World War II admiral Sweetser dies at 105

[cec]

World War II admiral Sweetser dies at 105



He received Silver Star, 2 Bronze, and was academy’s oldest alum
The Associated Press
Posted : Tuesday Dec 4, 2007 6:14:35 EST

GRAY, Maine — Willard Sweetser, a retired Navy rear admiral who commanded destroyers in combat in World War II, has died. He was 105.
Sweetser died Friday at the Maine Veterans’ Home in Paris. He was the U.S. Naval Academy’s oldest living alumnus. Willard Sweetser Jr. confirmed his father’s death.
The elder Sweetser served aboard the gunboat Panay, which in 1937 was attacked by the Japanese while at anchor in the Yangtze River in China, and went on to command the destroyers Lardner and Hickox in the Pacific. He received the Silver Star and two Bronze Stars.
Sweetser enrolled in the Naval Academy in 1922, his interest in life at sea mirroring that of ancestors who had been shipmasters.
“I guess, as some young folks do, my father at a young age had a passion for the sea and wanted to serve his country,” said Willard Sweetser Jr., one of his two children.
After World War II, Sweetser served as naval attache at U.S. embassies in the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia, a posting that involved the gathering of intelligence on the Communist governments then in power.
Following his retirement in 1956, Sweetser earned a master’s degree from Purdue University and went on to teach mathematics and statistics at LaSalle University in Philadelphia.
Sweetser’s son said his father kept a positive outlook and remained vibrant, even at 105.
“He was reading The Wall Street Journal every day, and his memory was like the memory of an elephant,” his son said



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[redtanker]

Good post Thank you.

[AT3Weins]

Fair winds and following seas sir