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Hyman George Rickover (January 27, 1900 – July 8, 1986) was a four star admiral in the United States Navy who directed the original development of naval nuclear propulsion and controlled its operations for three decades as director of Naval Reactors. In addition, he oversaw the development of the Shippingport Atomic Power Station, the world's first commercial pressurized water reactor used for generating electricity. Rickover was known as the "Father of the Nuclear Navy", which as of July 2007 had produced 200 nuclear powered submarines, and 23 nuclear powered aircraft carriers and cruisers, though many of these U.S. vessels are now decommissioned and others under construction. With his unique personality, political connections, responsibilities, and depth of knowledge regarding naval nuclear propulsion, Rickover became the longest serving naval officer in U.S. history with 63 years active duty. Rickover's substantial legacy of technical achievements includes the United States Navy's continuing record of zero reactor accidents, as defined by the uncontrolled release of fission products subsequent to reactor core damage. Hyman Rickover was born to Abraham Rickover and Rachel (née Unger) Rickover, a Jewish family in Maków Mazowiecki of Poland, at that time under Russian rule. "Rickover" is derived from the village and the estate of Ryki, located within an hour of Warsaw, as is Maków Mazowiecki. "Hyman" is derived from the Hebrew word חַיִּים (Chayyim) meaning "life." Fleeing anti - Semitic pogroms, the young Rickover emigrated to the United States with his parents in 1905; decades later, the entire remaining Jewish communities of Ryki and Maków Mazowiecki were killed or otherwise perished during the Holocaust. Rickover's immediate family lived initially on the East Side of Manhattan and moved two years later to Lawndale, a community of Chicago, where Rickover's father continued work as a tailor. Rickover took his first paid job at nine years of age, earning three cents an hour for holding a light as his neighbor operated a machine. Later, he delivered groceries. He graduated from grammar school at 14. While attending John Marshall High School in Chicago, from where he graduated with honors in 1918, Rickover held a full-time job delivering Western Union telegrams, through which he became acquainted with U.S. Congressman Adolph J. Sabath. By way of the intervention of a family friend, Sabath, himself a Czech Jewish immigrant, nominated Rickover for appointment to the United States Naval Academy. Though only a third alternate for an appointment, through disciplined self - directed study and good fortune the future four - star admiral passed the entrance exam and was accepted. On 2 June 1922, Rickover graduated 107th out of 540 Midshipmen and was commissioned as an Ensign. He joined destroyer USS La Vallette (DD-315) on 5 September 1922. Rickover impressed his commanding officer with his hard work and efficiency, and was made engineer officer on 21 June 1923, becoming the youngest such officer in the squadron. He next served on board the battleship USS Nevada (BB-36) before earning a Master of Science (M.Sc.) in Electrical Engineering by way of a year at the Naval Postgraduate School at the Naval Academy, followed by further work at Columbia University. At Columbia he met his future wife, Ruth D. Masters, a graduate student in international law, whom he married in 1931 after she returned from her doctoral studies at the Sorbonne in Paris. Shortly after marrying, Rickover wrote to his parents of his decision to become an Episcopalian, remaining so for the remainder of his life. More fond of life on a small ship, and knowing that young officers in the submarine service were advancing quickly, Rickover went to Washington and volunteered for submarine duty. His application was turned down due to his age, at that time 29 years old. Fortunately for Rickover, he ran into his former commanding officer from Nevada while leaving the building, who interceded successfully on Rickover's behalf. From 1929 to 1933 Rickover qualified for submarine duty and command aboard the submarines S-9 and S-48. During 1933, while at the Office of the Inspector of Naval Material in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Rickover translated Das Unterseeboot (The Submarine) by World War I German Imperial Navy Admiral Hermann Bauer. Rickover's translation became a basic text for the U.S. submarine service. In June 1937, he assumed command of the minesweeper USS Finch (AM-9), and on 1 July of that year was promoted to Lieutenant Commander. In October his designation as an engineering duty officer