Sharp in War, Sharp in Peace

Here is a gentle and genial military elder relaxing in his living room. Retired Admiral Ulysses S. Grant Sharp is entertaining a guest. Memories—bound in history books and photo albums—are being reawakened. The conversation—like the weather on this summer late morning—is pleasant. Yet the topic is wildly anachronistic.

Next year marks the 30th anniversary of Sharp’s retirement from active duty. From 1964 to 1968 he was Commander-in-Chief Pacific Fleet and led the unified command of a million personnel—Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines—fighting the war in Vietnam.

Vietnam. That wrenching conflict is three decades and several worlds removed from this manicured house on a quiet street in Point Loma.

Rest assured that when you are 91, as is the admiral, every year is the anniversary of something. It’s been 70 years since Sharp graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy. And it’s been two decades since Sharp wrote Strategy for Defeat: Vietnam in Retrospect.

Strategy for Defeat is Grant’s account of why America lost the war. In the book, Grant tersely blames the unfocused "strategy of equivocation" that came out of Washington, D.C., in the form of policy from President Lyndon B. Johnson and Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara.

When you’re named after a great-uncle—on Mom’s side—who was a Civil War general and a president of the United States, big things are expected of you. Conflict seeks you out. But saddled with an Army general’s namesake, why did this native of land-locked Shinook, Montana, choose the Navy? "I had hay fever," he confesses, noting there aren’t as many sneeze-inducing pollens at sea as there are on land.

These days, life moves at a leisurely pace for Sharp and his wife, Nina. He plays golf on occasion; they attend military banquets, luncheons and parades whenever possible. "We don’t just sit here in the living room and look at pictures," he says, his blue eyes inviting you to smile along with him.

It wouldn’t be hard to get lost reminiscing in Grant’s memorabilia, though. Few of us have ever had a Life magazine photographer follow us around at work, snapping away. A feature story on Grant that ran in the April 23, 1965, issue of Life carried the headline "The Thinking Man’s Admiral."

But that was then, and this is now. Though he follows current events closely—and reads most of the books about Vietnam—Grant says he no longer reflects at great length on his military experiences. "I got as high as you can get in the Navy," he remarks. "It was a very satisfying career." And it was a career that earned him a peaceful retirement.

The Admiral in a 1964 photo taken by Life magazine photographer Don Cravens.

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