Academy Alumni

Academy alumni honor 21 midshipmen for volunteer efforts The Naval Academy Alumni Association awarded plaques to 21 midshipmen yesterday for their sustained volunteer efforts. Projects in which they have engaged range from tutoring in schools to running book drives for poor communities in the United States and abroad. Four of the students - seniors Bill Major, Ethan Haines, Jennie Hill and Jeff Greene - were singled out for contributing almost weekly for more than three years and holding leadership positions in the academy's student-run volunteer organization, the Midshipmen Action Group.

Two Naval Academy alumni will spearhead the conversion of a storied former naval research station near Annapolis into a privately run high-tech office park that could employ 2,000 people, Anne Arundel County announced yesterday. Annapolis Partners LLC said it plans to invest $200 million during the next decade, beginning with construction of a new headquarters for Annapolis-based TeleCommunications Systems Inc. on a promontory across the Severn River from the Naval Academy. The company has 320 employees.

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."

Six months after his arrival at the helm of the U.S. Naval Academy, Vice Adm. John R. Ryan announced yesterday an ambitious plan to begin seeking private donations for new athletic facilities and other improvements.The money would pay for a new soccer field, a tennis center, upgrades at the sailing center, and possibly a parking garage and some academic improvements. The donations would free up federal funds for more than $300 million in needed repairs and modernizations, especially at academic buildings.

The music world owes 19th-century violinist Joseph Joachim a tremendous debt of gratitude.This great fiddler was a musical purist who stayed true to the highest callings of his art in an age of virtuosic excess. It was Joachim who, at midcentury, went against the grain to champion Beethoven's celestial but unflashy Violin Concerto. He played it everywhere, composed a cadenza for the first movement that most violinists still play, and saw to it that Beethoven's handiwork would forever be seen as one of the supreme musical accomplishments.

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.

Annapolis Historic District residents and the Naval Academy Alumni Association are expected to go head-to-head tonight at City Hall over the association's proposal to expand in the district.The association has applied for a conditional use permit to convert a house next door to its headquarters at King George Street and College Avenue for use as fund-raising offices with an outdoor garden for entertaining.The class of 1949 has promised to pay $300,000 to remake the Victorian home at 49 College Ave.The city council has scheduled a hearing at 6:30 p.m. at City Hall.

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.

The U.S. Naval Academy has scheduled its biggest fall alumni weekend on Yom Kippur, one of the holiest Jewish days, sparking complaints among Jewish alumni."