Welcome to Veterans Radio.
I am Jim Fossone.
I'm the officer of the deck today.
We've got some great programs for you.
We always want to remind you you can find more about Veterans Radio at its Facebook
site or at the web veteransradio.org where we're on the web 24-7.
You can find a lot of our podcasts there as well.
We post new ones every Tuesday so you can get a new story, a new interview, something
you didn't know before by going to veteransradio.org.
Before we get started we want to thank our sponsors.
Next up we want to thank National Veteran Business Development Council, NVBDC.org.
It was established to certify both service disabled and veteran owned businesses.
You'll find out how they can help your business by going to NVBDC.org.
We want to thank Legal Help for Veterans.
Legal Help for Veterans fights for veterans disability rights all across the nation.
You can reach them at 800-693-4800 or on the web at legalhelpforveterans.com.
And finally, PuroClean.
PuroClean is the paramedics of property damage.
It provides water damage remediation, flood water removal, fire and smoke damage remediation,
mold removal, biohazard cleanup.
It also has a focus on veteran franchisees.
You can learn more about them by going to puroclean.com.
You're going to hear some interviews today on pretty diverse subjects.
So the first is we're going to talk to a colonel who was in the Marines and led the
President's own band.
All history there, right, the Marine Corps band does all the ceremonial programs in Washington,
D.C.
Real interesting.
And then we're going to talk to a couple of Navy vets about their concerns on why the
Navy hasn't renamed the USS Stennis and its sorted history and the need for changing that
in today's world.
So really interesting programs stick with us.
We want to welcome to Veterans Radio today Colonel Jason Feddick of the Marine Corps,
retired.
Colonel, welcome to Veterans Radio.
Jim, thanks so much for having me on.
Well this is a really unique opportunity to tell some stories that I think people probably
have never heard about.
Colonel Feddick was the 28th director of the President's own United States Marine Band.
That's quite a high honor and must have been really the pinnacle of your career, Colonel.
Oh, absolutely.
And honestly a complete surprise.
You know, this job of director of the Marine Band is the same job that John Philip Sousa
once held.
He was the 17th director of the band in the 1880s.
And when I joined the service to join the President's own, I could have never imagined
that someday they'd give me the honor of leading this distinguished unit.
Well let's kind of start at the beginning.
How did a nice New England kid like you from New Hampshire end up in the Marine Corps?
I would say completely by accident.
My grandfather served in World War II, so we had a little bit of service in the family,
but not a whole lot.
I was training to be a music educator actually at the University of Massachusetts, I should
say.
And my idea was to be a band director.
So I was about to get my degree and I was traveling on a little bit of the tour over
summer, kind of an internship with a group called the American Wind Symphony.
And I saw an advertisement for the Marine Band.
They had an opening for Clarinet.
And the way that the President's own finds its Marines is we audition like civilian orchestras
because we are trying to find musicians who are fully trained out of the gate and educated
to jump right in and start doing their job on behalf of the President and the Marine
Corps.
And so the auditions often have civilians who will come to audition and if they win the
audition and they are qualified to a list of the Marine Corps, healthy enough, they
enlist for service in the Marine Band.
And they stay there for their entire careers, which of course as you know is very unusual
in the service and certainly in the Marine Corps.
So I decided to take a chance and take this audition.
I was 21 years old.
I didn't know much about the Marine Corps.
I certainly had heard of the President's own.
But I thought I was completely unqualified.
I imagined just the musicians that are in the band being so good and I'm just a college
student.
Came down to Washington, took the audition, was shocked at the end of that audition that
I won the job.
And they offered me a position with the band and that set me on a path that would eventually
lead to becoming the director, which is unfathomable to me.
Yeah, when you look back on it, you say, wait a minute, a chance seeing of a posting resulted
in an incredible career.
Now you have two bachelor's degrees from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.
And you also have a master's degree in orchestral conducting from the University of Maryland
at College Park.
That's correct.
This was all, this was not all planned out, right?
This is just taking opportunities that presented themselves.
Yeah, and you could imagine for a young musician, student, you know, the prospect of joining
the Marines, even though we have a very specialized mission in the Marine Corps, a very important
mission, but very unique.
A lot of people don't know about music and the service and exactly what goes into it
and who these service members are.
It was nerve-wracking to think I'm going to join the Marine Corps and I'm going to be
expected to uphold those traditions and that discipline as well as be a musician.
But when I joined, you know, thinking maybe I'll do my one enlistment my four years and
then I'll go back to school or I'll start teaching, within a couple of months I realized
just how incredibly special this opportunity was.
And I had put on hold at that point my aspirations to conduct and to lead because I didn't think
that that was going to be an opportunity, that it would just be playing clarinet and
doing what I had gone to school to do.
And then three and a half years into my enlistment, I was going to re-enlist, was going to continue
to serve in the band.
I was very happy.
They had an opportunity to audition again to become one of the junior assistant directors,
one of the conductors, and to be commissioned.
And I took that audition also with no expectations and when I won that audition, it set me on
the path as an officer and as a conductor that eventually would lead to my appointment
as a director in 2014.
But the whole thing was completely unplanned.
If you had talked to me when, or anybody when you were a teenager and say, hey, what would
you like to do?
