by Larry Berman
7. Letter to Miss Suzy Clegg, Sept. 13, 1972, ZPC.
8. James G. Zumwalt vignette, “A letter to Andreas zum Wald,” June 9, 1992.
9. James G. Zumwalt vignette, “James Brown Zumwalt.” James Brown Zumwalt became president of the Sunset Oil Company, with wells in the Lost Hills of California that he sold to Shell Oil.
10. “Kings Canyon National Park: Zumwalt Meadow,” www.shannontech.com/ParkVision/KingsCanyon/KCZumwalt.html.
11. Brooks Gist, Echoes of Yesterday (Tulare, CA: Gist, 1979), 21.
12. The home became the landmark Renaud Ranch.
13. Letter, “Dear Gang,” on occasion of Elmo’s fifty-eighth birthday, with reflections on his life, ZFC.
14. “Brilliant Military Wedding for Young Officer and Bride,” Richmond Daily Independent, Feb. 8, 1918.
15. Letter, “Dear Gang,” ZFC.
16. Daily Tulare Register, Feb. 1, 1919.
17. “Through the Eyes of a Son,” Tulare Advance-Register, Nov. 25, 1961, 6.
18. Editorial, “ ‘Doc,’ the Complete Citizen,” Tulare Advance-Register, Sept. 6, 1973, 10.
19. “Through the Eyes of a Son.”
20. Frances’s and Bruce Craig’s ashes had been scattered previously.
21. Geraldine (Gerry) Eyer Soults, Mar. 21, 2009; Tulare’s “Women of Destiny” featured thirty-six women in various categories. One was medicine, in which were exhibited numerous items and photos of Frances Pearl Frank Zumwalt.
22. I am indebted to the extensive family research conducted by Bud’s nephew Richard Crowe, son of Saralee. This entire section draws from Richard’s work, which will be available in the Tulare Historical Museum, www.tularehistoricalmuseum.org/index.html. “All my mother would say during my growing-up years was that she was an orphan—that’s all she would say,” recalled Bud.
23. Frances died in 1939, so it appears Sarah was unaware of this or chose not to change her will.
24. Related to author by Richard Crowe.
25. Anna Rich to Admiral Elmo, Jan. 10, 1971, sent to Doc Elmo at China Lake Naval Air Weapons Station, ZFC.
26. Dov Zakheim, Remarks to the Executive Program for General Officers of the Russian Federation and the United States, JFK School of Government, Jan. 10, 2000. Boorda raised his children as Protestants but is buried with a tombstone marked with the Star of David.
27. James G. Zumwalt vignette, “H Street Memories.”
28. Bud recalled that during the Depression his parents never asked for money from farmers going through tough times, and his mother almost always packed two sandwiches for lunch so that he could pretend at school to be too full and give one to a friend who did not have very much. Stillwell, Reminiscences of Admiral Zumwalt, Jr., 8–10.
29. Tulare Advance-Register, Nov. 5, 1935. “Former President Herbert Hoover stopped off at the Tulare hotel accompanied by Earl Warren, district attorney for Alameda county. While in Tulare, they were dinner guests at the home of Dr. and Mrs. Elmo Zumwalt.”
30. “The President,” vignette by James G. Zumwalt.
31. Letter to friend, Sept. 28, 1933, ZFC.
32. Ibid.
33. Author interview with James G. Zumwalt.
34. Stillwell, Reminiscences of Admiral Zumwalt, Jr., 4.
35. Ibid.
36. Ibid.
37. Letter, “Dear Gang,” on occasion of Elmo’s fifty-eighth birthday, ZFC.
38. Stillwell, Reminiscences of Admiral Zumwalt, Jr., 55.
39. Letter to Bud, Dec. 8, 1967, Naval Weapons Center. Congressman A. J. Elliott committed to giving Bud one of his appointments.
40. Stillwell, Reminiscences of Admiral Zumwalt, Jr., 29.
41. Interview, Admiral Elmo Zumwalt, Playboy, June 1974, 73–90.
42. Stillwell, Reminiscences of Admiral Zumwalt, Jr., 30.
43. Letter to Bud, Dec. 8, 1967, Naval Weapons Center, ZFC.
44. Stillwell, Reminiscences of Admiral Zumwalt, Jr.
CHAPTER 3: EDUCATION OF A NAVAL OFFICER
1. Lucky Bag yearbook, 1943. The rest of the quote reads: “Bud insisted youngster year was fruit and starred to prove it. Not being content with being great academically, he was twice winner of the Quarterdeck Society’s public-speaking contest. Like all men of genius, Bud leaned a bit toward the absent-minded side. Few of us will ever forget his solo ‘column right’ in the middle of a company mass. But we who know Bud are satisfied that great success will follow him wherever he goes.”
