‘Wings’ of First Women Naval Aviators

Four of the first six women aviators (NHHC)

Review by Bill Doughty––

In celebrating the achievements of women in the Navy over the past fifty years we remember the struggles involved in reaching equality and justice. Career opportunities for women were not the same as for men just a generation ago.

One of the things that bugged the first women naval aviators, for example, was inequality of training opportunities. While their male contemporaries learned sea service skills such as navigation and operations, women were often restricted to classroom lectures on administration.

Women officer candidates in the unrestricted line had to wear skirts and heels, even when marching in the snow. Women’s restrooms were few and far between. Pregnancy was punished.

As for training, a retired captain remembers how, while her male shipmates were learning how to operate patrol boats, she and her female classmates had to listen to “a representative from Max Factor instruct us on the proper wearing of makeup.”

In the early 1970s women were not permitted to serve aboard ships. Women were also not allowed to serve as Navy pilots.

But thanks to brave women and men –– military and civilian –– equality was achieved beginning in the 70s and over the following decades.

Beverly Weintraub, a winner of the Pulitzer Prize, tells the story of the fight for equality in “Wings of Gold: The Story of the First Women Naval Aviators” (Lyons Press, 2021). The book centers on the challenges, ordeals, and achievements of naval aviation’s first women pilots: Barbara Ann Allen Rainey, Judith Ann Neuffer Bruner, Jane Skiles O’Dea, Joellen Drag Oslund, Rosemary Bryant Merims Conatser Mariner, and Ana Maria Scott. (All but one of the women were military brats –– daughters of service members or veterans).

The first women in naval aviation faced a calcified male-centric culture within the Navy that was often either patriarchal or predatory, or both.

But the predicate for women serving in the military, even as aviators, had been made half a generation earlier.

The first class of WAVES to graduate from Aviation Metalsmith School in Norman, Oklahoma, July 30, 1943. (NHHC)

In “Wings” Weintraub presents a brief history of WAFS, WASP, and WAVES. She offers lots of first-person testimonials and snippets of oral history. And she carefully recounts the milestones achieved in the 70s, 80s, and 90s, thanks to activist women, fearless politicians, and forward-thinking military leaders.

“Fortunately for the female aviators determined to make the navy their career, there were officers up the chain of command willing to become not only mentors, but friends,” Weintraub writes.

Adm. Elmo "Bud" Zumwalt

Among the strongest pillars who championed integration and equality of opportunity (both for people of color and for women) was CNO Elmo Zumwalt, who famously said, “Equal means exactly that. Equal.”

Zumwalt released his Z-gram #116 in August 1972: “Equal Rights and Opportunities for Women in the Navy.” His Z-gram #116 eventually became the blueprint for ensuring women could serve in aviation, aboard ship, and eventually in combat and aboard submarines. Zumwalt was supported by Secretary of the Navy John Warner and later by Senators William Cohen, John McCain, William Roth, and Ted Kennedy, as well as Representatives Beverly Byron and the Patricia Schroeder (a champion of women in the military who passed away last week).

Another key reformer and champion for women’s rights was the remarkable Adm. William P. Lawrence, considered by some a “radical feminist.” USS William P. Lawrence (DDG-110) is home-ported in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. The ship’s commanding officer is Cmdr. Kellie Smith.

USS William P. Lawrence (DDG-110) participates in RIMPAC 2022 last summer. (MC3 Aleksandr Freutel)

Incremental change might have been accepted at first, but as more and more women came into the military, there was an inevitable backlash (similar to “replacement theory”). “While there is strength in numbers, there is also potential peril … As their ranks started to increase, broader resistance began to mount.” Some military men and some of their spouses felt threatened and aggrieved and took their anger out on those who championed equality.

