San Diego Hero: Captain Richard LeBron
Captain Richard LeBron | Commanding Officer, USS Bonhomme Richard
The numbers give weight to Captain Richard LeBron’s position: 45,000 tons and 1,100 sailors.
Being the commanding officer of the USS Bonhomme Richard, an amphibious assault ship homeported at Naval Base San Diego, is a leadership challenge beyond anything else in his 29-year career—that includes nine deployments, 21 permanent change-of-station moves, and uprooting his family for 12 of them.
It’s been a long build to get to this point.
At 17 years old, living in Bayamón, Puerto Rico, he convinced his mother to let him drop out of high school to enlist in the Navy. Through a special program he was later able to secure a full Naval ROTC scholarship to attend University of San Diego.
“I’ve been incredibly fortunate to get to this point in my career and cherish every day I have doing what I do,” LeBron says. “The Navy has afforded me some incredible opportunities. When I commanded a destroyer, that was challenging, but it was just me and 290 sailors and 9,000 tons,” he says. “Now, it’s me and 1,100 sailors, multiple staff, marines, a myriad of other stakeholders, and 45,000 tons.”
At 844 feet long, the Bonhomme Richard resembles a small aircraft carrier. Its missions often involve humanitarian assistance when tragedy strikes coastal areas around the globe, since the ship has the ability to take medical supplies and lifesaving equipment close to shore. The Bonhomme Richard can also serve as a mobile command and control platform, which is particularly helpful when responding to natural disasters.
To manage the crew, LeBron leans on his “highly experienced supporting cast,” particularly his executive officer, to make ship operations run smoothly. He finds it important to connect with his sailors on a personal level, and considering that 250 of them are naturalized citizens, it helps that he speaks fluent Spanish.
Earlier this year, his ship completed a homeport shift from Sasebo, Japan, where it had been forward deployed for the last six years, to San Diego. Most of the crew roster remained unchanged; they’re now preparing for an extended maintenance period, during which the ship will receive upgrades and modernizations.
LeBron spends his time on the bridge overseeing the watch team that’s responsible for navigation, as well as walking the decks to interact with sailors and marines. He tries to focus on fulfilling tasks that can’t be delegated to others—things that only he as captain can do. “I don’t make things happen; rather, I let them happen,” he says. “We have a chain of command just like any other ship, but unlike some, I use it more as a catalyst to create confidence than a burdensome energy slump. They want to succeed, and I let them.”
While in command of the guided-missile destroyer USS Benfold, LeBron challenged his crew to use innovative thinking, which later became known as The Athena Project. Sailors were given one day off per week to work on a project of their choosing focused on the ship, the Navy, or the local San Diego community. In return, they had to give him a five-minute pitch on what they worked on. One successful project, “the Cosmogator,” is designed to enable ships to fix their position while in an environment where GPS is unavailable. Another one, “the GunnAr system,” uses an augmented reality helmet to fuse information from a ship’s gunnery liaison officer and weapon system into an easy-to-interpret visual format for a sailor manning a naval gun.
With so much of his time spent meeting the demands of being a senior naval officer, LeBron often goes long periods without seeing his wife and six children. His family’s support and the service and sacrifice of his sailors and their families continually motivate him to carry out his highly visible job. “The trust and confidence the American people place upon me is wicked cool,” he says. “You can’t really do what I do anywhere else.”