And you say, you know what, I'd like to be the director of the president's own.
I'd like to be music advisor of the White House and have the same job that John Phillips
and Susan once had.
How about that?
People would have laughed in your face.
There's no way to plan that kind of opportunity.
So you just go where the opportunities lead and you just hope that you're the most qualified
person at that time.
And I was so fortunate that that's how it worked out in that chapter of my career.
Well, that's really one of the pearls of wisdom we get out of these interviews is for
people to realize you have to prepare yourself and take the opportunity when it shows up.
These are two opportunities that you had prepared for and you said, I'm going to raise
my hand and give it a try.
But I have to imagine that when you went home and said to the folks in New Hampshire, hey,
I'm going to join the Marine Corps.
There may have been some raised eyebrows.
A little bit.
You know, I think if you had known me when I was growing up, kind of a class clown, little
jokester, sarcastic, that that probably being a United States Marine was probably low on
the list of what people thought I might do.
And certainly a colonel in the United States Marine Corps would have been a shock to some
of the people who knew me.
They knew music was very important in my life and that I would be dedicated to wherever
that service called me.
But the Marines is very special.
But I'll tell you, Jim, as you probably with so many of your guests, you know, in your
own family service that the service changes you.
And within a very short amount of time when I became a Marine, I was changed.
And that change fundamentally defined who I'd become as a professional, who I'd become
as a musician.
And I feel that to this day, I'm a retiree now and I'm teaching, but I still feel that
influence on my life, both in music and beyond music every day.
And I'm so grateful that I ended up in a place that I never would have imagined that I would
have gone.
You know, sometimes you end up where you're supposed to be.
And I think the Marine Corps was where I was supposed to be and it really resonated deeply
with me.
And I'm glad that I took that chance those years ago because I do shudder to think, well,
what would have happened if I decided that I didn't have the courage to put myself out
there and would have ended up in a very different place than I am now.
Now, Colonel, there are a lot of listeners right now who have been through basic training
themselves in the different services and they are asking themselves, do the military musicians
go to a basic training camp?
And the answer is yes and no.
So the vast majority of military musicians in all the services do attend recruit training.
That's different in every service, of course, different locations, different lengths of
time.
Almost every Marine does go through basic training.
I will tell you that the members of the President's Zone have been exempted from basic training
since the 1950s.
And the reason for that is that are the expectation of Marine musicians at the level of the President's
Zone, which are the music, the house band for the White House, have an incredibly diverse
portfolio of expectations on behalf of our nation, on behalf of the Marine Corps.
The expectation is that they'd have the education and the experience to do that job in that very
specialized environment right out of the gate.
And so without risk of injury, without being off of the instrument for 14, 16 weeks, that
exemption was made in the 50s and it's held true.
So what we do is we bring our Marines, our new Marines enlisted to Washington, D.C. and
we try to indoctrinate them in all of the training that happens in basic training, save
for the weapons training and some of the physical rigors.
So all of the history, customs, traditions, UCMJ, everything that is important about the
culture of the Marine Corps, the respect for the history for the traditions of the Marine
Corps is taught over about an eight week period.
And that is when people are preparing to make that transition before they then start playing
full time with the band.
It is a little bit of a point of contention, as you might imagine, with some of my colleagues
in the Marine Corps.
A lot of Marines who don't have a chance to meet musicians of the present zone, they're
sometimes suspicious of how could we have Marines that don't go through that very important
gauntlet, that very important right of passage.
But as soon as they meet our Marines and see how dedicated they are to telling the Marine
Corps story, to being out there and representing all of our brothers and sisters who are doing
the hardest work of the Corps, they change their minds.
I mean, time and time again, as I spoke to my brothers and sisters, and they had a chance
to really understand what the band is all about, what music plays for a role in our
Marine Corps in our country, they become transformed as well.
And I've loved having those relationships with those Marines and having those conversations.
It's been very important.
Well, Colonel, I've had the chance to listen to a number of the service bands and choral
groups and singing groups.
It's always inspiring when they're out in the community talking and performing with
folks.
If I understand it right, do all of the services have musicians in them on these kind of engagements?
Yeah, every service has musicians.
So different sizes of the programs, the Coast Guard, for instance, has one band that is
stationed in New London, Connecticut, at the Academy.
They're a smaller service, Department of Homeland Security, so that's the only band.
All the other services have about anywhere from eight to 20 bands stationed around the
country and in some cases around the world.
In the case of the Marine Corps, we have 12 total bands, 10 fleet bands that are stationed
on the coasts where the Marine Corps is, also one in Japan in Okinawa and one in Hawaii.
And then there's the Marine Band in Washington.
We also have the Marine Drum and Bugle Corps, which is the only drum and bugle corps in
the entire armed services.
So they're very historic and very special unit.
And those are the two ensembles.
If you go to the Friday evening parades at Marine Barracks Washington in the summers,
you'll see both the President's Zone and the Commandant's Zone Marine Drum and Bugle
Corps performing together during that tattoo, during that ceremony, which is very impressive.
To see that level of musicianship illuminating that ceremony.
Well, Colonel Federer knew right where I was going with this question because he and I
talked about Athe and I in DC where the Marines are.