Former SECNAV Jim Webb

On the other side were leaders who slow-rolled change or favored the male-dominated status quo: CNOs Adm. James Holloway, Adm. Thomas Hayward, Adm. Carlisle Trost, and Adm. James Watkins. Outside of the Navy, right-wing conservative Christian Phyllis Schlafly, who helped defeat the Equal Rights Amendment, said that a woman’s place is in the home, not in the cockpit. Perhaps the worst harm to women’s equality was caused inadvertently by Secretary of the Navy Jim Webb, who had come out forcefully against women serving in combat, saying “women can’t fight.” (Webb later expressed regret for publishing his opinion.)

Weintraub shows how Webb’s position fortified discrimination and justified harassment of women in the minds of some men, even helping lead to the watershed event that became a profound catalyst for change within the Navy: the Tailhook Convention at the Las Vegas Hilton in 1991.

Courageous women –– feminists, activists, and military members seeking justice –– accelerated change. “It would take a series of lawsuits by military women to bring policies, if not attitudes, in synch with the times,” Weintraub writes.

Change came within the executive and legislative branches as well as the judiciary, with key rulings by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Judge John Sirica. Women themselves formed networks of support. And organizations such as DACOWITS and Women Military Aviators assisted in bringing about change.

"Wings" fills a void in the important history of the advancement of women in the Navy. One of the best features of this book is the inclusion of interviews and testimonials of the first women aviators as well as other women who pioneered progress. Weintraub does a great job of following the lives of the first women naval aviators, including into retirement.

“I will always miss the smell of jet fuel and salt air,” said Jane Skiles O’Dea.

Rosemary Mariner, who once wrote “Adm. Zumwalt changed my life,” said in an interview about women being allowed to serve on submarines, “We will have made progress when this is not a newsworthy event.”

The book opens and concludes with a historic flyover on February 2, 2019, in which the Navy executed the first all-women missing man formation flyover in navy history.

That flyover may remind readers that an all-women team from California performed a flyover at Super Bowl LVII last month to honor fifty years of women in the Navy.

The All-Women flyover team for Super Bowl LVII poses for a group photo at Luke Air Force Base, Feb. 10, 2023. (MC1 Bobby Bladock)

Happy Women’s History Month.

Blue Age I: ’Global Prosperity’ Ignoring Mahan

Review by Bill Doughty––

“The United States Navy –– A Global Force for Good.”

There was a time –– and it doesn’t seem that long ago –– when that message, a former recruiting slogan, came on TV in commercial breaks during NFL games.

For some, it was controversial. Anyone who misunderstood the meaning of the word “force” could misconstrue the message. Should the United States, through its surface ships, submarines, aircraft carriers, and Navy SEALs, be “forcing” its way? So, another way to look at the former Navy slogan is, “A Global Enforcer for Good.

Gregg Easterbrook makes the case for the Navy’s role as “a force for good” –– enforcing free trade on the world’s oceans and seas –– in “The Blue Age: How the US Navy created Global Prosperity –– and Why We’re in Danger of Losing It” (Public Affairs, Hachette Book Group, 2021). The result of such enforcement is peace, prosperity, and an amazing decline in extreme poverty, especially in China.

“Nearly all the decline of extreme poverty occurred in the trade-focused nations of Asia. Max Roser, an economist at the University of Oxford, has noted that China’s trade-based improvement of living standards in the last two decades works out to about 130,000 people escaping poverty each day. Roser calls this ‘the leading achievement in human history,” greater than the Apollo missions, greater than the European Enlightenment, greater than independence for the United States or India.”

“We are living in the blue age. Many generations of our ancestors, up to our grandparents, could only have dreamt of a time when a guardian navy eliminated nearly all risk involving sea lanes, anyone anywhere can sell to or buy from anyone else, anyone anywhere can sail anywhere.”

Mahan

Someone who did imagine it in our grandparents’ and great-grandparents’ time was Alfred Thayer Mahan. He foresaw a strong U.S. Navy on two oceans, and he greatly influenced President Theodore Roosevelt to build battleships and achieve naval hegemony under Manifest Destiny "moral" justification.

But, according to Easterbrook, Mahan, though still revered in many circles and right about the importance of the oceans, was devastatingly and fundamentally wrong then and now about some key theories.

