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DFW

(59,177 posts)
3. We just missed meeting Bud Zumwalt.
Tue Oct 7, 2025, 03:57 AM
Oct 7

But one of his daughters is a good friend of ours, and our children are also very close (as in crossing the Atlantic to attend each other’s weddings).

Nixon hated Bud’s guts for allowing blacks and women to become officers, and ordered Jim Schlesinger, then Defense Secretary, to fire Bud as head of the Navy just before he resigned. But Schlesinger ran out the clock, and Nixon was gone before he “got around” to carrying out the order. Schlesinger was no idiot, and knew how popular Zumwalt was with the rank and file.

One tragedy that plagued Bud til he died was accepting chemical industry claims that the defoliant Agent Orange was not dangerous to humans. His son, a swift boat commander who came into frequent contact with Agent Orange, paid for that with his life (resulting cancer). Bud, himself, was felled by environmental ignorance, as exposed asbestos inside navy ships over the years got into his lungs. His son-in-law, Michael, a physician, was by his side at the end, but by then it was just too late to treat.

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