Officer, Gentleman and Scholar

An interview with Captain Terence P. Labrecque

Capt. Terence P. Labrecque is the Commanding Officer of the College’s NROTC unit and professor of naval science. Over a 30-year career, he has been awarded the Legion of Merit with two Gold Stars; Meritorious Service Medal with two Gold Stars; Navy and Marine Corps Commendation Medal with two Gold Stars; and the Navy and Marine Corps Achievement Medal. On March 28, Capt. Labrecque met with HCM editor Jack O’Connell ’81 to discuss the ROTC program, his students’ reaction to the war in Iraq and his imminent retirement from the Navy.

HCM: Can you tell me a little bit about your background?

Capt. Terence Labrecque: I’ve been in the Navy for 30 years. I’m a surface warfare officer and have spent almost all of my career at sea. I’ve had command of two ships and one squadron of ships. I had command of the USS Anchorage in the Gulf during Desert Storm, so my mind and heart are now in Iraq—and I spend most of my waking moments with MSNBC and CNN like everybody else. Basically, I’ve done everything I could do in the Navy from a seagoing perspective. I’ve avoided going to Washington, D.C., because, quite frankly, it didn’t interest me. The Navy, to me, meant being at sea. As I approached these last couple years of my career, there was nothing left to do at sea, so I told my wife that I wanted to do ROTC. I wanted to go back to a college environment and work with young men and women because I thought it would be incredibly rewarding. It was time for me to have some fun.

There are about 55 schools in the country that have Navy ROTC and anywhere from 15 to 20 every year come up for rotation—it’s usually a three-year tour. I got the list two years ago, and there were 15 schools available. I gave the list to my wife and said, “We have to leave San Diego but surely there’s someplace on this list that appeals to you.” And she’s the one who picked Holy Cross. She’s from Connecticut, and, although there’s no family left back here, we’d spent our whole career on the West Coast and in Japan, so New England had strong appeal. There’s tremendous history here and we wanted to explore it.

I went to a Jesuit boarding school, Campion Jesuit High School and, consequently, I knew Holy Cross’ reputation well. Campion was in Wisconsin, and out of a class of 144, we all went to college. We all applied to Marquette, which was our safety net. But the really exceptional students aspired to Holy Cross. It’s a beautiful school, a small school, with a lot of personal mentoring. I knew that I was going to get quality students here.

HCM: And has that been your experience here?

TL: Absolutely! That has absolutely been the case. I love this school. I love everything about it. I like coming to work every morning. I’m usually here at my desk by 7 a.m., and I don’t leave until after 6. I love being here. I like being around these kids. They energize me and make me feel young. They’re great kids. They’re not fully mature yet, but my philosophy, from an ROTC perspective, is that we’re getting high school kids. They’re going to make mistakes, and that’s fine. It’s our job to take four years to work with them, to keep molding them and directing them and steering them.

I did my undergraduate work at the University of Colorado, and I was there in the late ’60s when being in ROTC was not a very fashionable thing to do. Coming out of a boarding school and going to CU—which then was considered the Berkeley of the Rocky Mountains—I had no mentoring whatsoever. Nobody cared if I went to class. To be honest with you, I was a horrible midshipman, a lost soul. It took a while for the light bulb to come on with me, and I appreciate that with students. So my job is to watch them and talk to them, and if the light bulb isn’t on yet, to help light it up. To steer them in the right direction. With some kids, it takes a couple of years. It really does. But basically, they’re all really good, bright, capable young men and women.

HCM: Are you able to stay in touch with your graduates?

TL: To a certain degree. You get e-mails. I still have a home in San Diego and I go back periodically. I have former students who are stationed in San Diego, and I’ll see them each time I go back.

HCM: What are your future plans?

TL: I retire this summer. This is a statutory retirement. There’s a statutory law that mandates that a Navy Captain can only stay for 30 years, and then you have to go. It doesn’t matter how much you love the job or how much the Navy loves you. I have always wanted to teach high school. I have the greatest respect for teachers. So while I’ve been here at Holy Cross, I’ve taken all my teaching courses at Worcester State College, and I’ve completed everything but student teaching—which I can’t do, ethically, while I’m on active duty. So I plan to stay here and student teach at a Worcester high school in the fall to get my credential.