Among Mahan’s failed theories were that bigger platforms are always better, a big navy could deter war just by being built and kept in port, and “that if sent into action, a navy should concentrate all force into a single, decisive battle.” Mahan’s theories enticed not just T.R. but also Kaiser Wilhelm, Führer Hitler, and Emperor Hirohito. Today, Mahan is read and cited by military leaders in the Communist Chinese Party, according to Easterbrook.

Mahan’s theories led Wilhelm and his navy leader Adm. Alfred von Tirpitz to build a big fleet but leave it in port until a decisive battle and defeat at Scapa Flow. “Unable to make Mahan’s theoretical notions work in the real world, Tirpitz pressured the kaiser to allow unrestricted submarine warfare against American merchantmen. This decision, taken in winter 1917, brought the United States into the Great War. “By drawing in the United States, strongest nation in the world, Mahan’s theories converted German military advantage into utter ruin.”

Imperial Japan made the same mistake less than a generation later when the attack on Pearl Harbor, instead of striking decisive blow, brought America into World War II. Japan built super-sized battleships Yamato and Musashi, and aircraft carrier Shinano, that were quickly sunk by the U.S. Navy.

After the British government appeased Hitler in the late 1930s, the Nazi’s were unleashed. “Hitler conceived a pure Mahan strategy, with he ominous label Plan Z, of building supergiant battleships, aircraft carriers, and long-range cruisers, all of which never would leave port: the ultimate fleet-in-being, to use Mahan’s terminology.”

The world has moved away from military conquest and toward greater international cooperation and trade by sea. But what about China’s plans?

“Today, Alfred Thayer Mahan is admired in China. Officers of the Chinese maritime force –– officially the People’s Liberation Army Navy, the existence of an organization called the Army Navy being delightful –– are required to read ‘The Influence of Sea Power Upon History.’ A documentary about how the upstart Tudor fleet brought great-power status to England in 1588 by defeating the Spanish Armada in decisive battle is shown on state-controlled Chinese television, followed by a talk-show format discussion of the genius of Mahan.”

Easterbrook observes, “Should China make a Mahan-style move, the harm to international trade will send the entire world spiraling backward.” He examines the current situation in Taiwan and the ways in which forces on all sides are monitored so as to create less uncertainty.

Easterbrook says that though Mahan was right about a nation’s coastline being its most valuable natural resource, he was wrong in arguing for the right of America to use its naval force “outward” to seize power over developing nations –– or otherwise Germany would do so.

One of the problems of building bigger and more and more ships, as Mahan advised, is that it gives powerful leaders more hammers, and you know what they say about hammers.

“Peace on the waters is both invisible to most of humanity and tenuous. For decades the US Navy has been so strong that no other nation tried to contest its ensign. Recently, China has engaged in a clipped naval buildup. The saying ‘When you have a hammer, every problem looks like a nail’ can apply to military affairs. Soon China will possess maritime hammers, and the world’s oceans may begin to seem like nails.

“The Russian Federation is improving its navy, while India, the United Kingdom, Japan, and other nations are adding warships. Destructive, almost continuous novelist military buildup was a distinguishing feature of the world from about 1500 to the 1950s. The English-German naval arms race that began in 1909 engaged the momentum of World War I. The reprise English-German naval arms race that began in 1936, coupled with Japan’s preparations to sink the American Pacific fleet at Pearl Harbor, were major factors in the impetus for World War II. Should a new naval arms race commence, the impacts will be global and entirely negative. Americans ignore the prospect at our peril.”

The world cannot ignore what Easterbrook considers the two greatest threats to continued prosperity: a renewed arms race (more hammers) and global climate change.

He explores how the Arctic is creating new challenges but also new opportunities for international cooperation, including new trade routes as long as sea lanes are unrestricted.

Special attention is given to contested areas and expanded sweeping claims by the PRC in the South China Sea.

Yesterday, the United States showed how it “will continue to defend the rights and freedoms of the sea guaranteed to all,” according to a statement on Navy.mil.

