Notable Passings

Captain David A. Long

Capt. 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 19 th -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 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

The 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 Continued on page 23

Other Awards of Note (Continued)

cans in the Navy. She chairs the command’s Senior Historians Advisory Committee. Dr. Akers earned her doctorate in U.S. history and public history at Howard University, where she taught women’s and public history as an adjunct professor. Her publications include her first monograph The Navy’s First Enlisted Women: Patriotic Pioneers (2019), book chapters, articles, encyclopedia entries, and book reviews. Recent assignments have taken her to Norfolk to capture the experiences of women assigned to the submarine USS John W. Warner.

Paul Stillwell is currently a freelance historian with a master’s degree in journalism from the University of Missouri. He served in the U.S. Naval Reserve from 1962 until his retirement in 1992; he was on active duty from 1966 to 1969. In early 1988 the Navy recalled him to active duty for a month and sent him to the Persian Gulf as a historian to document the U.S. Navy’s role during the Iran–Iraq War. In late 2004 he completed a 30-year tenure with the U.S. Naval Institute in Annapolis, Maryland, to include being the director of the Naval Institute’s history division. Stillwell is editor or author of 12 books, including The Golden Thirteen: Recollections of the First Black Naval Officers (1993), Assault on Normandy: First-Person Accounts from the Sea Services (1994), Submarine Stories: Recollections from the Diesel Boats (2007), and Trailblazer: The U.S. Navy’s First Black Admiral (coauthored with Vice Adm. Samuel L. Gravely Jr., 2010). He has also published

Notable Passings

Continued from page 22 now on I was on my own and Dabney was very good to make the trip by bus down from Philadelphia. It made my spring a wonderful escape from the drudgery of academics and the general despair of the news from our forces in the field in both

Europe and the Pacific.

The young couple would be married in the Bethlehem Chapel at the National Cathedral during the following December before he would deploy to the Pacific in the destroyer Ringgold. It would be the first of many separations that came with the territory of being a Navy spouse; Dabney often would be delegated to raise three children alone. Of those three children she was survived by two daughters, Lucy Holloway Lyon of Estero, Florida, and Jane Meredith Holloway of Washington, D.C., as well as grandson Graham Eynon-Holloway. A son, James L. Holloway IV, died in an automobile accident in 1964 while attending the University of Virginia. numerous articles and book reviews and served as a commentator/historian for multiple news broadcasts.

John Lyman Prizes

Though the North American Society for Oceanic History cancelled its May conference in Pensacola, Florida (which will now host the conference in 2021), the organization did announce its John Lyman Prizes for various categories for the year 2019. Of note to naval history audiences, the best naval history book prize went to the current deputy chair of the history department at the U.S. Naval Academy, Cdr. Benjamin Armstrong, for Small Boats and Daring Men: Maritime Raiding, Irregular Warfare, and the Early American Navy. Honorable mention in this category went to Air University Associate Professor Ryan D. Wadle for Selling Sea Power: Public Relations and the U.S. Navy, 1917–1941. Both books were published by the University of Oklahoma Press. For the category of Naval and Maritime Reference Works and Published Primary Sources, the winner was Ken W. Sayers for his U.S. Navy Auxiliary Vessels: A History and Directory from World War I to Today, printed by McFarland Publishing. Finally, in the category of Naval and Maritime Biography and Autobiography, Phillips Payson O’Brien earned honorable mention for his The Second Most Powerful Man in the World: The Life of Admiral William D. Leahy, Roosevelt’s Chief of Staff, which was published by Dutton.

As her husband rose in the ranks, she would join him on overseas tours. With Vice Adm. Holloway in command of the 7 th Fleet, she had the opportunity to represent the nation as she travelled throughout Japan and the Far East. With her husband’s subsequent two tours as vice chief and then chief of naval operations, she became a strong advocate for Navy families.

Retiring with her husband along the banks of the Severn in Annapolis, she became very involved with the restoration of the William Paca House. Having relocated to Godwin House in Alexandria, Virginia, she suffered a stroke and was cared for by her loving husband. She, in turn, stayed by his side as his health declined in recent years.

As recapped in the last edition of Pull Together, all of the tributes to Admiral Holloway also paid homage to her and the critical role she played in his life. Asked why they had chosen to retire to Godwin House and not a Navy retirement community, Dabney Rawlings Holloway reflected that the days of saluting and honors were behind them and that they needed “to prepare Jim to meet God.” Of course, in doing so, she did much to prepare herself.

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EDITORIAL BOARD

Chairman: Adm. William J. “Fox” Fallon, USN (Ret.) President: Vice Adm. Frank Pandolfe Executive Director: Rear Adm. Edward “Sonny” Masso, USN (Ret.) Historian / Editor: Dr. David Winkler Designer: Marlece Lusk Copy Editor: Catherine S. Malo Address submissions and correspondence to Executive Editor, Pull Together, c/o NHF, P.O. Box 15304, Washington, DC 20003. Phone: (202) 678-4333. E-mail: info@navyhistory.org. Subscription is a benefit of membership in the Naval Historical Foundation. Advertisement inquiries for future issues and digital content are welcomed. Opinions expressed in Pull Together are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Naval Historical Foundation. © 2020