Academy Alumni

A former Navy quarterback who was acquitted of rape and now faces expulsion from the Naval Academy took his case to Washington last week, urging members of Congress to support his attempts to graduate and become an officer. Securing the free assistance of several people from lobbying giant Cassidy & Associates is the latest step for Lamar S. Owens Jr.'s supporters, a group that includes a growing number of academy alumni with a wide range of influence garnered from prominent careers in the public and private sectors.

With the Naval Academy in a weeklong stand-down amid a rash of alleged wrongdoing, there is growing sentiment for the same kind of special panel used to force changes after the cheating scandal two years ago.The academy's Board of Visitors, a 12-member advisory committee appointed by Congress and the White House, has called a meeting for next month to debate whether to appoint a task force to recommend changes. Others are calling for an alumni panel.Navy Secretary John H. Dalton and Adm. Jeremy Boorda, the chief of naval operations, are expected to consult this week with the academy's superintendent, Adm. Charles R. Larson, about a possible task force or other options.

Throughout her accomplished Naval Academy and Marine Corps career, Capt. Jennifer J. Harris never attracted special attention for being a woman. So it was fitting, friends said, that she was not singled out in death, when the academy placed her name yesterday among hundreds of others on a marble tablet designated to honor graduates who were killed in action. She is only the second woman in school history to be added to the list, which includes 954 men dating back to the Civil War, many long celebrated as heroes.

An ambassador, an author, an educator and an aviator were honored as this year's winners of the Naval Academy's Distinguished Graduate Awards. The awards, given by the college's alumni association, recognize graduates who embody the school's core principles of honor, courage and commitment and who have given a lifetime of service to the nation and their alma mater. This year's four winners were feted at a ceremony at Alumni Hall on Friday afternoon attended by the 4,200-student brigade of midshipmen.

The board of the U.S. Naval Academy's alumni association is scheduled to vote today on a group's bid to form a predominantly gay and lesbian alumni chapter amid reports that the association's staff has recommended rejecting the application. The Associated Press reported last night that paid staff members of the Annapolis-based alumni association submitted an internal document to the board of trustees advising it to deny the group of mostly gay and lesbian alumni official status. Reached last night by The Sun, Skid Heyworth, a spokesman for the alumni association, declined to disclose details of the staff recommendation.

After almost 10 weeks of fiery and bitter debate questioning the future of the Naval Academy and its recent emphasis on ethics training, the academy's alumni association rebuffed an internal attack on the school's programs and curriculum. Last week, the association turned back a symbolic challenge to the re-election of the group's chairman by Charles C. Krulak, a graduate and former commandant of the Marine Corps who has called the school's ethics training programs "mumbo jumbo." A group of alumni began promoting Krulak as a write-in candidate for the chairmanship to "send the academy a message."

It was a year of assassination and riot, a year that the Vietnamese Communists took advantage of the lunar New Year holiday to launch what became known as the Tet offensive.The scores of men clustered Saturday under a long white tent at Navy-Marine Corps Memorial Stadium were young officers 25 years ago, leaving the cloistered world of the U.S. Naval Academy for the chaos of events outside."In a lot of ways we were removed from the rest of the world," said Richard D'Anna of Baltimore, a member of the academy's Class of 1968, who recalls little discussion about the war that was raging in Southeast Asia.

Ross Perot arrived at the Naval Academy in 1949 a short, jug-eared Texas boy with a broken nose. It was his 19th birthday and he had never been on a ship or seen the ocean.But he tackled the academy the way he did everything else -- with a confident vengeance.Mr. Perot emerged four years later as president of the class of 1953 and a devoted champion of the academy."I hope that each midshipman here tonight realizes how fortunate you are to have this unique opportunity to attend the Naval Academy," an enthusiastic Mr. Perot told the midshipmen during a 1990 speech in Annapolis.

Three of them collectively won more than 50 medals and commendations. One became a captain of industry and a philanthropist. All four are Naval Academy graduates who will be awarded the Distinguished Graduate Award by the college's alumni association. The recipients announced last week are retired Rear Adm. Maurice H. Rindskopf, Class of 1938; retired Adm. Thomas B. Hayward, Class of 1948; Ralph Hooper, Class of 1951; and retired Adm. Leighton W. Smith Jr., Class of 1962. The award, created in 1999, honors graduates who are "living role models" to the academy's midshipmen, said George P. Watt Jr., president and chief executive officer of the alumni association and academy foundation, which funds the awards ceremony.

It's been 40 years since Israel attacked the U.S. Navy spy ship USS Liberty, killing 34 American sailors and injuring 172 more in what both governments say was an accident. Today, Naval Academy alumni are scheduled to dedicate a plaque in memory of two classmates who were killed in the attack, which occurred June 8, 1967, in the Mediterranean Sea. The Liberty incident, which remains controversial, occurred on the fourth day of what has come to be known as the Six-Day War. Today's ceremony will be at the Navy-Marine Corps Memorial Stadium, where the plaque will be on display honoring Stephen Spencer Toth, academy class of 1963, and Philip McCutcheon Armstrong, Jr., class of 1953.