became effective, and he left the Finch. He was assigned to the Cavite Navy Yard in the Philippines, expecting to be transferred shortly to the Bureau of Engineering in Washington D.C. After a trip overland across China, Burma, and India, by air across the Mideast to Athens and then London, and by ship to the U.S., Rickover arrived in Washington and took up his duties as assistant chief of the Electrical section of the Bureau of Engineering on 15 August 1939. On 10 April 1942, after America's entry into World War II, Rickover flew to Pearl Harbor to organize repairs to the electrical power plant of the USS California. In that role he was "a leading figure in putting the ship's electric alternators and motors back into operating condition," enabling the battleship to sail under her own power from Pearl Harbor to Puget Sound Navy Yard. Later during the war, his service as head of the Electrical Section in the Bureau of Ships brought him a Legion of Merit and gave him experience in directing large development programs, choosing talented technical people, and working closely with private industry. During his wartime service, as noted later in the January 11, 1954 Time magazine issue that featured him on its cover:
In 1946 a project was begun at the Manhattan Project's nuclear power focused Clinton Laboratory (now the Oak Ridge National Laboratory) to develop a nuclear electric generating plant. The United States Navy decided to send eight men to this project, including three civilians and one senior and four junior naval officers. Realizing the potential that nuclear energy held for the Navy, Rickover applied. Although he was not initially selected, through the intercession of his wartime boss, Admiral Earle Mills, who became the head of the Navy's Bureau of Ships that same year, Rickover was finally sent to Oak Ridge as the deputy manager of the entire project, granting him access to all facilities, projects and reports. Following efforts by physicists Ross Gunn, Philip Abelson and others in the Manhattan Project, he became an early convert to the idea of nuclear marine propulsion. Rickover worked with Alvin M. Weinberg, the Oak Ridge director of research, both to establish the Oak Ridge School of Reactor Technology and to begin the design of the pressurized water reactor for submarine propulsion. In February 1949, he received an assignment to the Division of Reactor Development, Atomic Energy Commission, and then assumed control of the Navy's effort as Director of the Naval Reactors Branch in the Bureau of Ships, reporting to Mills. This twin role enabled him to both lead the effort to develop the world's first nuclear powered submarine, USS Nautilus (SSN-571), which was launched and commissioned in 1954, as well as oversee the development of the Shippingport Atomic Power Station, the first commercial pressurized water reactor nuclear power plant. The decision for selecting Rickover to head the development of the nation's nuclear submarine program ultimately rested with Admiral Mills. According to Lieutenant General Leslie Groves, the primary military leader in charge of the Manhattan Project, Mills was anxious to have a very determined man involved, and – though he knew that Rickover was "not too easy to get along with" and "not too popular" – in his judgment Rickover was the man who the Navy could depend on "no matter what opposition he might encounter, once he was convinced of the potentialities of the atomic submarine." Rickover did not disappoint. The imagination, drive, creativity and engineering expertise demonstrated by Rickover and his team during that era resulted in a highly reliable nuclear reactor in a form - factor that would fit into a submarine hull with no more than a 28-foot beam. These were substantial technical achievements:
Promoted to the rank of Vice Admiral in 1958, the same year he was awarded the first of two Congressional Gold Medals, for nearly the next three decades Rickover exercised tight control over the ships, technology, and personnel of the nuclear Navy, interviewing and approving or denying every prospective officer being considered for a nuclear ship. Over the course of Rickover's record length career, these personal interviews amounted to tens of thousands of highly impressionable events; over 14,000 interviews were with recent college graduates alone. These legendary interviews loomed large in the minds of midshipmen from both the U.S. Naval Academy and Naval ROTC. Varying from arcane to combative to humorous, and ranging from midshipmen to very senior naval aviators who sought command of aircraft carriers (which sometimes lapsed into ego battles), the content of most of these interviews has been lost to history, though some were later chronicled in the several books on Rickover's career, as well as in a rare personal interview with Diane Sawyer in 1984. Rickover's stringent standards and powerful focus on personal integrity are largely credited with being responsible for the United States Navy's continuing record of zero reactor accidents. During the mid - late 1950s, Rickover revealed the source of his obsession with safety in a personal conversation with a fellow Navy captain:
