Paul Stillwell, a historian at the Naval Institute at Annapolis, Md., said the importance of McGrath’s promotion cannot be overstated.
“It’s an understatement that I’m delighted,” she said in a short speech after taking charge of the combat ship. When Congress opened warships to women in 1994, she paid her dues for a few years, working in the Navy’s personnel bureau in Washington, and then helping to manage a destroyer squadron based in San Diego.Ī week before Christmas in 1998, she was given command of the Jarrett. She served on four support ships from 1983 to 1994, including commanding the Recovery, a rescue and salvage ship.ĭuring this period she earned a master’s degree in education from Stanford University. It was a thrilling experience that led her to dream of one day commanding a warship.Īfter initially being turned down, she was admitted to the Surface Warfare Officers School, which trained her to serve on an oiler, tender or other auxiliary vessel. Later, she sailed out of Yokosuka on a visiting frigate. While assigned to a Navy personnel office in Yokosuka, Japan, she arranged to ride on a support vessel where she was allowed to stand watch, participate in a man-overboard exercise and drive the ship. She attended naval officers’ school in Newport, R.I., and was commissioned in 1980.
But when she found that the Air Force recruiter was out to lunch, she impulsively stopped at the Navy office-and signed up. Intending to continue a family tradition, she went to the Air Force recruiting office in Merced, Calif. When she grew restive in that work, her father encouraged her to consider the military. She spent the next several years with the U.S. base on Guam while her father flew B-52 bombers over North Vietnam.Īfter high school she studied forestry at Cal State Sacramento, and earned a degree in 1975. “I have to be myself.”īorn in Columbus, Ohio, she was the daughter of a 29-year Air Force veteran who spent her teenage years at a U.S. “I don’t try to emulate a man, nor do I try to do what a guy would do,” said McGrath, a mother of two who played the violin in her stateroom for relaxation.
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