2. Most letters and correspondence in this chapter were provided by the Zumwalt family (ZFC). Some letters are also available at the Vietnam Archive in the Zumwalt Personal Papers (ZPP). Letters, Mar. 17, 1940, and Apr. 28, 1940. “The Academy is getting beautiful again . . . the sky blue, flowers are blooming, grass is green, trees are bearing leaves. The Severn has regained its healthy blue. The low cliffs that rise from the opposite shore are beginning to doll up in their springtime greenery.” ZFC.
3. W. D. Puleston, Annapolis: Gangway to the Quarterdeck (New York: Appleton-Century, 1942).
4. In a letter written thirty years later, Bud described his feelings to a young man about to embark on a naval career. “When I was your age, I wanted to be a doctor, because I very much wanted a profession which offered more than just a job, which offered me the chance to do something different, something worthwhile, something to help my fellow man. I found that profession in our country’s naval service.” Letter to Stephen Taylor, June 8, 1972, ZFC.
5. As recalled in a Dec. 8, 1967, letter from father on the occasion of Bud’s forth-seventh birthday, ZFC.
6. Zumwalt correspondence file, Dec. 3, 1970, NHHC.
7. Stillwell, Reminiscences by Staff Officers, 36.
8. Robert J. Schneller, Jr., Breaking the Color Barrier (New York: New York University Press, 2005), 91.
9. Stillwell, Reminiscences of Admiral Zumwalt, Jr., 42–44.
10. June 9, 1939, ZFC.
11. Tape 6230607037, Vietnam Archive, ZPP.
12. Between 1935 and 1939, Jim had prayed for Frances’s recovery. Jim became agnostic after his mother died in 1939. Bud added that “it had a significant impact on me. Not only those events transpiring as early as they did, but also my father’s feeling obviously had some impact on me. I saw him leading what I considered to be an extremely model life without it, and I’m sure it had some impact on me, both with regard to trying to do good work for other people and at the same time not getting myself carried away with religious fervor.” Stillwell, Reminiscences of Admiral Zumwalt, Jr., 45.
13. Tape 6, undated, ZTT.
14. James G. Zumwalt vignette.
15. Stillwell, Reminiscences of Admiral Zumwalt, Jr., 35.
16. Letter, Nov. 10, 1972, en route from Washington to China Lake, 30,000 feet, ZFC.
17. On July 23, 1985, in a “dear children” note, Bud attached copies of these letters (parts of which are also in his personal papers). “I attach copies of the letters I wrote to your granddad from the naval Academy when I was younger and foolisher than you. I hope you enjoy them, Love.”
18. Letter to Elmo Zumwalt, Apr. 17, 1940, ZFC.
19. Letter to Elmo Zumwalt, Feb. 18, 1940, ZFC.
20. “I must confess that in regard to my weight, temper, etc., you were right—I’ve slacked up on my physical training since X-mas,” wrote a contrite Bud in reply.
21. Jan. 1940, ZFC.
22. Jan. 28, 1940, ZFC.
23. Jan. 29, 1940, ZFC.
24. Feb. 3, 1940, ZFC.
25. Midshipmen calendars referred to exams as rivers, and there was a countdown on exams. Plebes were required to sing, “We are almost out of the wilderness, / Out of the wilderness, / Out of the wilderness, / We are almost out of the wilderness, / Just x more rivers to cross.” The graduating class put on a big show called There Are No More Rivers.
26. Bud discusses how poorly Dave Bagley, who would become a lifelong friend and member of Bud’s inner team or kitchen cabinet, is doing. “He not only failed to raise his marks, he s
ank lower . . . I feel terribly sorry for him—he will live to suffer more genuine regret than any other plebe who bilges. Every contact with his family, every mention of a relatives’ name will call to mind the beloved profession that he hadn’t the guts to learn.”
27. Feb. 18, 1940, ZFC.
28. Undated, ZFC.
29. “Finns Battle On as the War Goes into 4th Month,” Chicago Daily Tribune, Mar. 3, 1940.
30. “Empires Offer to Give Finland Vast Aid in War,” Chicago Daily Tribune, Mar. 12, 1940.
31. “Finland War Ended by Pact,” Los Angeles Times, Mar. 13, 1940.
32. “Weygand Stresses Near East Defense.” See also, “Near East Is Nervous: War Weather Coming in the Near East,” New York Times, Mar. 17, 1940.
33. Letter, Mar. 23, 1940, ZFC.
34. “Gamelin Commands All Allied Forces,” New York Times, May 13, 1940.
35. “Next week is exam week and I am worried about my particularly poor daily grades in Mech Drawing.” He had only a 2.7 GPA and feared being unsat (unsatisfactory). “I can’t study the stuff, so all I can do is pray. Be sure to write me often, because next week is a depressing one.”