He also made it a point to be aboard during the initial sea trial of almost every nuclear submarine completing its new - construction period, and by his presence both set his stamp of personal integrity that the ship was ready for the rigors of the open seas, and ensured adequate testing to either prove as much or to establish issues requiring resolution. As head of Naval Reactors, Rickover's focus and responsibilities were dedicated to reactor safety rather than tactical or strategic submarine warfare training. It could be argued that because of Rickover's singular focus on reactor operations, and direct line of communications with each nuclear submarine's captain, that this acted against the captains' war fighting abilities. Such a claim, however, does not hold up well in consideration of the highly classified national security accomplishments of the submarine force, such as are allegedly chronicled in Blind Man's Bluff: The Untold Story of American Submarine Espionage. Moreover, the accident free record of United States Navy reactor operations stands in stark contrast to those of America's primary competitor during the Cold War, the Soviet Union, which lost several submarines to reactor accidents in both its haste and chosen priorities for competing with superior U.S. technology. As stated in a retrospective analysis in October 2007:
However,
the extreme focus on nuclear propulsion plant operation and maintenance
was well known during Rickover's era as a potential hindrance to
balancing operational priorities. One way by which this was addressed
after the Admiral retired was that only the very strongest, former
at - sea submarine commanders have held Rickover's now uniquely
eight year position as NAVSEA-08, the longest chartered tenure in the U.S. military. From Rickover's first replacement, Kinnaird R. McKee, to today's head of Naval Reactors, Kirkland H. Donald, all have held command of nuclear submarines, their squadrons and ocean fleets; not one has been a long term Engineering Duty Officer such as Rickover. Following the Three Mile Island (TMI) power plant's partial core melt on March 28, 1979, President Jimmy Carter commissioned a study, "Report of the President's Commission on the Accident at Three
Mile Island (1979)." Subsequently, Admiral Rickover was asked to
testify before Congress in the general context of answering the
question as to why naval nuclear propulsion had succeeded in achieving
a record of zero reactor accidents (as defined by the uncontrolled
release of fission products to the environment resulting from damage to
a reactor core) as opposed to the dramatic one that had just taken place at Three Mile Island. In his testimony, he said: "Over
the years, many people have asked me how I run the Naval Reactors
Program, so that they might find some benefit for their own work. I am
always chagrined at the tendency of people to expect that I have a
simple, easy gimmick that makes my program function. Any successful
program functions as an integrated whole of many factors. Trying to
select one aspect as the key one will not work. Each element depends on
all the others."
Hyperactive, political, blunt, confrontational, insulting, flamboyant, and an unexcelled
workaholic who
was always demanding of others — without regard for rank or
position — as well as himself, Admiral Rickover was a thundering
force of nature and lightning rod for controversy. Moreover, he had
"little tolerance for mediocrity, none for stupidity." "If a man is
dumb," said a Chicago friend, "Rickover thinks he ought to be dead."
Even while a Captain, Rickover did not conceal his opinions, and many
of the officers he regarded as dumb eventually rose in rank to be
admirals and were assigned to the Pentagon. Rickover
found himself frequently and loudly in bureaucratic combat with these
senior naval officers, to the point that he nearly never became
"Admiral" Rickover: Two admiral selection boards — exclusively
made up of admirals — passed over Captain Rickover for promotion,
even while he was in the process of becoming famous. One of these
selection boards even met the day after USS Nautilus had its keel laying ceremony in the presence of President Truman.
