A Supply Corps School memory

Navy Supply Corps Newsletter, July-August, 2003 by Robert H. Madden

Editor's note: Robert Madden recently provided the following memories of his days with the Navy Supply Corps School to the Newsletter. The Newsletter will continue to provide personal histories of the Supply Corps through articles such as this one whenever possible.

Early in the year of 1946, I was just finishing up the decommissioning of my ship, the USS Lander (APA 176) at Norfolk. Decommissioning was 18/7 hours of detailed, boring questionable work as compared to when we commissioned in Astoria, Oregon, preparing for the war in the Pacific. By the way, the Lander broke from its moorings in the Reserve Fleet in the York River, and was hauled away to be made into razor blades.

I had received orders from BUPERS to go to Harvard University graduate school as an instructor in disbursing and supply subjects. As my wife was very pregnant and in Seattle, I made a trip to Washington, D.C., to see the Supply Corps detailing officer about possibly being ordered to the West Coast. Wally Dowd, later becoming an admiral, was the detail officer, and had been a shipmate at the NROTC Unit at the University of Washington in Seattle.

Wally convinced me that I would be helping him and would definitely help my career by becoming an instructor at Navy Supply Corps School Harvard University in Cambridge, Mass. I was immediately assigned as a teacher of Navy Disbursing to replace a Reserve officer who was getting out of the Navy. At the time, I really had to study and work hard as a first-time instructor even though I had just finished two strenuous years as disbursing and supply officer on the Lander.

Becoming an assistant professor at Harvard launched me into the most interesting and fulfilling profession that I could imagine. I spent many hours preparing for each class session, devising ways and methods to make such a boring subject as disbursing and accounting become alive, new, and interesting to my newly commissioned Navy officer students. I know I was successful, for many of my students told me so when they specifically looked me up later in the fleet.

My students were newly commissioned ensigns from the NROTC's, the Officer Candidate Schools (OCS), and ensigns from the Naval Academy who were not 20/20 in their eye sight and were required to go into the Supply Corps. These were the most highly motivated students of all the students I had in my later 20 years of teaching. Such students required a great motivation on my part to have high standards on what and how I prepared for their instruction.

In the summer of 1946, NSCS Harvard was decommissioned at the Graduate School of Business, Harvard University and I was transferred along with all the equipment, instruction material, and records, and "Gracey" the secretary to the new NSCS at Bayonne, N.J., where the "debris meets the sea." It was a drastic change from the beautiful big buildings, dormitories, restaurant, and classrooms of Harvard to the temporary wooden barracks the school occupied on the Bayonne Peninsula along with the Navy Supply Depot and Reserve ships.

The buildings had been newly refurbished with the school classrooms, dormitories, gymnasium, mess hall, administrative spaces, and Navy Food Research Office headed by a good friend Danny Logan. The instructional staff was highly motivated and qualified to teach in their specialties. I remember Neils Andersen, Dwight Botkins, Phil Crosby, Herb Johnson, and Bud Knopf. Knopf later became Dean of the Graduate School of Business, Harvard, where NSCS had been located. The instructors who were Naval Reserve were all replaced by regular Navy staff.

The student mix also drastically changed. Besides the newly commissioned officers, most of our students were line officers who were selected and transferred to the Supply Corps. They were of all ranks from ensign to lieutenant commander. They all being highly motivated made superior grades in all the disbursing and supply courses presented to them over the four month school period.

During the time I was an instructor at NSCS Bayonne, it is estimated about one third of the Navy supply officers after World War II came through the school. ADM "Chub" Austin was the most memorable of those who were Commanding Officers of NSCS Bayonne. ADM Austin was a nut for physical fitness, and if you visited him in his office you had to climb the rope, hand over hand, he had suspended from the ceiling. He was a native of Short hills, N.J., and immediately initiated action to move the school from its unsavory location there where the "debris meets the sea" to a college location at The University of Georgia.

After Bayonne, I was an assistant professor at the NROTC at Berkeley, Calif., and after retirement became Chairman of Economics and Business at California Western University, San Diego, and Professor of Economics and Business at Southwestern Junior College, Chula Vista, Calif. I sure wished I had been an instructor at NSCS, University of Georgia.

Commander Robert H. Madden, Supply Corps, USN (Ret)