HCM: Can you give us a general overview of what the Naval Science program is all about? How does a ROTC student’s daily life on campus differ from the average student?

TL: Naval science is a department within the College, but no one can major in naval science. We have courses that our students are required to take. So each semester there is a naval science course they must take, in addition to their normal course load. Most of them are not credit courses—only two of them are credited. One is my “History of Sea Power” course and the other is our course in management. So that’s three hours of class work a week in addition to their normal college course load. It’s very time consuming. We instruct them in things like ethics, naval engineering, weapons systems, navigation, seamanship and technology. We have certain Marine courses that the Marine option students are required to take. Tomorrow, as a matter of fact, they’re going out and doing a field operation where they learn how to land navigate. They’re difficult courses. And the syllabi are detailed and specific. We do everything by PowerPoint. They’re very robust courses. We also have a “lab” twice a week on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Tuesday is also our uniform day—everyone has to wear a uniform all day long on all campuses. Back in my day, you took your life n your hand doing that! Today, it’s very well thought of. The uniform receives respect. For our Tuesday labs, we bring in guest speakers. We have certain topics to cover each year—sexual harassment, hazing, drug and alcohol policy.

We’ll bring in speakers—a couple of weeks ago we had Professor David O’Brien and Professor David Schaefer come in to give two different perspectives on the just war theory. I was concerned that my Midshipmen might find themselves caught between a rock and a hard spot. Most of them are devout Catholics, but they’re looking at a career in the military. So we wanted to talk about whether the two are in sync or not, and it was great. They were wonderful speakers. This coming Tuesday, we have the father of one of our lieutenants—a retired Naval aviator who spent five and a half years as a prisoner of war at the Hanoi Hilton. He’ll speak about what it was like to be a prisoner of war, the kind of mental gymnastics you have to go through on a daily basis just to keep your sanity and survive. I had scheduled this earlier, to dovetail with my class’s Vietnam section, but the timing is perfect now that we have POWs in Iraq.

HCM: What is your organizational structure like?

TL: It’s a pyramid, like any other organizational structure. We have a battalion commanding officer at the top, with four companies, each with three squads. The most junior individuals—usually the first-year students—are in the squad. So that squad leader is responsible for those individuals. He needs to get to know them, to understand what courses they’re taking, who their siblings are, where they’re from, what their interests are. This becomes the first line of defense in recognizing if someone is struggling or if he has a problem or if she’s withdrawing. That’s the first line of defense. And it goes all the way up to my officers and myself. We talk to them every day.

There are other things we do as a battalion. Every Monday morning at 6 a.m., up in the field house, we do PT (physical training). On Thursday afternoons we run—which is my big thing. Two weeks ago I took a group of 25 to New Bedford to run a half-marathon there. I’m training 28 to run the Boston Marathon with me. We do our long runs on Sundays, through sleet and snow—teamwork helps a lot. We also do traffic control for the football games to earn some money. In a couple of weeks, we’re going to sponsor a Military Excellence Competition (MEC) for the junior ROTC units in Worcester. This is a mentoring program for my Midshipmen to mentor high school students. They’ll have a drill competition, a 10K race, a tug of war, and they’ll have a barbecue afterwards. Our Midshipmen will pay for it. That involves Burncoat, North and South high schools. We try to participate as a battalion in community events.

So they’re very, very busy. I’m very cognizant and careful of that. We try not to over-task them. The prime directive is class work. They have to get the grades. That’s the most important thing. If they don’t attain the right GPA, we give them mandatory study. We hire tutors, we use proctors—whatever it takes to help. In some respects we’re like a sports team and a fraternity, but we’re really more like a family. You might recall that last May, one of our Midshipmen was killed in an altercation. This was devastating. I’ve spent my whole career receiving phone calls like that, but never in my wildest dreams did I ever expect to get that kind of phone call at 4 a.m. on a Sunday, here at Holy Cross. And then go to a hospital and hold a sister’s hand … It was just awful. But it was a very bonding thing for the Midshipmen. They came together in their grief and realized that the first person that they could go to for help was one another. They’re a very close-knit group and they enjoy what they do.

