Naval Academy Class of 1967 reflects on time as midshipmen

ANNAPOLIS, Md. — The handsome young president told the midshipmen to stand at ease — none of them did.

"Perhaps the plebes will. Did you explain that to them?" President John F. Kennedy joked to the Naval Academy leadership. "That comes later in the course."

Most of the mids standing in Tecumseh Court on the hot August day in 1963 were plebes — they didn't want to do anything that got them in trouble. Even if the orders came from the commander-in-chief.

Kennedy told the Class of 1967 that if he was a young man in 1963, he couldn't think of a better place to begin his career than at a military academy.

"And any man who may be asked in this century what he did to make his life worthwhile, I think can respond with a good deal of pride and satisfaction: 'I served in the United States Navy,'" he said.

Kennedy's death three months later would be the first of many pivotal, history-making moments defining the 1960s: civil rights, voting rights, Martin Luther King Jr., "The Feminine Mystique," the pill, the Summer of Love, "sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll" and Vietnam. When 1967 Naval Academy graduates reflect on their class, as they did together this week on the eve of Commissioning Week, they remember living in changing times while living inside a "bubble."

"We grew up in a cauldron of change," said Dave Church, president of the Class of 1967.

While students on college campuses across the country protested for free speech, experimented with drugs and listened to Bob Dylan, The Beatles and The Beach Boys in their dorm rooms, the same couldn't be said for Naval Academy midshipmen in the 1960s. (The class's song was "We Gotta Get Out of This Place" by The Animals and notoriously annoyed the commandant at the time. It's now required to be played at all class reunions.)

Mids' lives were based on what was going on inside of the Yard, Church said. Unlike now, there weren't many restaurants or bars in downtown Annapolis. Church recalls a greasy sub shop, where midshipmen could eat high caloric sandwiches and play on pinball machines.

"Even today, it's a hard place to be, but it's a great place to be from," he said. "Annapolis is a sleepy, little waterman town. You didn't go down there as a midshipman."

Liberty for the mids was limited, and they were often required to attend sporting or academic events on Saturdays, said Linton Wells, a '67 alumnus. Other former midshipmen recalled watching movies on the Yard on Saturday nights.

"We were all kept on a short tether," Wells said.

With limited radios and televisions, the mids learned most of the news from reading The Capital or national newspapers. Alumnus Mike Singleton said mids were required to talk about an article they read every day in class. That's where he learned about the Gulf of Tonkin and the rising tensions between the U.S. and the Soviet Union.

But for alumni like former Navy football player Calvin Huey, many of the nation's current events stayed outside of the academy's walls.

Huey was one of the two black midshipmen in the class and was one of about 10 black midshipmen who attended the academy between 1963 and 1967. When the civil rights movement began to build in '63, Huey said he was too focused on doing well at the academy.

He didn't learn about the March on Washington until Christmas break, almost six months later.

"In reality, I didn't know what was going on in the black community," he said. "You had to stay in the moment while you were there and know the things you had to know."

Huey added he didn't feel he was treated differently than other mids and credited being an athlete for why he had an easier time as a plebe.

When it came to the escalation of the Vietnam War, several of the alumni said they expected to be deployed after graduation — and many were.

Wells said he and his fellow midshipmen saw the Vietnam War in terms of the domino theory regarding communism in southeast Asia. But several alumni, especially those from small towns, said they didn't have many friends against the war or come in contact with protests.

"The peak of disillusionment didn't really come home to me as a midshipman," Wells said. He did have a girlfriend during that time who was "very anti-war" and their differing mentalities did impact the relationship, he said.

When a handful of local '67 graduates returned Wednesday, they could still recall the spot where Kennedy stood during their plebe summer. Many live in Annapolis, Washington, D.C., or Northern Virginia and frequently hold mini-reunions every year, including Army-Navy tailgates and I-Day picnics.

Several of the '67 alumni will present the Class of 2017 graduates with the gold ensign and second lieutenant bars during graduation. Alumnus Jim McNeece said he still gets a lump in his throat when he thinks about his graduation, specifically the cheers right before the hat toss.

The brigade gives three cheers for those about to leave the academy, and the graduates give three cheers for those they're leaving behind. To him, the moment represented his class's journey as midshipmen.

"To look at where we started and look at all the stuff we've been through. And it was done," he said. "Now we get on with this thing called life."