Great Sage of the Sea
Posts: 618
Location: Issaquah WA, USA | Subject: Hand Salute! CAPT Ralph Styles, Departing!
STYLES, Ralph Emerson, CAPT, USN, Ret., 98, died October 7,2008. He was born in Asheville, N.C., on February 27, 1910. After graduating from the Asheville High School, he attended Weaver College for one year and then the University of Tennessee for a year, before entering the U.S. Naval Academy in 1929, where he graduated in the upper half of the class of 1933, thereby receiving a commission as an ensign. After two years as a ship's officer on the USS Lexington, he was assigned to the staff of Commander Aircraft Battle Force. At that time there were only three aircraft carriers in the Navy. In l937, he shifted to submarines, attending submarine School in 1937. Capt. Styles was chief engineer of the USS Narwhal, which was in port in Pearl Harbor when the Japanese attacked on Dec. 7, 1941. After two war patrols and the Battle of Midway, he was given command of USS S-20 in New London, Conn., for a year. He was then ordered to command USS Sea Devil being built in Portsmouth, N.H. It was commissioned in May 1944 and proceeded to the Pacific for three patrols, in which the Sea Devil accounted for 11 ships and earned Styles the Legion of Merit, two Navy Crosses and eight Naval Unit Citations for the ship. After tours ashore in Newport, R.I., and Puerto Rico, he took command of Subdivision 72 in the Pacific during the Korean War, a year in command of the USS Nereus submarine tender in San Diego, then attended the Naval War College and was given Submarine Squadron 10 in New London, Conn., to which the first nuclear submarine, the USS Nautilus, was attached. He went to Washington, D.C., for shore duty as assistant director of Naval intelligence. His last sea duty was command of the submarine flotilla in San Diego and Comsubpac representative on the West Coast for all submarine activity. Capt. Styles' last naval tour was back in Washington on the Joint Staff, first as assistant director of intelligence, then head of targeting branch, and lastly planning the Defense Intelligence Agency. He retired December 3, 1962, and moved to Sarasota, where he was the first director of planning for New College, which had just hired I.M. Pei, the architect, to build a complete college on the old Charles Ringling Estate. In 1970, he opened Ralph Styles Real Estate Office, which he ran until 1990. Capt. Styles is survived by daughters Anne Overbeck and husband Jim of Hingham, Mass., and Linda Styles and husband Alan Johnston of Sarasota; a sister, Virginia Price of Thomasville, N.C.; five grandchildren and two great-grandchildren. In lieu of flowers, contributions can be made to Haley House Fund Inc., P.O. Box 701, Brandon, FL 33509; New College Foundation, Keating Center, 5800 Bay Shore Road, Sarasota, FL 34243; and Saint Boniface Church, 5615 Midnight Pass Road, Sarasota, FL 34242.
A memorial service and celebration of life will be Friday, Oct. 24, 2008, at 11 a.m. at St. Boniface Church, 5615 Midnight Pass Road, Sarasota, FL 34242. |
Pretty cool video, (sub related)
