Admiral Samuel Gravely is one of my personal heroes. I will never forget his coming to the Walbrook Maritime Academy in the inner city of Baltimore. He drove there from his home in Haymarket, Virginia (no short distance), wore his uniform at my request, and spent the entire day with the cadets, promising them that if they would stay in school he would come to their graduation.
I also remember crossing the Atlantic with him as the admiral in charge. We were a mixed fleet of destroyers, cruisers, and lumbering amphibs. He decided to break the monotony of the crossing by holding a tactical maneuvering exercise in the middle of the Atlantic (something the amphibs were not used to doing). After one particular evolution in which an LST made several rather amazing maneuvers (all of them incorrect), he sent a flashing-light message to the errant ship containing a single word: "Good." He then followed with another message: "Reference my last message: 'GOD!'" His sense of humor was but one of many qualities that made this man memorable. He will be missed. Admiral Gravely passed away on 22 October 2004.
—Tom Cutler, author, Sailor's History of the U.S. Navy