Logistics Specialist Joshua Green, from New Orleans, stands lookout watch on the bridgewing as Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer USS Benfold (DDG 65) conducts routine underway operations, Jan. 20, 2022. Benfold is forward-deployed to the U.S. 7th Fleet area of operations in support of a free and open Indo-Pacific. (MC2 Class Arthur Rosen)

From the Navy: “On Jan. 20, USS Benfold (DDG 65) asserted navigational rights and freedoms in the vicinity of the Paracel Islands, consistent with international law. At the conclusion of the operation, USS Benfold exited the excessive claim and continued operations in the South China Sea. This freedom of navigation operation (‘FONOP’) upheld the rights, freedoms, and lawful uses of the sea recognized in international law by challenging restrictions on innocent passage imposed by the People's Republic of China (PRC), Taiwan, and Vietnam and also by challenging the PRC’s claim to straight baselines enclosing the Paracel Islands.”

Easterbrook

The Navy is still “a global force for good” if you believe Easterbrook’s contention that free and open trade between nations helps prevent wars.

“For present generations, a world without war is too distant to represent a practical goal,” Easterbrook writes.

“Disincentives to war are more pragmatic. The strongest disincentive to war on the blue water –– and, thereby, the best protection for trade that benefits nearly everyone on earth –– is the strength, scope, and forward placement of American naval power.”

In Part II of our review of “The Blue Age,” we will dive deeper into Easterbrook’s observations about China as well as the need for enforcing international laws, including especially, as the Navy notes, “international law of the sea as reflected in the 1982 Law of the Sea Convention provides for certain rights and freedoms and other lawful uses of the sea to all nations.”

Top photo: Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer USS Benfold (DDG 65) conducts routine underway operations in the South China Sea, Jan. 20, 2022. (MC2 Arthur Rosen)

'General Confusion' & Lies of Vietnam War

Crawling out of a hole in Vietnam in 1967. (Photos from National Archives and LBJ Library)

Review by Bill Doughty––

H.R. McMaster shows how outright lies, obfuscation and "deceit and manipulation of Congress and the American people" brought about the Vietnam War.

His carefully researched "Dereliction of Duty: Lyndon Johnson, Robert McNamara, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the Lies that Led to Vietnam" (HarperCollins) was published in 1997. McMaster is the current National Security Adviser.

Now, twenty years after his book appeared – and fifty years after most of the events depicted in this book –McMaster's words ring with new relevance.

"The president's fixation on short-term political goals, combined with his character and the personalities of his principal civilian and military advisers, rendered the administration incapable of dealing adequately with the complexities of the situation in Vietnam. LBJ's advisory system was structured to achieve consensus and to prevent potentially damaging leaks. Profoundly insecure and distrustful of anyone but his closest civilian advisers, the president viewed the JCS with suspicion. When the situation in Vietnam seemed to demand military action, Johnson did not turn to his military advisors to determine how to solve the problem. He turned instead to his civilian advisers to determine how to postpone a decision. The relationship between the president, the secretary of defense, and the Joint Chiefs led to the curious situation in which the nation went to war without the benefit of effective military advice from the organization having the statutory responsibility to be the nation's 'principal military advisers.'"

Taylor and McNamara (2nd and 3rd from left) aboard Air Force One headed to Honolulu, 1964; President Johnson in executive seat and robe. (Yoichi Okamoto)

LBJ surrounded himself with yes-men. Chief among them was a holdover from the Kennedy in-crowd, military advisor Maxwell Taylor, author of "The Uncertain Trumpet" and trumpeter of the strategies of "flexible response" and "limited war."

In Neil Sheehan's comprehensive history of the Vietnam War, "A Bright and Shining Lie," Taylor's "limited war" strategy is called "Maxwell Taylor's rationalization to find employment for an unemployed U.S. Army." 

LBJ traveled to Honolulu with his inner circle for a conference in early June 1964. "The conference attendees affirmed the basic concept of graduated pressure and agreed to refine plans to support it." McMaster contends that a lack of consensus or clear understanding was part of the administration's plan. "The ambiguity was deliberate, and Taylor played a critical role in preserving it."

