Word: graf
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Dates: during 2010-2019
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...Witch" [March 22]: I find it ironic that among the accusations against Captain Holly Graf is that she used "salty" language. Does the phrase swears like a sailor apply only to nonmilitary mariners...
...Graf relieved of her command simply because she is female? "She acted like a man, and now she was being punished for it," says retired commander Darlene Iskra, who in 1990 was the first woman to command a Navy ship, the U.S.S. Opportune, a salvage vessel. But Iskra's view is hard to square with the fact that the service promoted Graf at every turn, gave her two historic assignments and made her something of an example for younger female officers. In fact, Graf was slated for a top Navy staff job at the Pentagon when the IG report scuttled...
...better explanation is that the Navy failed to move on Graf earlier not in spite of her gender but because of it. Following the Tailhook scandal - in which Navy aviators assaulted dozens of women at a 1991 convention - the service rushed women to sea to show it was no longer locked in the Dark Ages. The service was under political pressure to diversify its leadership, and Graf was part of the answer: the first woman to command both a destroyer and a cruiser. Some veterans believe Graf needed more time to prepare for those commands. "I have some sympathy...
...Graf case is sure to make the lives of Navy recruiters more difficult. Shawn Smith is a retired Navy captain who - along with her husband, also a retired Navy captain - applauded their daughter's decision to join the Navy in 2007 after graduating from Notre Dame on a Navy ROTC scholarship. Erin Smith was "seriously considering" making the Navy a career, as her parents did, until she was assigned to the Cowpens. "Her experiences with Captain Graf definitely helped form her decision to do her time and leave the Navy," her mother says. "I was appalled that this happened, guilty...
...Graf declined to be interviewed for this article. She is now headed for the Navy weapons lab at Dahlgren, Va., a bureaucratic backwater where she is virtually certain to face a follow-up hearing that could end her career - if she doesn't request retirement first...