Happy Independence Day, guys, I hope you all had a great 4th of July weekend. As you know we continue to populate new sections of our website. One of the sections we have been working on was a page to capture our classmates on video. We’ve named it ‘Classmates on Video’ and you can find it under Class History (https://www.usna1978.org/classmates-on-video/). Since we upgraded the website we’ve collected over 130 videos of 34 different classmates dating back to the early ‘80s with Jack Fernandez in 1983 and Bobby Goodman in 1984 to current videos from as recent as April 2020. We have collected speeches, panels, news reports and change of command and retirement ceremonies. The videos include great videos from our four star classmates in all sorts of forums, classmates who are leaders in business, Art Athens on leadership during his tenure leading the Stockdale Center and Bobby Goodman at the White House. We also have a great video of Jack Fernandez bringing a single engine F-14 aboard at night with inflight engine bay fire on the USS Independence and Mark Fox’s MiG kill in the first Gulf War.
These videos were collected at different times over the past six months when I would stumble on one or something would cause me to search for a Classmate. Of course our flag officers have lots of videos on line but obviously lots of other classmates do, too. It has been a pleasure to watch at least a little of every one of those videos and have watched or listened to the entirety of many of them. Several that I have watched in their entirety and can strongly recommend are Bob DeStafney’s May 2013 California Maritime Commencement speech, Cecil Haney’s December 2018 Veterans N Transition interview with General Larry Spencer, Jim Stallings January 2020 speech receiving the 2019 YearUp Jacksonville’s Empowerment Award and Art Athens’ four part September 2010 leadership conversation “What’s Love Got to Do With It?” with the Class of 2011 Firsties.
Like the photo and professional writings section we will continue to add to this section in the months and years to come. I am sure there are lots of other videos out there, please send links to webmaster@usna1978.org.
The page has videos from the following classmates:
- Art Athens (18th Co.)
- Mark Boensel (21st Co.)
- Bruce Bole (3rd Co.)
- Bill Borchardt (5th Co.)
- Bill Burke 31st Co.)
- Dave Buss (34th Co.)
- Rich Cellon (6th Co.)
- Sean Coffey (13th Co.)
- Rusty Cone (11th Co.)
- Bruce Crair (26th Co.)
- Bob DeStafney (14th Co.)
- Mark Ferguson (7th Co.)
- Jack Fernandez (9th Co.)
- Jeff Fowler (12th Co.)
- Mark Fox (18th Co.)
- Chuck Goddard (2th Co.)
- Bobby Goodman (9th Co.)
- Cecil Haney (29th Co.)
- Tim Hanifen (12th Co.)
- Harry Harris (15th Co.)
- Jon Kutler (17th Co.)
- Bruce Latta (25th Co.)
- Charlie Martoglio (3rd Co.)
- Dave Mercer (4th Co.)
- Dennis Reilly (22nd Co.)
- Bob Schmermund (15th Co.)
- John Semcken (2nd Co.)
- Dennis Stallings (34th Co.)
- Steve Sutton (21st Co.)
- Kurt Tidd (36th Co.)
- Maurice Tose (17th Co.)
- Mel Williams (26th Co.)
- Andy Winns (24th Co.)
- John Wissler (21st Co.)