And if you ever get a chance to go to the Friday night silent tattoo under the lights,
it's an impressive moving affair every time.
And I suspect for the men and women in the band, it's equally moving and prideful.
But you've been there.
You've walked the ground.
Tell us about it.
It's a sacred place.
Marine Barracks Washington is, we call it the oldest post of the Corps.
It was the first official post of the Marine Corps in Washington, DC.
It was founded by Thomas Jefferson of all people and William Ward Burroughs, who was
the Commandant at the time.
They picked out this piece of land within marching distance of the Capitol in the White House
so that the Marines that were stationed there could defend our nation, international capital
if it came to that.
And of course it did come to that in the war of 1812.
It's a very special place and it's special historically.
It's a special sacred place to Marines all over the world.
And it's also special because it is our primary connection to the American public.
What music does in the military is it connects our service members, our men and women in
uniform to the public, to our government officials, to our president in a very emotional and visceral
way.
So when we march on Friday evening in Carades and we have three or four thousand people
come every week, every day citizens, sometimes veterans of course, since active duty service
members, but the majority of the audience are people that have no affiliation with the
service.
And they see Marines performing with such precision and such dignity and such excellence
and they hear that music that stirs the soul and in perfect cadence with what's happening
with our Marines on the deck.
It's a very, very special and emotional experience and people leave that parade having a greater
admiration for those who serve, a greater respect and desire to support those who wear
the uniform and who represent our country in that special way.
It's the same spirit that happens all over the country.
You asked about bands traveling to other communities, not only in Washington, D.C., but all of the
bands have units, including the president's own, that go out on tour and share a piece
of what happens in Washington and in our government with communities all over the country, playing
in major venues like Carnegie Hall and the next day playing in a middle school gymnasium
in New Jersey or a field house in Nebraska.
And thousands of people will come to these concerts and gather together in community
with no political overtones, with nothing other than the expectation of being together
as Americans and listening to this great music and these great bands that we're so proud
of and frankly just feeling good about our country and about what we are represented.
Music is the most powerful tool to do that, which is why music has been a part of the
services since its inception.
The Marine Corps has had music almost since its birth and it's been one of the most important
things to preserving and illuminating that culture and I can speak obviously firsthand
about that.
I was deeply engaged in that for 26 years.
Well, one of the things that we could spend a whole other show on is the history of music
in the military all around the nations, all nations involved.
But one of the things that you got to do directing the president's own is sort of do those good
will ambassador tours not just out of the White House but internationally if I understand
it.
Yeah.
Yeah, we don't travel too much internationally and most of that is because we are needed at
the White House.
And so over 300 commitments a year for the president of the United States with the Marine
Band, over a thousand commitments a year total for the Marine Corps, whether that's playing
for full honors funerals at our LinkedIn National Cemetery, which is one of the most important
things we do.
Marine Corps ceremonies, tours, concerts, all of that happens in DC.
But every once in a while we get internationally and to bring the Marine Band, in my case when
I was director I took the band on two international tours, one to Japan, of course great allies
of the United States and of the Marine Corps, big Marine Corps presence in Japan since World
War II.
That was an incredible tour to bring this famous ensemble to the Japanese people to have
cultural exchanges with their Armed Forces bands, very, very special to building those
bridges and preserving those ally, ally ships that are so important to our country.
And then just last summer before I retired I took the band to Europe and we played concerts
in Prague and Austria and the Netherlands to standing remotely crowds.
And it's just such a privilege knowing how important music is in the American military
culture, to bring these ensembles abroad and to show that and show how that represents
the excellence in our Armed Services all across all of the services.
Really very, very special feelings and indelible memories that I just, I will never forget.
Well you also had the chance to put some of this music down on wax as they used to say,
but I'm sure it's digitally recorded.
Now tell us about recording sessions with the President's own.
Yeah, I'll tell you a funny little story is John Philip Sousa was director from 1880
to 1892.
He left a little bit before the recording industry really kind of caught hold and Sousa
himself was a bit skeptical of recordings because he felt like live performance was
one of those new things that will never take off, right?
Yeah, I think that's exactly how he felt and he wasn't wrong in the sense that live performance
is still the best.
Getting out to the people, having live musicians interact with live audiences is the bread
and butter of music performance.
But as we all know, recordings are so important to sharing this art across the entire globe
and so recording has been a huge part of the Marine Band's legacy, putting historic repertoire
down onto disc that we can share wax cylinder originally then records then eight tracks
and cassettes and now CDs and now digital.
And we do a lot of recording in the Marine Band, not only for sharing for educational
purposes for bands all over the world to use this great professional ensemble as a model
for how to play core music that's important to all of us, but also to help preserve the
legacy of historic music.
So for instance, in the Marine Band, we did an entire complete collection of the marches
of John Philip Sousa new recordings, 125 marches that we recorded over seven years during my
directorship to share with music lovers and share with the schools all over the world so
that could gather an appreciation for a lot of this music that is so central to our American
artistic identity and a lot of music that people don't know by the great John Philip
Sousa, one of our great composers in America.
And we also made all of the music available in sheet music form so that schools could
download for free the marches of John Philip Sousa, hear the Marine Band perform them and
then perform them themselves off of the same parts.
