Word: graf
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...Graf's next command, as captain of the guided-missile cruiser U.S.S. Cowpens, would be her last. Graf was relieved of duty in January, after nearly two years on the Cowpens, for "cruelty and maltreatment" of her crew, according to a blistering Navy inspector general's report obtained by TIME. The report has rocked the service to its bilges because it calls into question the way the Navy chooses, promotes and then monitors its handpicked skippers. The saga of Holly Graf suggests the Navy had long ignored warning signs about her suitability for command. And while news of her spectacular...
...Master and Commander Holly Graf had dreamed of skippering a Navy vessel ever since her high school days in Simsbury, Conn. Her father was a Navy captain, and her sister Robin wanted to go to sea too. (Robin eventually became an admiral - and married one; Holly is single.) After she graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy in 1985, colleagues sensed that Graf was on a fast track to flag rank. (See the best pictures...
...Graf alternated tours aboard a destroyer tender, a frigate and a destroyer with shore assignments at the Pentagon and as a Navy ROTC instructor at Villanova University, outside Philadelphia. She earned a Bronze Star during the Iraq war (along with the Legion of Merit, Defense Meritorious Service Medal and two Meritorious Service Medals). Adding some academic heft to her résumé, Graf earned three master's degrees - in national security from the Naval War College, in civil engineering from Villanova and in systems analysis from the Naval Postgraduate School. Early in her career, there were few signs...
...Graf's darker side began to emerge when she was assigned to the destroyer U.S.S. Curtis Wilbur in 1997, as the executive officer (XO), or second in command. Kirk Benson, who retired from the Navy as a commander after a 20-year career, says his tour aboard the Curtis Wilbur with Graf was "the worst time in my life." Her constant berating of the crew led him to complain, he says, but nothing was done. "When I think of Holly Graf, even 12 years later, I shake," says Benson. "It was hard to imagine her as an XO, never mind...
...Navy had warning signs about Graf after her time on the Curtis Wilbur, it didn't seem to pay them any heed. Instead, in 2003, Graf made U.S. Navy history by becoming the first female commander of a destroyer, the Churchill. Kaprow, the Jewish chaplain, recalls his time aboard the Churchill in 2003 as the strangest of more than 200 such visits to ships in his 20-year career. Morale was the lowest he had ever encountered on any vessel. Kaprow says he tried to talk to Graf about her leadership style after 10 days aboard. "I told...