36. Bud received his marks: Bull 14, Math 87, Dago 123, Skinny 42, Steam 611.
37. “Weygand, Disciple of Foch, Named to Command Allies,” Chicago Daily Tribune, May 20, 1940.
38. Letter, May 14, 1940, ZFC.
39. “Well the Allies seem to have gotten a half way break in this latest phase of the war. Germany has always jumped first. This time she found a Holland and Belgium ready, armed to the teeth, calm and organized. The 1,900,000 men of these low countries is more men than Germany can break thru in 8–10 days at least. Thus the traditional slowness of the British is given a time-lag factor of lee-way.” Letter, May 17, 1940, ZFC.
40. Ibid.
41. Written by Ray as a vignette for Bud and Mouza’s fiftieth wedding anniversary, Oct. 2, 1995, ZFC.
42. Letter to Elmo Zumwalt, circa May 1940, ZFC.
43. He also attributed the two ideas or themes to his father’s notebook. “You will notice that the theme of this talk is stolen from the notebook you sent me. You used the phrase ‘brave, homogeneous people,’ which I borrowed, and ‘it can’t happen here.’ Which I also used—in short, the whole idea grew up around your story.”
44. May 25, 1940. “Something seems to have snapped within me. I have gotten back a good share of my old drive.” Grades were good—3.88 in the Math final, which placed him twenty-eighth for the past two months. He was now sixty-third in his class. . . . In Skinny he got 3.8 on the final, and his class standing was twentieth.
45. Letter, June 1, 1940, ZFC.
46. See K. Jack Bauer and Stephen S. Roberts, Register of Ships of the U.S. Navy, 1775–1990 (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1991), 145: “Formerly the Spanish unprotected cruiser Reina Mercedes, she was scuttled in the entrance to Santiago Harbor on 4 Jul 1898. Wreck captured when the port was captured, 17 Jul 1898. Initial plans to convert her to a sea-going training ship proved impractical. In 1912 she became a stationary receiving ship at the Naval Academy, and remained in that duty until 1957, when she was scrapped.”
47. Letter, June 10, 1940, ZFC.
48. Letter, June 16, 1940, ZFC.
49. The four years were reduced to three—freshman, sophomore, and senior.
50. Letter, June 29, 1940, ZFC.
51. His dad did send money so that during thirty-six hours’ leave in New York, Bud and his friends went to the Hotel Astor, near Times Square, rented a suite for $10, and just hung out. They skipped the World’s Fair. Instead, each took a hot bath and spent the day lounging in the suite’s soft chairs, listening to the radio. “It was the most luxurious afternoon of the summer.” In Boston on June 20, ten of them slept in the Hotel Statler.
52. “I want to thank you all again for a perfect Sept. leave. I can’t imagine having a more perfect time. The fishing trip was the highlight of the month—a chance to get away from the routine—close contact with a worthless ‘od ma’ and a ‘little squirt’ of a brother. . . . And the last week—the thrill of falling for a wonderful girl—it was all just like a story book.”
53. Arrived by train on Sept. 12 and went to the campus on the 13th.
54. Letter, Sept. 30, 1940, ZFC.
55. Ibid.
56. “Dear Dad” letter from Annapolis, Oct. 5, 1940, ZFC.
57. “My Dad is still carrying on—the same dauntless oak—unbowed by the lightening [sic] of Fate that has struck so often in the same place—his place in the community is still a Holy Grail to inspire me in my quest.”
58. Elmo wrote to “My dear Bud” a few evenings later on his office stationery in Tulare, Oct. 10, 1940, ZFC.
59. Admiral Harold Stark was being badgered by Congressman Fish on the Forum radio show.
60. Oct. 10, 1940, ZFC.
61. Letter, Oct. 30, 1940, “I hope you take Jim’s advice and don’t sell the home. . . . Tulare is booming and that house is a good investment to hang onto.” ZFC.
62. There are four generations of Zumwalt family Bronze Star recipients.
63. Bud refers to FDR as “the personality expert” and laments the “damn shame that the thinking classes don’t swing a majority.” Oct. 30, 1940. ZFC.
64. Letter, Nov. 7, 1940.
65. Doodle to Saralee, Nov. 1940, ZFC.
66. Undated letter, circa Nov./Dec. 1940, ZFC.
67. Ibid.
68. See letter to dad, February 23, 1941, “If I hadn’t been through all this once before, I’d be pretty discouraged. As it is, I console myself somewhat in the loss of past experience. It doesn’t help much, but some.” ZFC.