So this was a great example of the band being a resource to citizens.
We are paid for by the taxpayer dollar.
We consider a huge part of our mission to provide inspiration, provide educational resources,
provide a model for people who are aspiring to be musicians or simply people who love
band music and look to the president's own as the pinnacle of that.
Now Colonel, you had an incredible military career that we could talk on for quite a while,
but I wanted to spend a few minutes at least because you are now wearing the mantle of
professor of music and director of bands at the University of Michigan.
How did a nice Colonel like you get talked into that job?
A nice Colonel like me, Jim.
I've talked to some of my Marines and I'll say the group of them.
Well here's the situation.
I told you earlier in our talk that I wanted to be a band director and my career as a teacher
got, I like to joke, I got a little sidetracked by me winning a position with the president
so it turned out to be a beautiful opportunity for me.
But I always knew when I was finished with the Marines and I was young enough when I
got in that I knew I didn't want to overstay my welcome.
You know people who are in command, you have the privilege of command, you're really in
control of so many aspects of your colleagues' life, those under your command and I felt
it was important for me to pass that baton at a time when I felt like someone else could
continue to take the unit in a place where it deserved to go.
So I knew I'd always return to teaching.
I just didn't know where it was going to be.
When the opportunity came up to apply to the University of Michigan it was almost like
a dream come true because Michigan I've always for decades had such respect for this school
of music, for the students who come out of it, for the culture of the university, the
tradition of the university which of course is so important to me coming from the Marine
Corps.
So I applied and without any expectation that I would be the best candidate, I went to the
process and it turns out I was.
And he would ask me a decade ago if I could go anywhere after my career in the Marine
Corps where would I want to go to teach music.
I would have told you the University of Michigan for all the reasons I just said.
So for me to land here is my only my second job in my entire professional career is unfathomable
to me but I am so grateful to have been a part of this and to get involved in what happens
here at Michigan.
It is an exceptional institution and I'm having such a great time taking my experiences
from my professional career and sharing them with my students.
Well let's do one more thing before we run out of time and I want to build on the concept
of passing the baton because those of us in the military we've all been at change of command
ceremonies and you just recently retired and there was a change of command for the president's
own.
Talk to us about your change of command ceremony because you passed the baton literally.
We did yeah and the change of command as you well know and all of our listeners who have
served is such a sacred tradition.
It is our version of the inauguration right it's our chance to have the peaceful transfer
of power for any military unit.
In the Marine Band we take the change of command incredibly seriously because there is only
one director of the Marine Band and we wear a very special uniform.
We know that the uniform of the president's own is unique.
It's the red with blue trim you know the opposite of a marine uniform because musicians wore
the opposite colors of battle marines because we needed to be found on the battlefield quickly
to signal to the troops.
So the Marine Band uniform is red with braiding and gold buttons 21 buttons and a beautiful
oculette and epaulette signifying our presidential service.
The director of the Marine Band wears a solid blue black coat just like Marines but with
the same decoration.
There's only one of them in the entire Marine Corps because there's only one limited duty
officer colonel in the entire Marine Corps and that is the director of the Marine Band.
So there's only one time Jim when two individuals are wearing that black coat and that is when
we do our change of command.
So we decided that this year since I was leaving in December rather than in the summer which
is traditional that we would take the change of command to this huge gathering of music
lovers and educators the largest gathering in the country happens in Chicago every year
in December it's called the Midwest Band and Orchestra Clinic.
We wanted to show these music lovers these teachers this sacred ceremony and so in front
of about 5,000 people we stopped the concert in the middle and we both came out on stage
with the command on the Marine Corps, assistant command on the Marine Corps at the time,
and we did the change of command ceremony in front of these folks and we literally passed
the baton as you said there is a baton that was given to John Phillips in 1892 when he
left the Marine Band by the men of the band and their esteem for him.
It's this ceremonial baton with a beautiful eagle globe and anchor on the top and it's
inscribed to Suza.
It lives in a hermetically sealed case all the time because it's a priceless artifact
and we pull it out once every decade or so for our changes of command and I passed that
baton to my successor Lieutenant Colonel Ryan Allen and then I left the stage in Chicago
in front of all those educators and I took off my blouse and that was the last time that
I'll ever wear that historic uniform.
Well it's an amazing career that you've had, experiences that again most people can't
even fathom.
You got on this road kind of accidentally and enjoyed it immensely and we are so happy
you could share this so that kids out there, men and women who are in the musical field
and didn't even know you could have a musical career in the military, can maybe get a little
glimpse at this and certainly we would encourage anybody listening to any time any of the military
bands of one form or shape or another come into town, go listen you will be amazed.
Colonel Fettig we really appreciate the time that you've given to us and the insights that
you shared.
It's been wonderful to talk to you Jim and to all the Marines out there, Semper Fidelis
and to all of my new University of Michigan colleagues go blues.
Okay you got to admit most of us have never really heard from or talked to anybody who's
been a military musician let alone the head of the president's own band.