It eventually took the intervention of the White House, U.S. Congress
and the Secretary of the Navy — and the very real threat of
changing the Navy's admiral selection system to include
civilians — before the next flag selection board welcomed the
twice passed over Rickover (normally a career ending event) into their
ranks. Even
Rickover's most senior, renowned and professionally accomplished
nuclear trained officers that he had personally selected, such as Edward L. Beach, Jr.,
had mixed feelings about "the kindly old gentleman," or simply "KOG",
as Rickover became euphemistically known in inner circles. Beach, in
his later years, once referred to him as a "tyrant" with "no account of his gradually failing powers" (United States Submarines). However, President Nixon's comments upon awarding the admiral's fourth star in 1973 are germane: "I
don't mean to suggest ... that he is a man who is without
controversy. He speaks his mind. Sometimes he has rivals who disagree
with him; sometimes they are right, and he is the first to admit that
sometimes he might be wrong. But the greatness of the American military
service, and particularly the greatness of the Navy, is symbolized in
this ceremony today, because this man, who is controversial, this man,
who comes up with unorthodox ideas, did not become submerged by the
bureaucracy, because once genius is submerged by bureaucracy, a nation
is doomed to mediocrity." While
both Rickover's military authority and congressional mandate with
regard to the U.S. fleet's reactor operations was absolute, it was not
infrequently a subject of Navy internal controversy. As head of the
Naval Reactors branch, and thus responsible for "signing off" on a
crew's competence to operate the reactor safely, he had the power to
effectively remove a warship from active service and did so on several
occasions, much to the consternation of those affected. In
short, Rickover was obsessed with a safe, details focused and
successful nuclear program. Coincident with this success, the
perception became established among many observers that he sometimes
used the raw exercise of power to settle scores or tweak noses. In
a distinct contrast to numerous examples of admirals and senior naval
officers who would come to point their finger at individuals or groups
of individuals in the fleet when something went seriously awry,
Rickover adamantly took full responsibility for everything within the
scope of the naval nuclear propulsion program (NNPP). Sample Rickover
quote: "My
program is unique in the military service in this respect: You know the
expression 'from the womb to the tomb'; my organization is responsible
for initiating the idea for a project; for doing the research, and the
development; designing and building the equipment that goes into the
ships; for the operations of the ship; for the selection of the
officers and men who man the ship; for their education and training. In
short, I am responsible for the ship throughout its life — from
the very beginning to the very end." Given
Rickover's single minded focus on naval nuclear propulsion, design and
operations, it came as a surprise to many when in 1982, near the end of
his career, he testified before the U.S. Congress that, were it up to
him, he "would sink them all." A seemingly outrageous enigma of a
statement — and perhaps one attributable to an old man beyond his
time — in context, Rickover's personal integrity and honesty were
such that he was lamenting the need for such war machines in the modern
world, and specifically acknowledged as well that the employment of
nuclear energy ran counter to the course of nature over time. At a congressional hearing Rickover testified that: "I
do not believe that nuclear power is worth it if it creates radiation.
Then you might ask me why do I have nuclear powered ships. That is a
necessary evil. I would sink them all. I am not proud of the part I
played in it. I did it because it was necessary for the safety of this
country. That's why I am such a great exponent of stopping this whole
nonsense of war. Unfortunately limits — attempts to limit war have
always failed. The lesson of history is when a war starts every nation
will ultimately use whatever weapon it has available." Further remarking: "Every
time you produce radiation, you produce something that has a certain
half - life, in some cases for billions of years. I think the human race
is going to wreck itself, and it is important that we get control of this horrible force and try to eliminate it." However,
after his retirement — and only a few months later, in May
1982 — Admiral Rickover spoke more specifically regarding the
questions "Could you comment on your own responsibility in helping to
create a nuclear navy? Do you have any regrets?": "I
do not have regrets. I believe I helped preserve the peace for this
country. Why should I regret that? What I accomplished was approved by
Congress — which represents our people. All of you live in safety
from domestic enemies because of security from the police. Likewise,
you live in safety from foreign enemies because our military keeps them
from attacking us. Nuclear technology was already under development in
other countries. My assigned responsibility was to develop our nuclear
navy. I managed to accomplish this."
As quoted by President
Jimmy Carter during his 1984 interview with Diane Sawyer: "One
of the most remarkable things that he ever told me was when we were
together on the submarine and he said that he wished that a nuclear
explosive had never been evolved. And then he said, 'I wish that
nuclear power had never been discovered.' And I said, 'Admiral, this is
your life.' He said, 'I would forego all the accomplishments of my
life, and I would be willing to forego all the advantages of nuclear
power to propel ships, for medical research and for every other purpose
of generating electric power, if we could have avoided the evolution of
atomic explosives.'"
When
he was a child still living in Russian occupied Poland, Rickover was
not allowed to attend public schools because of his Jewish faith.
Starting at the age of four, he attended a religious school where the
teaching was solely from the
Old Testament in Hebrew. School hours were from sunrise to sunset, six days a week. Following his formal education in the U.S. as described above and the birth of his son, Robert, Admiral
Rickover developed a decades long and outspoken interest in the
educational standards of the United States, stating in 1957: "I
suggest that this is a good time to think soberly about our
responsibilities to our descendants - those who will ring out the
Fossil Fuel Age. Our greatest responsibility, as parents and as
citizens, is to give America's youngsters the best possible education.
