THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, May 17, 1996 TAG: 9605170474
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY BILL SIZEMORE, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 180 lines
Adm. Jeremy ``Mike'' Boorda reached the pinnacle of the Navy's hierarchy at a time of tumult and daunting challenges: a painful military drawdown that is shrinking the fleet, a rocky accommodation of women in the ranks, an attempt to use a combat force to impose peace on the bloody killing fields of Bosnia.
There was a certain symmetry to that, because Boorda's own story is one of crisis and struggle against long odds.
Boorda was, in military parlance, a ``mustang'' - an officer who came up through the enlisted ranks. He was the first enlisted man in the Navy's history to become a four-star admiral.
Born in South Bend, Ind., in November 1939, the grandson of Ukrainian immigrants, Boorda's life was not a happy one. His parents' marriage went sour. He began drinking six-packs of beer and skipping school.
In 1956, he dropped out and enlisted at age 16, lying about his age to join the Navy. At first he hated boot camp, too. And then he started to like it.
``The Navy replaced alcohol'' in his life, he told a crowd of trainees at boot camp in San Diego seven years ago, when he was the chief of naval personnel. ``The Navy filled in some of the things that had been missing in my life. I still wanted to go home, but I wanted to go home wearing a uniform that said I was something special - that said I had done it.''
He was married at 19 to Bettie Moran, a college student he met while attending the Naval Air Technical Training Center in Norman, Okla.
Their first child, David, was born with severe birth defects that left him legally blind and handicapped. David, now 38, endured 17 operations before his fourth birthday.
David's birth focused him on the responsibilities of life, Boorda told interviewers later.
``You grow up like, now,'' he said in an interview last year in Washingtonian magazine. ``You go from, `Gee, we're going to have this little baby - it will be like playing house,' to `Here's this huge problem.' And you have to deal with it every day. Not just every day for a little while, but forever.''
The Boordas had three more children, all born healthy: Edward, Anna and Robert. The two younger sons and a daughter-in-law are naval officers.
Boorda's apparent suicide Thursday ended an extraordinary four-decade Navy career, notable both for his rapid rise and the route he took.
He graduated from Officer Candidate School in 1962 and received a bachelor's degree in political science from the University of Rhode Island in 1971.
Based on his early performance as an officer, he was put on a fast track leading to command of a coastal mine sweeper, the Parrot, as a lieutenant. He then commanded the destroyer Farragut, a destroyer squadron, a cruiser/destroyer group and the 6th Fleet battle force in the Mediterranean.
He never wore his second star. His promotions came so fast between 1986, when he commanded Cruiser/Destroyer Group 8 in Norfolk, and July 1988, when he was promoted to the three-star rank of vice admiral, that there wasn't time to buy it, he said at the time.
He became chief of naval personnel in August 1988 and established a reputation as a ``people's admiral'' who never forgot his enlisted background and stood up for junior sailors.
Stories of his tenure were legion. One was related by Duane Bushey of Norfolk, former master chief of the Navy, in a 1994 interview with The Virginian-Pilot.
A female yeoman third class who was serving in Japan wanted a promotion to boatswain's mate. ``Everybody raved about her,'' Bushey recalled, and the Navy was almost desperate to find women for the job. But regulations called for her to complete a three-year assignment before she would be eligible.
Told of the rule, Boorda said, ``We'll change that one,'' Bushey recalled. He then called the yeoman to tell her she was being promoted.
In the last months of the Reagan administration, a few admirals still clung to visions of a 600-ship Navy. But in the three years that Boorda served as personnel chief, the Navy began shrinking quickly.
To avoid pushing people out of the service, Boorda slowed recruitment. As a result, there were few forced retirements.
Later, the diminutive pipe-smoking admiral faced another kind of challenge as commander of North Atlantic Treaty Organization forces in southern Europe: committing acts of war to bring peace to the former Yugoslavia.
Called on to enforce a no-flight zone over Bosnia, provide air support for United Nations operations and police a cessation of hostilities among the warring parties, Boorda stood in the harsh spotlight cast on one of the world's most vexing post-Cold War problems.
Boorda's elevation to chief of naval operations had its genesis in the notorious 1991 Tailhook Association convention in Las Vegas, where a ``gantlet'' of young officers sexually assaulted dozens of women, many of them fellow officers.