69. The Log, Jan. 10, 1941; also see Stillwell, Reminiscences of Admiral Zumwalt, Jr., 55–56.
70. Stillwell, Reminiscences of Admiral Zumwalt, Jr., 56.
71. Letter, undated reply, ZFC.
72. Letter, Oct. 7, 1941, ZFC. Indeed, Jim did not like Doris from the start, “out of loyalty to my mother I suppose.” Jim first met Doris when he went to Fort Lewis to be with his dad, who had arranged for Jim to have a civilian job hauling supplies for the army.
73. Letter, undated reply, ZFC.
74. Letter, Apr. 24, 1941, ZFC.
75. Letter, June 24, 1941, ZFC.
76. Stillwell, Reminiscences of Admiral Zumwalt, Jr., 56.
77. Ibid.
78. Quoted in the Washington Post, Oct. 10, 1972.
79. Signed “the son who can never equal his father in anything except finance.” ZFC.
80. Bud gave the second watch to his father. Western Union telegram to Capt. Zumwalt at the Post Hospital at Fort Lewis: “Congratulations on the victory of your eldest in fierce finals. Now there’s a watch for both of us.”
81. Professor of thermodynamics, L. S. Kintberger, letter on behalf of Bud for Rhodes Scholarship, ZFC. Bud “stood No. 34 in a class of 615 members.”
82. Four years later, Bud served as executive officer under Kintberger’s command on the USS Zellars. “His orations dealt on both occasions with international relations. I was impressed by the fine balance of idealism and logic in his treatment and by his poised delivery. . . . One of the important reasons was the candidate’s leadership. He had a capacity for organizing and stimulating popular interest along literary lines. The field of international relations was used as a springboard for debate, oratory, open-forum discussion and composition.” ZPP.
83. Letter to Doctor Zumwalt, June 8, 1942, ZFC.
84. The Washington Post reported on June 19, 1942, that “New Ensigns Answer Love’s Call Before Sailing War-Swept Seas.” The weddings went from dawn to dusk.
85. Tulare Advance-Register, June 27, 1942. “My graduation day was, therefore, particularly memorable in that we not only had all the usual ceremonies surrounding that, but then the subsequent glamour of a military wedding in the chapel with classmates holding the swords and so forth.” Stillwell, Reminiscences of Admiral Zumwalt, Jr., 58–61.
86. Undated letter, circ
a June 1944, ZFC.
CHAPTER 4: WAR YEARS
1. Recommendation by Commander Grantham that Bud receive the Bronze Star. “As evaluator in the Combat Information Center he furnished information indispensable to the success of the attack. This involved recommending courses and speeds and time to fire and time to retreat from combat. His outstanding skill and judgment as well as his exemplary conduct under fire were an inspiration to the officers and men.”
2. “We were together then until I deployed for the Aleutian campaign, and our marriage broke up at that time . . . when I deployed for the Aleutians campaign, she went to Dos Palos, California, where my sister and brother-in-law lived and remained there for a number of months, working as an employee at Eagle Field, an Air Force training airfield. She then went back to her parents in Yeadon, Pennsylvania, for the balance of the war—or until our divorce.” Stillwell, Reminiscences of Admiral Zumwalt, Jr., 61.
3. Bud recalled this initial trip as a pleasant one with plenty of room and wonderful food, with time for sunbathing and sea stories. Ibid., 63.
4. See James Grace, The Naval Battle of Guadalcanal (Annapolis, MD: U.S. Naval Institute Press, 1999). Also, Thomas J. Cutler, The Battle of Leyte Gulf (Annapolis, MD: U.S. Naval Institute Press, 1994), 66–67, www.usni.org/selected-writings-lieutenant-commander-thomas-j-cutler-us-navy-retired.
5. See Colin G. Jameson, The Battle of Guadalcanal, 11–15 November 1942 (Washington, DC: Naval Historical Center, 1994), and Richard Frank, Guadalcanal: The Definitive Account of the Landmark Battle (New York: Random House, 1990).
6. Ibid. The Guadalcanal supply operation was assigned to Task Force TARE under Rear Admiral Richmond K. Turner. The combined task force carried six thousand men to be put ashore on Guadalcanal and was protected by twenty combat ships.
7. Denis Ashton Warner, Peggy Warner, and Sadao Senoo, Disaster in the Pacific: New Light on the Battle of Savo Island (Annapolis, MD: U.S. Naval Institute Press, 1992).
8. James D. Hornfischer, Neptune’s Inferno: The U.S. Navy at Guadalcanal (New York: Bantam, 2011).
9. Mikawa’s dragon formation—the way the ships swooped in with a dense fan of torpedoes ahead of them, then added quick, accurate nighttime gunfire and quick escape—was a brilliant naval tactic. It also underscored the disorganization of the pre–World War II U.S. Navy, which was not prepared for night fighting, battle damage, or emergency ship maneuvers.