We need the best teachers and enough of them to prepare our young
people for a future immeasurably more complex than the present, and
calling for ever larger numbers of competent and highly trained men and
women." Rickover
was particularly of the opinion that U.S. standards of education were
unacceptably low. His first book centered on education and was a
collection of essays calling for improved standards of education,
particularly in math and science, entitled Education and Freedom (1960).
In this book, the Admiral states that, "education is the most important
problem facing the United States today” and “only the massive upgrading
of the scholastic standards of our schools will guarantee the future
prosperity and freedom of the Republic." A second book, Swiss Schools and Ours (1962)
was a scathing comparison of the educational systems of Switzerland and
America. He argued that the higher standards of Swiss schools,
including a longer school day and year, combined with an approach
stressing student choice and academic specialization produced superior
results. His persistent interest in education led to some related discussions with President John F. Kennedy. While
still on active duty, the Admiral had suggested that there are three
things that a school must do: First, it must transmit to the pupil a
substantial body of knowledge; second, it must develop in him the
necessary intellectual skill to apply this knowledge to the problems he
will encounter in adult life; and third, it must inculcate in him the
habit of judging issues on the basis of verified fact and logical
reasoning. Recognizing
"that nurturing careers of excellence and leadership in science and
technology in young scholars is an essential investment in the United
States national and global future," following his retirement Admiral
Rickover founded the Center for Excellence in Education in 1983. Additionally, the Research Science Institute (formerly
the Rickover Science Institute), founded by Admiral Rickover in 1984,
is a highly respected summer science program hosted by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for rising high school seniors from around the world. By
the late 1970s, Rickover's position seemed stronger than it had ever
been. He had survived more than two decades of attempts by the Navy
brass to force him into retirement — including being made to work
out of a converted ladies room and being passed over twice for
promotion. Over many years, powerful friends on both the House and
Senate Armed Services Committees ensured that he remained on active
duty long after most other admirals had retired from their second
careers. But on January 31, 1982, in his 80's, and after 63 years of service to his country under 13 presidents (Woodrow Wilson through Ronald Reagan), Rickover was forced to retire from the Navy as a full admiral by Secretary of the Navy John Lehman, with the knowledge and consent of President Reagan. This was done in a premeditated fashion. As Lehman, a former reserve naval aviator, put it in his book, Command of the Seas: [O]ne
of my first orders of business as secretary of the navy would be to
solve ... the Rickover problem. Rickover's legendary achievements
were in the past. His present viselike grip on much of the navy was
doing it much harm. I had sought the job because I believed the navy
had deteriorated to the point where its weakness seriously threatened
our future security. The navy's grave afflictions included loss of a
strategic vision; loss of self - confidence, and morale; a prolonged
starvation of resources, leaving vast shortfalls in capability to do
the job; and too few ships to cover a sea so great, all resulting in
cynicism, exhaustion, and an undercurrent of defeatism. The cult
created by Admiral Rickover was itself a major obstacle to recovery,
entwining nearly all the issues of culture and policy within the navy. Fitting
to the end of the decades long reign and reputation of Rickover, his
career concluded in both a battle with the defense establishment and a
coming - to - terms with his own human limitations. In
the early 1980s, structural welding flaws — whose nature and
existence had been covered up by falsified inspection records — led to
significant delays and expenses in the delivery of several
submarines being built at the General Dynamics Electric Boat Division
shipyard. In some cases the repairs resulted in practically dismantling
and then rebuilding what had been a nearly - completed submarine. While
the yard tried to pass the vast cost overruns directly onto the Navy,
Rickover fought Electric Boat's general manager, P. Takis Veliotis,
tooth and nail at every possible turn, demanding that the yard make
good on its shoddy workmanship. Although the Navy eventually settled with General Dynamics in 1981, paying out $634 million of $843 million in Los Angeles class submarine cost
overrun
and reconstruction claims, Rickover was bitter over the yard having
effectively and successfully sued the Navy for its own incompetence and
deceit. Of no small irony, the United States Navy was also the yard's
insurer — though the concept of reimbursing General Dynamics under
these conditions was initially considered "preposterous" in the words
of Secretary Lehman, the legal basis of General Dynamics' claims
included insurance compensation. Outraged,
Rickover furiously lambasted both the settlement and Secretary Lehman,
who was partly motivated to seek an agreement in order to continue to
focus on achieving President Reagan's goal of a 600 ship Navy.
