James L. Holloway, Jr.

James Lemuel Holloway, Jr. was a fourstar admiral in the United States Navy who served as superintendent of the United States Naval Academy from 19471950 as chief of naval personnel from 19531957 and as commander in chief of all United States naval forces in the eastern Atlantic and Mediterranean from 19571959, in which capacity he commanded the 1958 American intervention in Lebanon. As founder of the Holloway Plan, he was responsible for creating the modern Naval Reserve Officer Training Corps.

He was born in Fort Smith, Arkansas to future centenarian James Lemuel Holloway Sr. and the former Mary George Leaming. In 1904, his family moved to Dallas, Texas, where he was a varsity football tackle and a member of the debate team at Oak Cliff High School, from which he graduated in 1915. Unable to secure an appointment to the United States Military Academy at West Point, New York, his original ambition, he instead passed the entrance examinations for the United States Naval Academy at Annapolis, Maryland and entered the Naval Academy as a midshipman in 1915. He graduated in June 1918 near the bottom of the accelerated class of 1919, ranked 149th out of 199, and later claimed that he had avoided flunking out of the Academy only because his class graduated early due to World War I. I knew I would have bilged in mechanics.

Source: Wikipedia