President Jimmy Carter has been in the news a lot lately due to the unfortunate fact that he’s entered hospice care, but in better news, the U.S. Naval Academy recently honored the former President by naming a hall after him.
Carter is a retired Navy lieutenant, and he graduated from the Academy in 1946. The move to rename Maury Hall is part of a congressionally-mandated process whereby Confederate names are removed from Defense Department buildings and installations, according to Military.com.
Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro announced the new name, and said the mandate was to “give proud new names. Names that echo with honor, patriotism and history. Names that will inspire generations of service members to defend our democracy and our Constitution.”
Del Toro said he couldn’t think of anyone “more worthy” than President Carter. The former president entered the academy in 1943, and got a bachelor’s in science in 1946. He was part of a class that was accelerated due to World War II, in which he served as both a submariner and a surface warfare officer.
Carter’s story, from the Navy to the Presidency, is full of twists and turns. He was working toward becoming an engineering officer at a nuclear plant when his father died. He resigned right away to go run his family’s peanut farm. After two years of farming, he entered politics. His first position was as a member of the Sumter County, Georgia school board.
From there he served as a Georgia State Senator and then as governor of that state. The presidency came next. During the hall naming ceremony, Naval Academy Superintendent Vice Adm. Sean Buck called Carter “one of our institution’s most distinguished graduates.”
“By naming this building in his honor, we not only recognize his great contributions, but ensure that his legacy will forever inspire our nation’s future leaders,” Buck said.
The building’s original namesake was Matthew Fontaine Maury, a naval officer widely considered a very important figure in oceanography science. While in the Navy, he published the first global charts of winds and currents in 1847, and then the first American Oceanography book, called The Physical Geography of the Sea.
Maury resigned from the Navy in 1861 and joined the Confederate Army during the Civil War. Maury’s name was on several college buildings throughout his home state of Virginia, but many have been removed. After the war, he joined the faculty of the Virginia Military Institute, and his name is still on a hall at that institution.