This was hardly Rickover's first clash with the defense industry; he
was historically hard, even harsh, in exacting high standards from
these contractors – but now his relationship with Electric Boat took on the characteristics of an all out, no holds barred war (Running Critical: The Silent War, Rickover & General Dynamics, 1986). Veliotis
came to be indicted by a federal grand jury under racketeering and
fraud charges in 1983 for demanding $1.3 million in kickbacks from a
subcontractor. He nonetheless eventually escaped into exile and a life
of luxury in his native Greece where he remains a fugitive from U.S.
justice. Subsequent
to accusations by the indicted Veliotis, a Navy Ad Hoc Gratuities Board
determined that Rickover had received gifts from General Dynamics
including jewelry, furniture and exotic knives valued at $67,628 over a
16 year period. Charges were investigated as well that gifts were
provided by two other major nuclear ship contractors for the navy, General Electric and the Newport News Shipbuilding and Dry Dock division of Northrop Grumman. Veliotis
also charged, without providing substantiating evidence, that General
Dynamics had given gifts to other senior naval officers, and had
routinely underbid contracts with the intention of charging the
government for cost overruns. These charges were not pursued by the
Navy, at least in part due to Veliotis' flight from justice. Secretary
Lehman admonished Rickover for this impropriety via a nonpunitive
letter and stating that Rickover's "fall from grace with these little
trinkets should be viewed in the context of his enormous contributions
to the Navy." Rickover
released a statement through his lawyer saying his "conscience is
clear" with respect to the gifts. "No gratuity or favor ever affected
any decision I made." Senator William Proxmire of
Wisconsin, a longtime supporter of Rickover, later publicly associated
a debilitating stroke suffered by the Admiral to his having been
censured and "dragged through the mud by the very institution to which he rendered his invaluable service." Beyond
any personal enmity or power struggles between the two naval leaders,
it was Rickover's advanced age, singular focus and waning political
clout regarding nuclear power, and strong, near insubordinate stance
against paying the fraudulently inflated submarine construction claims
that gave Secretary Lehman substantial political capital to have
Rickover retired. A moderate loss of ship control and subsequent depth
excursion during the sea trials of the newly constructed USS La Jolla (SSN-701) —
over which Rickover had direct supervisory control and, as the
man in charge, actual culpability by way of human error — provided
Lehman with the final impetus for ending Rickover's career. Upon
being apprised of Lehman's decision that it was time for the admiral to
finally retire, President Reagan asked to meet with Rickover. As quoted
from Lehman's Command of the Seas, Rickover was unhappy with the course of events and held forth in a tirade against Lehman, with Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger in attendance, at the meeting with the President: (Rickover,
referring to Lehman:) "Mr. President, that piss-ant knows nothing about
the Navy." The admiral turned toward (Lehman) and raised his voice now
to a fearsome shout. "You just want to get rid of me, you want me out
of the program because you want to dismantle the program." Shifting now
toward President Reagan, he roared on: "He's a goddamn liar, he knows
he is just doing the work of the contractors. The contractors want me
fired because of all the claims and because I am the only one in the
government who keeps them from robbing the taxpayers." (Lehman,
as later quoted by CNN:) "... it was a difficult moment for the
president in the Oval Office. And he was so concerned about the man,
about Admiral Rickover and that he not be embarrassed, that he asked us
all to leave. He said, "Admiral Rickover and I see things the same way.
Could you leave us a while? We want to talk about policy." Offering
respectful words for Admiral Rickover's past service, but not
encouragement for continued service, President Reagan eventually
brought the meeting to a close and Rickover's 63 year career was at its
end. The
Navy's official investigation of General Dynamics' Electric Boat
division was ended shortly afterward. According to Theodore Rockwell,
Rickover's Technical Director for more than 15 years, more than one
source at that time stated that General Dynamics officials were
bragging around Washington that they had "gotten Rickover." On
February 28, 1983, a post retirement party honoring Admiral Rickover
was attended by all three living former U.S. Presidents at the time,
Nixon, Ford, and Carter. President Reagan was not in attendance.