Marine walks through punji gully in January 1966.

Johnson skipped over Admiral George Anderson in order to keep Taylor as chairman of the joint chiefs. (In July 1964 LBJ chose Taylor to succeed Henry Cabot Lodge as ambassador to South Vietnam, where he served in '64 and '65.)

Meanwhile, LBJ tried to go after those in his administration who leaked to the press, and he "obscured the cost of the war" both to Congress and the public.

When the early Rolling Thunder air campaign did not succeed, LBJ and other senior military leaders blamed the inexperienced "boys" carrying out the mission. He called himself the coach and told his inner circle a story that was eerily reflected in the 2017 Super Bowl 51, more than 50 years later. Think of LBJ as the future Coach Bill Belichick. (Belichick, by the way, was then 13 years old and would soon to go to Annapolis High School, but that's another story.)

"LBJ told the JCS: 'Now, I'm like a coach I used to know, and you're my team; you're all Johnson men.' Referring to the situation in Vietnam, the president continued with his metaphor: 'We played the first half of the game and the score is now 21-0 against us; now I want you to tell me how to win' ... 'You're graduates of the Military Academy and you should be able to give me an answer. I want you to come back here next Tuesday and tell me how we are going to kill more Viet Cong.'"

LBJ and McNamara in a Vietnam security meeting July 21, 1966.

Johnson was fixated in the power of winning – even when claims of victories were increasingly less believable.

This book features nearly three dozen pages of notes and a very extensive bibliography including books, documents and oral histories conducted with witnesses and principals. "Dereliction" is recommended by authors and historians like Paul Fussell, Stanley Karnow and Tom Clancy as well as former uniformed leaders like Col. (U.S. Army ret.) David Hackworth and Lt. Gen. (U.S. Marine Corps ret.) Victor Krulak (father of the 51st commandant of the Marines), among others.

Each chapter begins with an epigraph, none more powerful than this one by Thomas Jefferson at the beginning of Chapter 5, "From Distrust to Deceit." The Jefferson quote is from August 19, 1785:

"He who permits himself to tell a lie often finds it much easier to do it a second and third time, til at length it becomes habitual; he tells lies without attending to it, and truths without the world's believing him. This falsehood of the tongue leads to that of the heart, and in time depraves all its good dispositions." – Jefferson

Whether LBJ believed in the logic of his argument or not, he argued midway into the war, that patriotism and support of the troops must be a "lynchpin for greater involvement." In May of 1965 LBJ said a vote against a ramp up and request for an additional $700 million was a "vote against 400 Americans" who had been killed up to that point.

McMaster doesn't blame the New York Times or college campuses for the failure of the United States in Vietnam. He places the blame squarely in "Washington D.C. ... indeed, even before the first American units were deployed."

"The disaster in Vietnam was not the result of impersonal forces but a uniquely human failure, the responsibility of which was shared by President Johnson and his principal military and civilian advisers. The failings were man and reinforcing: arrogance, weakness, lying in the pursuit of self-interest, and, above all, the abdication of responsibility to the American people."

A Navy Nurse helps a Marine aboard USS Repose, Oct. 1966.

Parallels are tied to another error in judgment, as defined by historians: President George Bush's foray into Iraq in 2002.

While patriotic Americans honor the sacrifice of the brave service members who went to Vietnam, many believing they were fighting for freedom, McMaster reminds us;

"The war continues to capture the public interest in part because, looking back, its cost seems exorbitant – and would seem so even if the United States had 'won.' The war took the lives of fifty-eight thousand Americans and well over one million Vietnamese. It left Vietnam in ruins and consumed billions of American dollars, nearly wrecking the American economy. Vietnam divided American society and inflicted on the United States one of the greatest Political traumas since the Civil War. indeed, the war's legacies proved to be as profound as the war was traumatic. It led Americans to question the integrity of their government as never before. Thirty (now fifty) years later, after the end of the Cold War, the shadow of the American experience in Vietnam still hangs heavy over American foreign and military policy, and over American society."

