Notable Passings Captain David A. Long
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apt. David A. Long, the first executive director of NHF, passed away on May 12, 2020, at age 96. It was a big step for NHF to hire an executive director—the first paid staff member in its then-54-year history. NHF president Vice Adm. Walter S. Delany had handled most of the day-to-day administrative functions himself, but with his health on the decline, before he passed away in 1980, Delany agreed to hire an executive director. Fortunately, a great candidate had reached his retirement date from active duty. Captain Long had served as deputy director of naval history during an era when the Navy consolidated many of its historical entities, forming the Naval Historical Center (NHC; now the Naval History and Heritage Command) in 1975. Hired as the first NHF executive director, Captain Long served in this position until 1988. With the loss of Delany, the NHF turned again to a former CNO for leadership. Adm. James L. Holloway, III, would become the longest serving president of the Foundation, beginning an 18-year tenure in 1980. One of the big decisions made by Holloway was to close the NHF’s Truxtun-Decatur House Museum on Lafayette Square in 1982 and align the NHF to help support the NHC and its Navy Museum at the Washington Navy Yard. Captain Long facilitated the realignment of the NHF’s mission to provide support for the Navy’s history branch and its museum and founded the NHF-operated Navy Museum Store. A signature item he acquired that the store still carries are replicas of the Truxtun Bowl that is on display in the Navy Museum—a bowl whose twin had been presented by Commodore Thomas Truxtun to his friend and Revolutionary War comrade President George Washington. Besides opening a gift shop, Long and the NHF supported the relocation of the CNO’s home to Tingey House on the grounds of the Washington Navy Yard with the acquisition of period furnishings that would fit the style of the early 19th-century residence. The NHF continues in this support mission today. Retiring a second time in 1988, Long would be succeeded in turn by two more former deputy directors of naval history—Captains Kenneth Coskey and Charles T. Creekman. Creekman, who held the position for 17 years after relieving Coskey in 1999, remembered meeting up with his two predecessors as well as his former boss, Dr. Dudley, “at Trattoria Alberto’s Italian restaurant up 8th St. SE from the Navy Yard for a monthly luncheon that was full of naval history and sea stories.” For Long, the stories revolved around his career as a surface warfare officer. Born in Montana and raised in Kansas during the Depression, with the advent of World War II, he applied for the Navy’s V-12 program and served on a destroyer later in the war in the Pacific. Stationed after the war in Charleston, South Carolina, he met his future wife, Ruth Mengedoht. Married on June 24, 1950, the young couple’s honeymoon was disrupted, thanks to North Korean
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Naval Historical Foundation
tanks rolling into South Korea. With orders to get under way, Long arrived off the west coast of Korea in time for the Inchon landings. Over those pasta lunches, Captain Long recalled his tours as XO of the destroyer Wren, which supported the making of the movie Operation Petticoat; his command of the destroyer Greene; and his time as commodore of a destroyer division that participated in the annual UNITAS exercise with South American navies. He also shared stories about his shore tour converting the old Del Monte Hotel into the Naval Postgraduate School; assignments in Honolulu, Norfolk, and Galveston; a stint at the Naval War College; and serving as a Pol-Mil officer in the Pentagon at the height of the Vietnam War. One of Long’s Pol-Mil accomplishments included negotiations with the British government to create a naval base on Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean. Having retired to The Fairfax, a retirement community across from Fort Belvoir, Long would be predeceased by his wife Ruth in 2013. His interest in naval history continued as he attended NHF events throughout the past decade. He will be missed.
Dabney Rawlings Holloway
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he time apart between Admiral Holloway and his bride of 77 years would not be long as Dabney Rawlings Holloway passed away on April 7, 2020. As with the former CNO and chair of the NHF, Mrs. Holloway was born into a Navy family. Her father, Norborne Rawlings, graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy in 1917, two years ahead of her husband’s father. In his oral history Admiral Holloway fondly remembered meeting Dabney in late February 1942. Though a member of the Class of 1943, Holloway was slated to graduate a year ahead of schedule thanks to World War II. He recalled: I agreed to double date with my roommate Fred Gressard and his One-and-Only (“OAO”) Betty, who was rooming with Dabney Rawlings at the Ogontz School in Abington, Pennsylvania. We had a great time that included my breaking the rules by wearing a tattersall vest under my blue service jacket, and spending Saturday and Sunday afternoons at the cocktail hour in a dive called Annie’s Alley where we drank straight bourbon out of teacups—very much an offense against Academy regulations. The idea of being a First Classman with a very pretty girl in a fashionable dump with my coat unbuttoned displaying a loud checkered vest and being stimulated by Old Grand-Dad: that was my idea of having arrived at maturity. My first act Monday after the working day and during study hall was to call Dabney for a date the next weekend and the next. I didn’t wait for Fred Gressard or Betty to suggest a double date. From
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