The Naval Academy was in bad shape when Adm. Chuck Larson returned to lead the brigade for the second time. The school's reputation was tarnished in a 1992 cheating scandal that left Congress asking whether military academies were necessary.
But Larson and his team were able to right the ship, and as a tribute to his legacy, the academy renamed its administration building Larson Hall in a Friday ceremony, the first campus building ever to be named for a former superintendent.
Larson was a personal hero, current academy superintendent Vice Adm. Ted Carter said Friday, not only to himself and other superintendents, but to friends, family, colleagues and other members of the class of 1958, several hundred of whom gathered in Mahan Hall to honor him.
"[He believed] midshipmen needed to view doing the right thing as a matter of course," Carter said.
To return focus to ethics after the scandal, which involved a large of web mids cheating on an electrical engineering testsscandal and resulted in two dozen expulsions, Larson integrated ethical training into the academy's curriculum.
He also started the Center for the Study of Professional Military Ethics on campus — now known as the Stockdale Center for Ethical Leadership — which today studies ethical leadership as a discipline and grants awards every year to sailors in the fleet who embody those values.
Larson passed away from leukemia at the age of 77 last summer, just days after Carter took command of the academy.
"My first act as the superintendent was to, sadly, be part of the memorial service and the burial," Carter told Navy Times in an Oct. 1 phone interview.
To honor his memory, Carter proposed to then-Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Jon Greenert that the academy rename the administration building, the last building on campus not named for a legendary Navy leader.
Larson's command was not only unprecedented because he served twice — from 1983 to 1986 and then from 1994 to 1998 — but because he sidelined his plans for retirement to return to the academy as a four-star admiral, at a time when the supe was a two-star job.
"There will be some people who say that Chuck Larson saved the Naval Academy," Carter said. "I know he never felt that way."
He had plenty of post-retirement opportunities, his former executive assistant told Navy Times, but he chose to put them off to help the institution he believed in.
"He was very concerned the second time, as a four-star, about the future of service academies in general, and of course the Naval Academy in particular," retired Capt. Hank Sanford said in an Oct. 1 phone interview.
Sanford served as Larson's flag secretary during both of his academy tours before retiring in 2002. Today he is the chief financial officer and treasurer of the Naval Academy Alumni Association.
"Character development was his big emphasis when he came back," Sanford said. "It was both a daunting responsibility but also, he knew it was important."
He used facts and figures to show the federal government and American people that the Naval Academy's rigorous program turned out excellent leaders who go on to serve at the highest levels in the military, government and corporate worlds, Carter said, and that research holds up today.
"Anybody that's seen the national rankings for colleges and universities, it just sends a message for the value of not only the overall program we have here, but the academics that we have here," he said. (The Naval Academy is ranked as the nation's ninth best liberty arts college, according to the latest U.S. News & World Report list.)
Internally, he drove midshipmen to "become leaders of character and consequence," Carter said. "Young men and women who exhibit excellence without arrogance."
"His leadership was value-driven," said Sen. Barbara Mikulski, D-Maryland, in her remarks at the ceremony. "The Naval Academy needed a new self-confidence. It needed a new way of thinking about leadership. Command and control was a thing of the past."
He was able to get the academy back on course, Mukulski added, and restore its reputation in the eyes of the American public.
After his 1998 retirement, Larson stuck around Annapolis, serving on multiple corporate and non-profit boards, including as chairman of the U.S. Naval Academy Foundation.
"How appropriate that the building where the superintendent resides with all of his support people should be named after the greatest superintendent in Naval Academy history," Carter said.
Meghann Myers is the Pentagon bureau chief at Military Times. She covers operations, policy, personnel, leadership and other issues affecting service members.