Counting down the days and months in 1968.

Missing in this dissertation, because of McMaster's narrow timeframe, is an accounting of President Richard Nixon, who used his own subterfuge directly and indirectly with the Republic of Vietnam to attain office in 1968 (and then lied to the American people about domestic affairs, including related to his election) and who extended the war before the American public demanded an end to the conflict in 1973. Interestingly, McMaster mentions Nixon only once and then in the context of John F. Kennedy, who "narrowly defeated Dwight Eisenhower's vice president" in 1960.

"Dereliction of Duty" concludes with this powerful observation:

"As American involvement in Vietnam deepened, the gap between the true nature of that commitment and the president's depiction of it to the American people, the Congress, and members of his own administration widened. Lyndon Johnson, with the assistance of Robert S. McNamara and the Joint Chiefs of Staff, had set the stage for America's disaster in Vietnam."

The antidote to similar disasters may be, in the words of other senior leaders,  "clarity and consistency" and "honesty and accountability" – credible leadership.

Honor, Courage, Commitment: Grit Wins the Gold

Review by Bill Doughty

Like having Michael Phelps and Katie Ledecky as anchors, the last few chapters of Dr. Angela Duckworth's milestone, "Grit" (2016, Scribner, Simon & Schuster), completes an extended relay of a book–filled with life advice and examples of achievement and success.

In fact, Duckworth talks about Phelps, Ledecky, Kevin Durant and other Olympics heroes–along with dozens of other public and private individuals in this powerful book subtitled "The Power of Passion and Perseverance."

Readers will want to race through this book to pick up valuable tips about potential, resilience, character, training and achievement. From diverse fields or endeavors such as sports, zookeeping, NASA, cartooning, spelling bees and more, Duckworth delivers examples from her own life as well the lives of people including Jeff Bezos, Steve Young, Tom Seaver, Julia Child, John Irving, Aristotle, Ta Nehishi Coates, Benjamin Franklin, Will Shortz, Warren Buffet, and the nation of Finland.

A Navy SEAL monitors youth training camp. (Photo by MC3 Geneva G. Brier.)

Duckworth explores West Point's "The Beast" (barracks boot camp) as she and other scientists attempt to predict who will succeed and who will drop out. The same evaluation is done, no doubt, in all military branches especially in hyper-competitive areas such as Navy BUDS (Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL) training.

Natural talent, initial physical strength, and inherent skills are not most important. Mental toughness–grit–is.

Winners like Michael Phelps, Katie Ledecky and Usain Bolt want to go head-to-head with other people, are willing to train continuously and with passion, and can accept failure as motivation for the next challenge. They understand "there are no shortcuts to excellence."

It helps, Duckworth notes, to have "purpose-driven grit"–a vision and calling, whether it's the Olympics, service in the military or as part of an NBA or NFL team. Each has its culture of teamwork,service and, some more than others, a concept of a greater good.

After seeing Duckworth's TED talk on grit, Seattle Seahawks head coach Pete Carroll, author of "Win Forever," contacted her and invited her to the Seahawks camp. Carroll's philosophy is, "Do things better than they have ever been done before."



The day after Carroll's team beat the Denver Broncos to win Superbowl XLVIII in 2014, he said this in an interview:

"We're looking for great competitors. That's really where it starts. And that's the guys that really have grit. The mindset that they're always going to succeed, that they've got something to prove. They're resilient, they're not going to let setbacks hold them back. They're not going to be deterred, you know, by challenges and hurdles and things ... It's that attitude–we really refer to it as grit."

Carroll had this to say about Duckworth after he shared a town hall with her in Seattle last year: “She has such a big personality and attitude, she’s really fun to work with. She goes really fast with her thoughts and ideas, which is just fine with me, so we’ll cover a lot of stuff in a short amount of time. She’s got a real sense of urgency about discovery as well, so we see things in a similar fashion in that regard as well.”

Duckworth examines Carroll's reaction to the next year's Superbowl XLIX and the Coach's decision to pass rather than run the ball with Marshawn Lynch, resulting in a historic loss. Failure became another opportunity for resilience.