Kind of interesting how they do things, a lot of tradition, a lot of sacred reasons
behind it but those of us who've just maybe been on a ship or flying a helicopter or cranking
on a diesel engine in logistics somewhere, we just don't get exposed to those folks so
I thought this was an interesting interview, happened to be a local guy who moved to locally
I should say for his second job interview in his life so great to tell that veteran's
story and that's what we do here on Veterans Radio.
So if you've got a local hero, you've got a local veteran with an unusual story, reach
out to us at veteransradio.org either Dale at veteransradio.org or Jim at veteransradio.org
send us your suggestions that's how we find these folks to talk to that you've otherwise
you didn't know their story they may be your neighbor down the street who's never really
had a lot of discussion about that weird thing that he did when he was in service so keep
us in mind but we hope you enjoyed that.
I'd like you to hear a few words from our sponsors and then we'll move into a maybe
a little more thought provoking and stirring interview about the USS Stennis.
Military veterans touch everyone's life.
I'm guessing right now you're thinking of a veteran, a close friend, relative, maybe
it's you.
Even the toughest of us sometimes need help but don't know where to turn for support.
You don't need special training to help a veteran in your life.
Even small actions can make a world of difference.
If you know a veteran in crisis, please call the Veterans Crisis Line 800-273-8255 800-273-8255
a message from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.
If you have a VA claim denied by the Board of Veterans Appeals, contact legal help for
veterans at 1-800-693-4800.
They're experts in handling cases before the U.S. Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims.
Their number again, 1-800-693-4800.
We want to welcome back to Veterans Radio a couple of Navy gentlemen.
I'll use that term loosely because they're officer types that have spoken to us on different
subjects in the past and are willing to talk to us again.
So right there, hey, first we've got Captain John B. Cordell.
John, welcome back to Veterans Radio.
Hey, thank you very much.
John, thanks for having me.
I really appreciate it.
And we also have Lieutenant Commander Ruben Keith Green, both gentlemen retired.
Keith, welcome back to Veterans Radio.
Jim, thank you for having us and it's a pleasure.
Well, as I say, officers and gentlemen here according to Congress.
But we've got a very serious subject to talk about today and both of you have been thinking
and writing and talking about this for a number of years.
But recently had a article, The Tragedy to the Lost Generation, in a US&I proceedings
in August of 2024.
That sort of focuses on the whole issue of renaming the Navy renaming ships and in particular
why it hasn't yet renamed the USS John Stennis.
Keith, why don't you start with this?
Tell us what the Stennis is.
Well, the USS John Stennis is an aircraft carrier named for Mississippi Senator John
Stennis, who is an arch segregationist, racist.
He's considered the father of the modern Navy, but the Navy's biography leaves out all of
his anti-civil rights and racist behaviors that he perpetrated for his entire adult life.
And when did it get put into service?
I believe it was 92.
Don't quote me on that.
Reagan nominated Stennis as the, I think it was 95.
But Reagan nominated the ship in 1989 just before he left office and shortly before Stennis
retired.
And this is an aircraft carrier for those non-naval types who are listening in here
on Veterans Radio.
We're talking to Lieutenant Commander Keith Green and Captain John Cordell.
Keith, explain to folks how big an aircraft carrier is and how many people are on it when
it's active.
Well, I'm going to pass that to John, since he's actually a nuclear service engineer
who has some time on that platform.
Oh, thanks, Keith.
So I have a service nuke officer, so I've served on it, actually pre-commissioned two
carriers, the Harry Truman and the George Bush, and we'll come back to the names and
why they matter.
But an aircraft carrier, Jim, is basically the largest ship in the world.
It's 1,000 feet long, roughly like three football fields.
It carries about 75 aircraft of different types, from jets to helicopters to vertical
takeoff.
And it has a core crew of about 3,000, and it adds about 1,500 aviation folks and others.
So it sails around on nuclear power with about 4,000 to 5,000 sailors on board.
Yeah, that's what I wanted to get across, is how big it is and how many men and women
living on it when it's out cruising around the world.
It is currently, as I understand it, being retrofitted, updated, and when it gets done
with that, it'll have another life of what, 25 or 30 years in the fleet?
Yeah, that's exactly right.
The nuclear plants of those ships are good for about 25 years, and so typically, because
refueling takes about three to five years, there's only time for one, and so they last
about 50 years total.
Yeah, so the issue of the name on this ship isn't something that's going to go away tomorrow.
It's going to be the name of the ship's going to continue to live on for another couple
of two to three decades, so it's worth talking about the names Dennis, who he was.
Now let's put this in a little context, too.
The military DOD, the Navy has gone through in the last few years looking at its bases,
its ships, its buildings, its monuments, all of those things that were named after Confederate
generals primarily, and said, you know what, that's not right anymore, that's not the
image we want anymore.
And the Navy did do some of that work over the last couple of years, didn't it, John?
They did.
Yes, the naming commission was put together with some retired admirals, and they looked
at that, and Keith may know better than I do, but a couple things about that commission,
they were very much focused on the Confederacy, so it was Adels, like Chancellor'sville, and
memorializing the rebel forces of the Confederacy that they wanted to get at.
And so the Stennis was sort of at one level outside of that bubble, but when you start
to look at it, we could talk more about this, but one of his legacies was that he was very
much a supporter of many of the things that the Confederacy stood for, and I think the
record will show that he was pretty dedicated to making sure that those types of things lived
on, segregation being the large one.