Over the next 30 months, the fallout from Tailhook tore the Navy community apart. Critics said Navy leaders like Adm. Frank Kelso, then the Navy's CNO, who attended the convention, had mishandled the scandal and tried to deflect attention from their own leadership failures.
By the fall of 1993, Navy Secretary John Dalton was pushing to get Kelso fired. When a Navy judge accused Kelso of lying about what he'd witnessed, he denied wrongdoing but agreed to step down. He was able to retire as a four-star admiral only after a bitter debate and a close vote in the Senate.
Defense Secretary William Perry asked John Hagan, master chief petty officer of the Navy, whom he would like to see as CNO. Hagan, the Navy's senior enlisted man, suggested Boorda.
``A few months into his tour, I realized how far he had come, how many odds he had overcome,'' Hagan later told the Washingtonian. ``We have some of the most brilliant people in the world stand up in front of sailors, and when they're finished, sailors ask, `What the hell did he say?' They don't say that with Admiral Boorda.''
Within 10 days after becoming CNO, Boorda declared that a repeat of Tailhook ``simply would not be tolerated'' on his watch. Promising a new commitment to equal opportunity, he vowed to speed up the integration of women on combat ships.
He told reporters the Navy deserved much of the bruising it took in the wake of the Tailhook affair.
``It's no secret that we've been battered about pretty good, and it's no secret that there was some pretty bad stuff to batter us about,'' he said.
Thanks to increased awareness of sexual harassment and equality issues, ``I don't think another Tailhook is possible in this Navy,'' he said. ``I think our culture is different now.''
But in the Washingtonian interview last year, Boorda said he made perhaps the biggest mistake of his career when he decided not to fight for the nomination of Adm. Stanley R. Arthur to be commander of U.S. forces in the Pacific.
Arthur agreed to withdraw his nomination to avoid a long and potentially bitter confirmation fight in the Senate because of questions over his role in a sexual harassment investigation.
Arthur was not accused of harassment. But Lt. j.g. Rebecca Hansen, an aspiring helicopter pilot, charged that he did not protect her when other officers flunked her out of flight school in what she said was retaliation for filing a harassment complaint. Arthur said Hansen's failure resulted from subpar performance.
``I should have fought this to the end,'' Boorda said in the 1995 interview. ``I helped screw it up and don't feel good about it.'' MEMO: BOORDA
Born in South Bend, Ind., Nov. 26, 1939
Enlisted in Navy, 1956
Commissioned under the Integration Program, 1962
Combat Information Center officer aboard USS Porterfield, 1962
Weapons officer, USS John R. Craig, 1964
Commanding officer, coastal mine sweeper Parrot
Weapons instructor at Naval Destroyer School, Newport, R.I.
Bachelor of arts degree, University of Rhode Island, 1971
Executive officer, USS Brooke
Commanding officer, destroyer Farragut, 1975-77
Executive assistant to the principal deputy assistant secretary of the
Navy for manpower and reserve affairs, 1977-81
Commanding officer, Destroyer Squadron 22, 1981-82
Executive assistant to the chief of naval personnel/deputy chief of
naval operations for manpower, personnel and training, 1983-84
Executive assistant to the chief of naval operations, 1984-86
Commander, Cruiser-Destroyer Group 8, Norfolk, 1986
Commander, Saratoga Carrier Battle Group and Commander, Battle Force
6th Fleet, 1987
Chief of naval personnel/deputy chief of naval operations for manpower,
personnel and training, 1988-91
Commander in chief, Allied Forces Southern Europe, enforcing U.N.
sanctions in the former Yugoslavia, 1991-94
Chief of naval operations, 1994-96
Family
Wife, the former Bettie Moran
4 children, 11 grandchildren
ILLUSTRATION: ASSOCIATED PRESS, File color photo
Adm. Jeremy ``Mike'' Boorda took on the Navy's top job when fighting
in Bosnia, sexual harassment fallout from the Tailhook convention
and a shrinking military raised challenges on several fronts.
ASSOCIATED PRESS, File photo
Adm. Jeremy ``Mike'' Boorda addresses Navy Seabees at Camp Mitchell
in Rota, Spain, in December 1995. He was known as the ``people's
admiral'' for his affinity for enlisted sailors.
KEYWORDS: BIOGRAPHY PROFILE by CNB