Carroll's idol-mentor was Coach John Wooden, a World War II Navy veteran and epic winning coach of UCLA Bruins basketball team. Wooden's advice comes across in this found (unintentional) haiku from the great coach:

success is never

final; failure is never

fatal; ... courage ... counts

Duckworth is impressed by this Japanese saying: "Fall seven, rise eight." People with grit don't give up. They rise to the challenge. They learn that it takes at least 10 years and 10,000 repetitions to become an expert or master. They have purpose and passion.

Duckworth offers great words of wisdom, including her own found haiku:

our potential is

one thing; what we do with it

is quite another

As a neurobiologist and psychologist, Dr. Duckworth can explain the neuroplasticity of a "remarkably adaptive" brain that allows people to achieve their vision.

"Like a muscle that gets stronger with use, the brain changes itself when you struggle to master a new challenge. In fact, there's never a time in life when the brain is completely 'fixed.' Instead, all our lives, our neurons retain the potential to grow new connections with one another and to strengthen the ones we already have. What's more, throughout adulthood, we maintain the ability to grow myelin, a sort of insulating sheath that protects neurons and speeds signals traveling between them."

This book is packed with advice for individuals, leaders and parents. It includes a self-test and practical how-to advice, along with personal and public examples of people and situations where grit wins "the gold."

It's a perfect Navy read in the context of preserving a resilient workforce and fostering core values: Honor, Courage, Commitment."

Duke's Coach K and Navy Core Values

by Bill Doughty

Coach K after 1,000 wins with his 2014/2015 team.

Victory starts with strong defense and execution through power projection. That's the theme of today's victory by the Duke Blue Devils over the Michigan State Spartans.

The best teams have strong, good and caring coaches, and each of the coaches for this year's NCAA Final Four tournament in Indianapolis has a good, experienced coach on the bench.

"But the strongest bench job of the season has been done by arguably the best coach of any sport on the planet: Mike Krzyzewski," writes Steve DeShazo of Fredericksburg.com on the eve of today's game.

Coach K and Coach Izzo have fun yesterday.

Coach K is the picture of sustained honor, courage and commitment.

"After 35 years at Duke, his program is almost self-sustaining," DeShazo writes. "He’s won a record 1,016 games, four national titles and will tie the legendary John Wooden today with his 12th Final Four appearance ... Krzyzewski’s role with USA Basketball enriches his status even more."

Krzyewski knows when to be serious yet he shows he can have fun.

Coach K is author of several books, including "The Gold Standard: Building a World-Class Team," "Beyond Basketball: Coach K’s Keywords For Success" and "Leading with the Heart: Coach K’s Successful Strategies for Basketball, Business, and Life." We featured "Leading with the Heart" in a recent Navy Reads review; the book is on the CNO's Professional Reading Program.

Coach K on Honor, Courage and Commitment:

Honored to coach Team USA in the Olympics.

Honor as head coach of USA team in the Olympics – “For me, this is the ultimate honor in coaching,” said Krzyzewski. “It is a chance to represent the United States at this elite level of basketball. I am honored to be chosen and look forward to the opportunity to develop this team that will represent our great country in its own sport, both on and off the court.”

Courageous leadership – “It takes courage not only to make decisions, but to live with those decisions afterward.”

Committed teamwork – “Mutual commitment helps overcome the fear of failure—especially when people are part of a team sharing and achieving goals. It also sets the stage for open dialogue and honest conversation.”

March Madness: Coach K's Philosophy & Found Haiku

Review by Bill Doughty

One foundation for Duke University men's basketball head coach Mike Krzyzewski  (along with his family) is his education at West Point U.S. Military Academy, where he learned three disciplines: "respect for authority, personal responsibility and the discipline to be honest."

"Imagine if every person had such a great foundation and then the passion and heart to love what they do. They'd always love their lives," he writes in "Leading with the Heart," written in 2000 and published by Warner Books. "That's what I'd call success."