Well that's why you sort of have to set this up to understand this discussion of the need
to change the name, with, hey, we've just gone through this for this limited period
of the Confederacy, and according to an article by Steve Walsh, the Navy renamed something
like 33 ships, buildings, and streets as a result of that commission work, and so that
does kind of set up like, okay, we recognize this is a problem and we're changing it.
So now let's talk about Stennis, which as you say is just outside the bubble, but really
pretty associated with it.
I'll throw it to either of you to talk about who this senator was that, you know, died
many years ago, and many of us won't even remember him when he was alive, but talk about
his legacy.
Okay, I'll take that.
I first learned who John Stennis was when I read Admiral Zoomwalt's memoir on Watch
in 1976.
I was an 18-year-old, 19-year-old seaman, and he had three chapters, and one of the
chapters in his book was Sailing Second Class, and John C. Stennis is the man who ordered
the Navy's subcommittee hearings on permissiveness in the Navy after the so-called race riots
in the 1970s, early 72, 73, and he stacked it with Louisiana Congressman Eddie Hebert,
who was also a signer of the Southern Manifesto, and he was adamant that Zoomwalt was being
too permissive and not punishing those black sailors.
When the truth eventually came out 50 years later, those black solar sailors had been
victims of racial discrimination for years, including during the court martial process.
So Stennis has been on my radar for a long time.
I was busy being a chief engineer when Reagan made the announcement at the ship, and I had
bigger problems to worry about than what the next aircraft carrier's name was going to
be.
But as I started working on writing my first memoir, Black Officer White Navy, I dug back
into who Stennis was, and the more I learned, the more appalled I got.
And then when John read my first book, he picked up on that, and since then we've been
writing articles and trying to get the Navy to change the name of this ship, because John
Stennis was born in 1901.
He was 18 years old when the Navy banned the enlistment of black sailors.
President Woodrow Wilson and Secretary of the Navy Josephus Daniels would have been in
total agreement with their efforts to curtail any opportunities for black sailors, including
banning the first enlistment of black sailors.
So Stennis knew men, knew invinerated men who had served in the Confederacy.
He was young enough to have known grown men that actually fought in the Confederacy.
But he's the biggest booster of the Confederacy in modern time.
And to have a ship settling around, made for a man who did so much damage and continues
to do so much damage.
It's really, to me, it's a moral injury, it's psychological abuse.
It's saying thousands and thousands of black and other diverse sailors to be a servile
to ship name for somebody like that.
Well, let's be clear about this.
The historical record is clear.
This isn't your opinion, Keith, about Stennis's views on race relations.
He's got all kinds of documents that he's put his name to that are in archives all over
the place, which makes it clear.
For example, I read in the tragedy of the lost generation that when President Harry
Truman integrated the armed forces in 1948 by executive orders, Stennis, he didn't like
it.
He told everybody he didn't like it, didn't he, Captain?
Right, and going even further, to your point, a lot of times I start with Wikipedia.
And so I hit Wikipedia for Stennis, and the first thing that pops up is Senator, father,
the modern Navy.
Then you kind of flip the page too, and that's where the article about his segregationist
policies goes in.
He voted against the Civil Rights Act, he voted against Martin Luther King's birthday,
he voted against the Voting Act.
So his goal was to keep people separate based on race, which is the definition of segregation.
And then when you click on segregation, it leads you right to the definition of racism.
And so in that Wikipedia, it talks about how in his young life as a prosecutor, he prosecuted,
I believe it was four black men who had a confession to murder, or rape and murder,
basically beaten out of them.
I mean, he even describes in pretty graphic detail, being simulated hangings, being thrashed
with belts, and all this was on the record of the trial that he led the prostitution
of these people that was eventually overturned by the Supreme Court.
So that was pretty clear.
And then you follow his political career.
And then based on Keith's sort of clues, I went back to the University of Mississippi,
has an entire dossier on him.
And that's where I found the letter that was printed in the magazine of, hey, I agree,
what the letter said was, I agree with you, the boys should serve in all white units.
Stenus was pretty savvy.
He didn't put the racial epithets and the controversial language in his replies to letters.
He let the letters stand and endorsed them.
And so I couldn't print that letter because of the words used in it to describe black people,
Jews, and Italians, and others.
But suffice it to say that what he put in that letter addressed Truman's mongrelization
of the armed forces.
And the problem that he was fighting against was the problem of black soldiers and black
sailors.
And that's what Stenus was agreeing with in that letter.
Yeah, he's responding to a constituent and saying, I agree with you 100%.
And in my years of service here, I have constantly and continually stressed the very point you
mentioned that our boys should have the chance to serve in all white units.
And this is 1955 when he's writing to the constituents.
Right.
Yeah.
And then so the next, I'll start, too.
No, go ahead, Jen.
So the next thing that, and this was a complete coincidence, as Naval Academy graduate, I
get this quarterly magazine called Shipmate.
And I happened to know Abel Stravaid as referred with him in the past.
He was a distinguished graduate.
And so they have a little biography, and then they had five of them.
