A tribute to CAPT Sam Meyer - Open channel: readers' response & comments

Navy Supply Corps Newsletter, May-June, 2003 by Frank J. Allston

CAPT Sam Meyer, SC, USNR (Ret.), 85, a World War II veteran with 34 years of Navy and Naval Reserve service, died at Chicago, Ill., on Saturday, Jan. 11, 2003, after several years of declining health. Dr. Meyer was a respected educator, a prolific author and was widely recognized as the unofficial biographer of Francis Scott Key, author of the lyrics to the national anthem.

The son of an immigrant father, Sam Meyer was born at Decorah, Iowa, in April 1917. He enrolled at Luther College in his hometown in 1934, left college in 1936 and joined the Civilian Conservation Corps in April 1938. He served in the CCC until August 1939. While a member of the CCC, he transferred to the State University of Iowa in 1938 and was graduated (cum laude) in June 1948 with a bachelor's degree in commerce.

Following graduation, he joined the Tennessee Valley Authority in September 1940 as junior clerk-stenographer at Wilson Dam, Ala. As war clouds were gathering in August 1941, he enlisted in the U.S. Navy in advanced rating as a yeoman, first class because, CAPT Meyer always said with a smile, he could type and had a college degree. He served as an enlisted man in Naval Intelligence at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

In January 1943, he was commissioned an ensign in the Naval Reserve Supply Corps. His wartime active duty included Naval Supply Depot, Oran, Algeria, where he met the commanding officer, the late RADM George Bauernschmidt, with whom he corresponded until Bauernschmidt passed away in 1998. LT Meyer next served at the Naval Air Station, Glenview, Ill., from July 1945 until he was released from active duty in April 1946. Meyer entered the University of Chicago, where he was awarded a master's degree in English in June 1948 and earned a doctorate in English in June 1960 from Loyola University of Chicago.

LT Meyer joined legendary Naval Reserve Supply Company 9-7, Chicago, in October 1948, served in increasingly responsible membership, training and counseling billets and was promoted to captain in September 1966. While a member of NRSC 9-7, he was ordered to 40 days of active duty to plan and prepare materials to facilitate promotions of storekeepers afloat. He was a member of the CNO Sea Power Presentation Team from September 1971 until his retirement from the Naval Reserve in June 1975. CAPT Meyer's rise to senior level in the Navy and Naval Reserve Supply Corps and his significant contributions to the Corps are all the more impressive considering that he never attended Navy Supply Corps School.

While studying for his postgraduate degrees, his first postwar employment was associate director of Profit Sharing and Pension Plan for Goldblatt's, a Chicago department store chain, from September 1946 to February 1948. He reoriented his career in 1949 by becoming a teacher of English, commerce and journalism in Chicago suburban high schools until 1955. Dr. Meyer became a professor of English at Morton College, Cicero, Ill., in 1956 and was named in 1968 chairman of Morton's English and Foreign Language Department, a position he held until his retirement in 1975, when Morton College designated him professor emeritus of English.

Dr. Meyer's literary efforts were published in such prominent journals as Naval History, The Retired Officer, Maryland Historical Magazine, Journal of American Composition and Rhetoric Society Quarterly, as well as the Navy Supply Corps Newsletter. He is listed in the Directory of American Scholars.

In 1990, I had the privilege of nominating CAPT Meyer for the George Washington Honor Medal for Excellence in the category of Public Communication, for his article, Religion, Patriotism, and Poetry in the Life of Francis Scott Key, published in the Maryland Historical Magazine in fall 1989. Then Chief of Corps RADM James Miller, SC, USN (Ret.), presented the medal to CAPT Meyer in June 1991 on behalf of the Freedoms Foundation of Valley Forge before a session of the Naval Reserve Supply Corps Readiness Workshop at Jacksonville, Fla. Dr. Meyer had already received, in 1984, a Valley Forge Freedoms Foundation Honor Certificate for his article, Moral Courage and the Spider Web Connection, published by The Retired Officer, December 1983. (See CAPT Meyer's obituary on Page 41.)