Fundamental qualities for success in leadership and performance include communication, trust, collective responsibilities, caring and pride, according to Coach K. "In leadership there are no words more important than trust. In any organization trust must be developed among every member of the team if success is going to be achieved."

Pride comes from ownership of the mission; understanding of the mission comes from communication, caring and demonstrating collective responsibility as a team.

Coach K writes about being overly rigid in his early days as a coach, but he learned how to keep his core principles while being flexible, adaptable and innovative, depending on the personalities and situations he faced as his teams evolved. Now, "I want no artificial walls erected that might limit potential, stifle creativity or shackle innovation." Good leaders must be able to think on their feet and react immediately when necessary. And good leaders give their teams freedom to excel.

"At Duke, nobody is a number. Rather, we try to plant seeds that help people grow. We try to give every individual the freedom to develop their full capabilities.

"If you put a plant in a jar, it will take the shape of the jar. but if you allow the plant to grow freely, twenty jars might not be able to hold it. The freedom to grow personally, the freedom to make mistakes and learn from them, the freedom to work hard, and the freedom to be yourself – these four freedoms should be guaranteed by every leader in every organization."

Touring the Pentagon after the 1992 season.

A pivotal moment in the book is his retelling of one of the most memorable plays in college sports history, the East Regional championship game against the University of Kentucky in March 1992. The Duke Blue Devils were down 103 to 102 with 2.1 seconds left in the game. Coach K called up a play for Grant Hill to pass the ball 75 feet down the length of the court to Christian Laettner at the top of the key on the other end.

It's what happened immediately before the play was called and immediately after it was executed that sets Coach Krzyzewski apart as a great coach, leader and human being. It must be read in its entirety to be fully appreciated, and it's too long to excerpt here.

Speaking with Soldiers at Fort Bragg.

In "Leading with the Heart," Krzyzewski offers practical advice for leading teams with exuberance and excitement, always living with integrity, demonstrating confidence, using plural pronouns such as "we" and "our" instead of "me" and "my," and building pride, unity and motivation through traditions. 

Returning several times to examples from his experience at West Point, Coach K writes:

"I find that people, generally, want to be on a team. They want to be part of something bigger than themselves. They want to be in a situation where they feel that they are doing something for the greater good."

Found Haiku in Coach K's Philosophy

This book is filled with Sun Tzu or Confucius-like sayings like, "Never let a person's weakness get in the way of his strength," "Sometimes a loss can be a win," and "The only way you lose is if you don't try your best."

Within some of his words of wisdom are "found haiku," poems or verses generally fitting the rule of three lines of 5-7-5 syllables.

Here are some found haiku in "Leading with Heart":

The deal is [in] the

handshake; the deal is that there

won't be any deals

You hear, you forget;

You see, you remember; You

do, you understand

Confidence can be

an extremely effective

weapon against fear

Confidence shared

is better than confidence

only in yourself

A key principle:

don't worry about losing;

think about winning

People have to be

given the freedom to show

the heart they possess

And at the heart of

character is honesty

and integrity

Help me do my best,

help me be myself, and help

me lead with my heart

"Leading with the Heart: Coach K's Successful Strategies for Basketball, Business and Life" by Mike Krzyzewski with Donald T. Phillips was written 15 years ago, so references to Duke basketball players and others are somewhat dated (no mention of Jahlil Okafor, for example, who was only four years old at the time), but references harken back to some great memories of NCAA seasons and games. Among the names Coach K recounts in hardwood stories: Bobby Hurley, Grant Hill, Danny Ferry, Chris Collins, Trajan Langdan, Steve "Wojo" Wojciechowski, Shane Battier, Christian Laettner, Tommy Amaker and Johnny Dawkins.


Coach K's book is on CNO Adm. Greenert's professional reading list. 

Duke Blue Devils (28-3) are ranked 3 by the AP as of March 8. Coach K's team was victorious yesterday over the University of North Carolina at Dean E. Smith Center, Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Down by two points at the half, they ended with a win at 84-77. They are expected to be a number-one seed in the upcoming NCAA tournament bracket.