the gas tank under the center of the car, not in the wheel well. This may have saved us, because the car didn’t burn. We were able to crawl out through a broken window in the back. Robbie, 12 years old, very calmly said, “I think we can get out back here.” He showed me how to get out. I was kind of banged up with ribs and so on. I had a seat belt on, and Barbara didn’t. We were unable to resuscitate her. I think she died on impact. Katy had a broken leg. We were able to get an ambulance and got to Edwards Air Force Base, which took care of us. It was a tragic end for our beloved Barbara and a very sad thing for our family.
We were medevaced to the Bethesda Naval Hospital. The surgeons there found that Katy’s break had been so well handled by the duty Air Force doctor at Edwards that all they had to do was let her knit. But it was months before she could walk again. Our family moved into a house that we had built in Bethesda and, with the help of friends, gradually held this small family together.
In 1972, that magnificent dining room at the PG School was named in honor of Barbara. Malcolm Moran did a sculpture of a cypress tree for the school. It’s so appropriate, because Barbara had lived in Monterey, and the Lone Cypress Tree in Pebble Beach has long been the symbol of the area.
