A Supply Corps School memory.

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 ...