Developed and polished over the course of the last five of his 63 years of public service, Admiral Rickover's final public remarks after his retirement included a lecture in May 1982 at the Morgenthau Memorial Lecture series under the auspices of the Carnegie Council ("The Voice for Ethics in International Policy"). In his lecture, titled Thoughts On Man's Purpose in Life, Rickover presented his crucible, summary comments on the subject for the
audience's careful consideration. Drawing upon wide ranging
philosophers and dignitaries such as Voltaire, Emerson, Sir Thomas More, Robert Browning, President Theodore Roosevelt, Justice Louis Brandeis, Aristotle and Martin Luther, as well as extracts from the I Ching,
Rickover presented some of the fundamentally guiding thoughts and
beliefs that he had acquired during his lifetime. Rickover's
core comments centered around the thoughts that "principles of
existence — responsibility, perseverance, excellence, creativity,
courage — must be wedded to intellectual growth and development if
we are to find meaning and purpose in our lives" and that "a final
principle of existence essential to man's purpose in life is the
development of standards of ethical and moral conduct." Earnest in
pointing out the triumph of action over thoughts alone, Rickover's
comments included the following: "Man
has a large capacity for effort. In fact it is so much greater than we
think it is that few ever reach this capacity. We should value the
faculty of knowing what we ought to do and having the will to do it.
Knowing is easy; it is the doing that is difficult. The critical issue
is not what we know but what we do with
what we know. The great end of life is not knowledge, but action. I
believe that it is the duty of each of us to act as if the fate of the
world depended on him ... we must live for the future, not for our
own comfort or success." He
closed his remarks at the lecture with a question and answer period
that addressed various aspects of Rickover's public service record,
opinions, philosophies and anticipation for the future. Subsequent to strokes, pneumonia and generally declining health over time, Admiral Rickover died at his home in Arlington, Virginia, on July 8, 1986. Memorial services were led by Admiral James D. Watkins at the Washington National Cathedral, with President Carter, Secretary of State George P. Shultz,
Secretary Lehman, senior naval officers and about 1,000 other people in
attendance. Mrs. Rickover had asked President Carter to read from John
Milton's On His Blindness.
Carter was at first puzzled by her choice, but then came to believe
that the last line had special meaning for all wives and family members
of submariners who were away at sea: "They also serve who only stand and wait." Clearly
a man of conscience, despite Admiral Rickover's last public and
instructive remarks he went to his deathbed questioning the meaning and
purpose of his own life, and specifically whether or not it was led in
consonance with God's intentions ("How the hell are you supposed to know what God wants you to do with your life, eh?"). Milton's
poetic words regarding a man's inherent blindness and
potential - yet - unknown ability to otherwise serve God may well thus have
also held a special meaning to Rickover himself, as it paradoxically
answers one of the Admiral's last questions in life: Admiral Rickover is buried in Section 5 at Arlington National Cemetery. His
first wife, Ruth Masters Rickover (1903 – 1972), is buried with him and
the name of his second wife, Eleonore A. Bednowicz Rickover, whom he
met and married while she was serving as a Commander in the Navy Nurse
Corps, is also inscribed on his gravestone. He is survived by Robert
Rickover, his sole son by his first wife. At Arlington, Rickover's burial site overlooks the John F. Kennedy Eternal Flame.
Of note, it was Rickover who gave President Kennedy the old Breton
fisherman’s prayer plaque, which states, "O God, thy sea is so great
and my boat is so small." The plaque is displayed in the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum as part of the Oval Office exhibit. During
the last century, only a few names naturally come to mind of those who
have made a truly major impact on both their navies and their nations: Mahan, Fisher and Gorshkov.
Rickover joined them. Creating a detail focused pursuit of excellence
to a degree previously unknown, he redirected the United States Navy’s
ship propulsion, quality control, personnel selection, and training and
education, and has had far reaching effects on the defense
establishment and the civilian nuclear energy field. USS Hyman G. Rickover was
launched on August 27, 1983, sponsored by the Admiral's second wife,
Mrs. Eleonore Ann Bednowicz Rickover, commissioned on July 21, 1984,
and deactivated on December 14, 2006. Rickover Hall at the United States Naval Academy, housing the departments of Mechanical Engineering, Naval Ocean Engineering, Aeronautical and Aerospace Engineering, and Rickover Center at the Naval Nuclear Power Training Command are also named in his honor. |