And one of them was Brigadier General retired Leo Williams, the third Marine.
And Barry in his bio was a quote that said, everybody knew that a man of my color could
never get a nomination from a Southern state.
So I had to move to get to the Naval Academy.
And between him and Keith, I found a book called Blue, Gold, and Black talking about
the integration of the Naval Academy.
And I reached out to the author, who was coolly in touch with the general, who pretty much
confirmed what we had sort of inferred from that document, is that there was a movement,
a handshake, amongst the Southern Congressmen and Senators.
And the nomination process to the Naval Academy is very, it's run by politicians.
And so without writing anything down, they were able to have a handshake to make sure
that no black candidates got through that process for decades.
And so that really, to me, was like the next piece of, you know, the next layer to peel
back of, wow, not only did he have beliefs, but as Keith talks about, my beliefs drive
my actions.
He had tangible actions that he took to prevent blacks Americans from serving their country.
So let's go to, you know, I said a minute ago, I don't think there's really any question
about his segregationist and racist beliefs.
So let's go to what's the impediment for the Navy to change the name?
Who's got to make that decision?
Why hasn't that decision been made?
You guys have been talking and writing on this for years.
What feedback do you get from the Naval community?
Okay, Keith, quit laughing, Keith, answer the question.
Well, that was John laughing, I was gritting my teeth so far, the Navy, when my first article
came out, the case of renaming the USS John C. Stennis, there was a flurry of activity
in the press, people, you know, questioning this and so forth.
And when the Navy was asked about it, they said they had no comment at this time.
And they forwarded that article to the Congress, the Congressional Research Service, the Navy
forwarded that saying that people were talking about the need for renaming the ship.
But from that day to this, there's been no official comment.
The Secretary of the Navy can make that change with the stroke of a pen, as far as I understand.
And they don't have to appropriate any money, they can get money out of the couch cushions
to do that.
So, but it's a lot of pushback, I suspect, but there's been no public discussions about
it.
So I don't really know what's going to happen.
So how in the world has there not been a Congressional hearing on this issue?
John, did you get different pushback or different feedback from the Naval community on this?
So I have a lot of retired and active duty friends that are pretty high up in the Navy.
And the sort of feedback I get is, hey, there's bigger fish to fry, right?
Like this is not that important.
We have other things to worry about.
Number two, most of them just don't know.
Like that's what I get a lot of.
And back to your point, we talked about that before we started recording, the moveon.org.
When you ask a sailor about John C. Senus, most of them say, oh, he's the father of
the Navy, there's a carrier named after him.
They haven't turned to page two of Wikipedia to find out.
And that applies to Seaman and it applies to flag officers.
What prompted me to write this article with Keith, to collaborate with Keith and write
this article, was two sailors that approached us on the John C. Senus who were stationed
there after we spoke at one of the, I think it was Anzo, an American Naval Service Officer's
symposium.
It said, we talk about this a lot, but basically what we're told is it's not your issue.
And then we put the article, we have black sailors who felt like it was a slap in the
face when they walked across the border deck.
A black pilot who said it was a gut punch to land on the carrier.
And so there are activity sailors.
But one of my favorite quotes in a different context was a young chief said, when the organization
you work for is discriminating against you, it's not in your best interest to point that
out.
And one of the things I've learned in my 40 years, especially with the Navy, is when
you're at the top of the Navy or the top of leadership positions, you have the option
to do nothing and say nothing.
And eventually, most things will just go away.
And so that, it seems to be the option that's being taken.
Well, the problem I have with the do nothing is something like 17% of the Navy are African
Americans.
It is a slap in the face.
And we as veterans want to be proud of our service, right?
And you can go into any store, down any street, any parade, and you're going to see guys
wearing gales wearing ball caps and T-shirts with the name of the vessel they served on
or the airborne unit they were with, what have you.
I mean, you're not wearing the John C. Stennis cap out in public, is it?
We had sailors tell us they refused to wear it out in public.
They won't wear the shirt home.
But you mentioned the number, 17%.
You know what the percent of Black Naval Academy of the Shipman is?
I don't.
Six.
So we're going to get to that issue in a minute.
I want to talk about that.
But I want to go back to how does the general public, you guys are busy educating the naval
community that this isn't right.
You got to know the history of this man.
And when you do, you won't want the ship named for him or continue to be named for him.
How do you get the general public involved telling the secretary of the Navy, hey, don't
be silent.
There's a time to do something.
Well, I have an opinion on that.
I don't think the Navy gives a hoot what the general public thinks about that.
What they care about is what Congress is interested in.
And if you can get Congress interested in this topic, they will, the Navy has ignored
the general public in the press, but they will not ignore an inquiry from Congress on
why you stepped over an alligator to kill two frogs by renaming ships of people that
have been long dead when Stennis was alive when I was fighting discrimination, you know,
as an officer in the Navy.
And there are going to be many thousands of minority sailors and white sailors that will
serve on that ship in the next 25 years.
And the longer the Navy delays this, the longer the moral consensus issues going to be.
And it's up to Congress to step in and protect the people that volunteer to serve in our
military from this sort of moral abuse.
Keith, is there a particular congressman or woman who is maybe near and dear to this
issue?