HCM: What about numbers? How many students are in the program?

TL: It fluctuates. Usually between 100-110. Right now we’re at 106. We get new people who want to come in, and we have people who decide that college isn’t for them. Occasionally, people ask for a leave of absence because it’s just too much to juggle.

HCM: What is your sense of the morale of your students since the war began? Do they come to you with their concerns?

TL: They do. I listen to them think out loud, but I try very hard not to convey my opinions. We all have opinions. I’ve spent my life dealing in fact and not in opinions because it’s dangerous. I have a master’s degree in Naval Intelligence. In the past, I’ve had the highest classification clearance access in the Navy. But right now, I know nothing more than anyone else. I get all my information from CNN and MSNBC. But I know enough to know what kind of information is out there, and I can read between the lines. I can look at a map of Iraq, for example, and I know what’s going on, and I know what isn’t being told. But I try not to convey my opinions.

I certainly don’t denigrate war protestors. They have every right to do what they’re doing. So I deal in facts. In my “Sea Power” class yesterday, for example, the topic was to be the Korean War. I had a huge PowerPoint presentation and was prepared to talk for an hour and fifteen minutes on the Inchon landing. But while I was running that morning, just before class, I was thinking about the war in Iraq and how the media is reporting it—what they were and what they weren’t saying. So I decided to come to class and put up a map of Iraq and ask some questions and see who’s paying attention. I did that, and we never got to Korea. We spent all the class time on Iraq.

I always encourage them to read the newspaper, watch the news, listen to the State of the Union, for example, themselves. Not to let someone else tell them what was said. To do their own research and think for themselves. We talked about Iraq, and we talked about the reporting, and we talked about whether or not we were in trouble. We did not talk about whether or not we should be there. Because we are there. So, if we’re there, what should we do? It was extremely interesting. In my “Sea Power” class, I have more than just Midshipmen. It’s a fairly sought-after class and I’ll take as many students as the classroom will hold. But the truth is, this is history in the making. And the students understand what the Navy is all about and its role, what the chain of command is.

HCM: Has their level of concern spiked in this last month now that wartime service is less academic?

TL: I think they’re more attuned to what being commissioned means. On May 23, we will commission our graduates from Holy Cross. We can’t commission them before the day they graduate. We have to make sure that they are, in fact, getting their diploma. We commission them early in the morning, so that they can change out of their uniforms and put on their graduation robes.

Now, this is an exciting but very solemn event. Because you put your right hand up and you swear to obey and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies both foreign and domestic and to obey the orders of the President. And that says it all. You pledge to do it. In an event like what’s happening right now in Iraq—if you’re a Marine, you’re probably in a sandstorm, and you’re under fire, and you can’t see anything to your left or your right. It takes a lot of courage. They need to be sure that they can uphold that pledge, from both a moral point of view and a courageous point of view. So our seniors are within two months of taking this pledge. Some will go from Holy Cross, straight to their ship. And if this war is still going on in late May, they’re going to the Gulf. Most of them are anxious to go. They want to serve their country, and they’re almost afraid to miss this opportunity to serve.

HCM: When you mention that you brought professors O’Brien and Schaefer to your class to speak with your students, it underscored for me the fact that Holy Cross has an interesting and conflicting history regarding notions of war and peace. We have a long military tradition, stretching back to our V-12 program in World War II. We have three Congressional Medal of Honor winners. At the same time, we have a history of internationally known individuals such as Philip Berrigan ’50 and Michael Harrington ’47, who have denounced militarism and helped found and guide the peace movement.

TL: Which speaks volumes about the caliber of individual who comes to Holy Cross.

HCM: How have you and the program negotiated those tensions? We have a peace group on campus, Pax Christi. There have been anti-war protests and rallies on campus. How does this sit with you?

