

The letter, which was subsequently obtained by and printed in the San Francisco Chronicle, emphasized that the ship remained ready if needed in time of war or crisis. On April 2, Modly announced that he was firing Crozier as commanding officer because he had lost confidence in Crozier’s judgment after Crozier wrote a letter to Navy leaders outlining his concerns about dealing with an outbreak of disease aboard his ship. Although I knew Crozier only glancingly in our time together at the Naval Academy and we haven’t seen each other since, we have both had the experience of commanding ships and leading sailors. Brett Crozier who, until recently, served the Navy and our country as the commanding officer of the USS Theodore Roosevelt. Among my classmates in the class of 1992 was Capt. Bush wrote the same thing to me and my Naval Academy classmates. The commission Modly received, along with the rest of his classmates, noted that Reagan had “ special trust and confidence” in his “patriotism, valor, fidelity, and abilities.” Nine years later, President George H.W.


Naval Academy, it was Ronald Reagan’s official duty as president to commission these new officers. In 1983, when Acting Secretary of the Navy Thomas Modly graduated from the U.S.