Is there somebody or some committee in general that needs to hear from people about this
matters?
Well, Mississippi Senator Benny Thompson would be the obvious choice to spearhead this thing.
And not only that, the Congressional Black Caucus, there was a huge outcry when the young
airman was killed in his apartment.
There was a huge outcry and, you know, you had these prominent people attending his
funeral, but not one word from these people about sailors that are experiencing this sort
of, I call it, discrimination and psychological abuse on an everyday basis.
So you need to get, I think, Benny Thompson, have the moral authority to address this issue.
Well we want to...
And Jeff, Keith and I are working on, now that these letters are out there and these
articles is a bit of a letter writing campaign to some key congressmen and senators, other
Navy leadership and things like that that might educate them because, like I said, the
average person just doesn't know.
And then when you confront them with it, you know, it's kind of like if you took a poll,
there's a good chunk of the country that feels like that racism is not an issue.
And so it's tough to even bring a topic like this up.
And back to my point about the 6% of the naval academy, remember, you don't grow admirals,
it weren't ensigns.
And so if you start at 6%, look at the percentage of black flag officers.
Sure.
I think it's down in like the one or two.
And, you know, I mean, one of our mentors had a comment that says, you know, for something
to change, there has to be empathy from the unimpacted.
And if I'm a white senior person, this doesn't impact me.
And for me to feel compelled to make a change, I have to really inject empathy into that
18-year-old black sailor.
And I don't have a lot of evidence of that happening.
Well, we had talked earlier too about whether or not there was a change.org petition that
the general public could sign.
I think you told me there is.
You can go to change.org and look for a petition called Renaming the Stennis.
It hasn't grabbed a lot of the general public yet, but maybe it will.
Keith, do you think it has any prospect of having an impact on Congressmen or the Congressional
Black Caucus, or does it need a whole different type of effort?
I think you need a whole different type of effort.
I signed the petition quite some time ago.
The last time I checked, there weren't very many signatures on it, but the Navy does not
respond to outside pressure.
The military does not respond to outside pressure.
All of these issues with sexual harassment, discrimination, etc., have been ongoing for
decades.
And the Navy only responds when the people that control the purse strings have a say.
Well, let's hope that some more momentum from Congress builds on renaming the John C.
Stennis before it serves another 25, 30 years and that this is just not the right name for
this aircraft carrier.
I certainly appreciate both of you.
I would be Captain John Cordell and Lieutenant Commander Keith Green, both retired from the
US Navy, talking about the Stennis issue.
These are the sort of thought-provoking discussions, interviews that we can bring you here on Veterans
Radio because we have this format that allows for it and we have very generous sponsors.
So we can't do this work without the continuation of our sponsors.
We talked about some of them earlier.
But I want to also mention the Vietnam Veterans of America National Chapter and local VSOs
who will help out Vietnam Veterans of America Charles S. Kells Chapter 310 in Ann Arbor,
the VFW Graffo Hero Post 423 in the American Legionist, Prescorin Post 46 also in Ann Arbor.
Dale and I have been doing this for 21 plus years and you get towards the end of the year
and you think, well, I don't know if there's any more stories to tell.
And there always are.
Some of those stories we find in papers, some of those stories we can elaborate on from
books that we get a chance to read, or just folks who contact us and say, hey, I'd like
to hear about this.
And that's what we do.
We track folks down and have those kind of conversations.
It's amazing how many people are really happy to finally tell their story.
Maybe nobody's ever asked or asked in a format that they felt comfortable with.
So if you've got somebody out there who's interested, who might want to tell a story,
reach out to us.
Jim at veteransradio.org or Dale at veteransradio.org.
We're always really interested in those kinds of opportunities to talk to somebody who maybe
has kept their military story quiet, but really it needs to be added to the whole history
of military service here in the United States.
If you'd like to help out financially, you can go to veteransradio.org.
There's a button that says donate and shows you how to give to what we do here.
It's a voluntary organization.
Nobody's getting paid big bucks to host veterans radio, but we do have to pay for our radio
sponsors and our time on air, so we do appreciate whether it's 200 bucks or 20 bucks or $10.
Feel free to donate.
We also have a way to do that on our Facebook site, VeteransRadio's Facebook site, so reach
out.
It's the holiday season.
It's a good time of year to step back a little bit, be thoughtful, maybe make sure you're
extra kind to all your friends, neighbors, and those who aren't your friends and neighbors.
I think that's one of the things we're supposed to do at this time of year.
I always like to keep in mind all of the armed forces scattered all over the world who are
keeping us safe and protected and allowing us to enjoy a holiday season, a religious
season because they've been out there protecting us, and I think, again, that less than 1%
is doing that for the rest of us.
The least we can do is be very supportive of them and go out of our way a little bit.
Whether it's dropping some toys and toys for Tots or helping out military charities,
we really encourage you all to think about doing that.
We're coming to the end here.
We want to appreciate all of you for being loyal listeners to Veterans Radio.
Love to communicate with you.
Reach out to us.
It's a great thing to do.
Next week, Dale Throneberry, my partner, will be back to bring you some more interesting
discussions on topics that we think Veterans are always interested in.
Until next time on Veterans Radio, you are dismissed.