TL: Well, it’s reflective of what we are as a country. That may sound trite, but it’s absolutely true. The freedoms that we fight for are exactly those freedoms. The freedom to express your opinion. I will draw the line at physical conflict or obstruction, but everyone not only has a right to express their views, they have a moral obligation. And I speak to my students about this.

Up to now, it’s been entirely peaceful. I was a Midshipman when it was not peaceful. I was, in fact, spat upon, and I had rocks thrown at me, and it was for no other reason than the fact that I had short hair, and I occasionally wore a uniform. I mean, I was a college student, too. I was no different than anyone else. I had mixed emotions about the Vietnam War. I understand what it’s like to go through this.

HCM: When something like a peace protest takes place, how do the ROTC students react?

TL: I don’t want them to take it personally. I want them to hear both sides of the issue. I want them to do the research on their own. I don’t want them to simply believe what I think. I will tell them how I view something, but I always caution them to make up their own minds, based on their own research and reflection. And that’s a process they’ll need to enact throughout their lives, in all areas of their lives. So I want them to hear as much input as they can. I want them to process it, think about it, research it, and make their own decisions.

I’m very appreciative of Naval chaplains. As the Commanding Officer of several ships, I had chaplains assigned, and one of my very best friends to this day was my Catholic chaplain on the USS Blue Ridge. He was my ace in the hole. He could, and would, tell me when I was wrong and couldn’t see it. He would help with the counseling aspects of the job. As Commanding Officer, you’re the guy in charge and you make decisions that affect everybody. You make the best decisions that you can and you reflect upon your actions as best you can, based on the information you have at the time. Sometimes you don’t have a lot of time. My chaplain was one of my best advisors.

When I arrived at Holy Cross, I found we didn’t have a “battalion chaplain.” So I approached Paul Covino of the Chaplains’ Office, and he has been terrific. He comes to our events. I wanted him to get to know my Midshipmen. I wanted them to get to know him. There can be situations when it’s difficult for them to come to the Captain, but they can always talk to the chaplain.

HCM: As you know, there are alumni who argue that Holy Cross, as a Catholic institution, should not have an ROTC program. How would you answer an alum who said that to you?

TL: If you target ROTC because it’s militaristic and promotes war, I’d have to say that the military is the last organization that ever wants to go to war. If you look at it historically, you’ll find that to be the case. We’re the first to die in war. The use of the military in a conflict is truly the last resort. We don’t live in a perfect world. If we did, I’d agree that we could dispense with the military. And I’d be a teacher, or I’d be in the merchant marines. But we most certainly aren’t in a perfect world. We need a military for a lot of reasons. First and foremost, to protect us. Looking at the current conflict, if you ask whether or not we should be at war, it’s certainly a question worth debating. If you feel that we should not be at war, don’t focus on ROTC. That’s the wrong target. The target is politics. Vote for somebody else. It’s not the military that makes the decision to go to war.

Now, if you accept that we need a military, you have to ask where your officers should come from. The preponderance of them come from the Naval Academy, a fine institution. Then there are the ROTC programs, and there are 55 colleges involved in the program. And there’s OCS (Officer Candidate School), and OCS expands and contracts based upon the need. So if you look at the sources for officers, where would you want them to come from? How could you argue that they shouldn’t come from Holy Cross? It’s mind-boggling to me. If we accept that we need a military, shouldn’t our officers be trained in critical thinking? Trained in ethics, philosophy, classics, history? I believe the officers that come out of Holy Cross do better in the military than anywhere else. We get more generals and flag officers out of Holy Cross per capita than any of the other schools. The number of (Congressional) Medal of Honor, Navy Cross and Silver Star recipients from Holy Cross is truly remarkable.

I think Holy Cross would make a great mistake if they did away with the ROTC program. If you throw the program out because it doesn’t fit the mold of what a minority of alumni believe to be acceptable for the College, where do you draw the line? Do you throw an Israeli or Islamic organization off campus? Diversity means more than race. It means accepting and sharing different ideas and views in order to achieve intellectual growth.

HCM: Thank you, Captain Labrecque, for taking the time to talk with us.