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This wall is
dedicated to Honor the Association member selected by the President. The
selection is based on the Honored Members dedication to our Association and
their personal efforts, to bring both "honor" and "respect" to our shipmates and our ship's memory.
God Bless all
they do.
Honored member for
2009:
Shipmate:
Commander John A. Fahey, U.S.N. Ret.
John A. Fahey's website:
www.johnfahey.net
John Fahey is an Associate Professor Emeritus of Foreign
Language and Literature at Old Dominion University, having retired from active
teaching in July 1988 after twenty two years on the University faculty. He is a
retired Navy Commander who served in World War II as a Combat Airship Command
Pilot on anti-submarine patrols, flying 162 combat airship flights, patrolling
the shipping lanes and escorting merchant ships. After the war he was the first
Navy Airship Command Pilot to qualify in night carrier landings and the first to
conduct in flight refueling in a K-type airship from an aircraft carrier. For
two years, 1955-1957, he served as Operations Officer in the U.S.S. Muliphen
AKA-61 and during his last year of active service, 1962 - 1963, served in the
U.S.S. Thuban AKA-19 as Executive Officer. For three years Commander Fahey
directed the U. S. Navy Language School. While Director, he worked with the
Department of Health, Education, and Welfare in formulation of the Congressional
bills which became the National Defense Act of 1958. He assisted the White
House on several occasions, including performing liaison tasks during the visit
of Nikita Khrushchev to the United States in 1959. For two years Commander
Fahey served as an American Liaison Officer to the Soviet Army in East Germany
where he was recommended for a Legion of Merit and awarded the Army Commendation
Medal for performing difficult liaison and operational duties and displaying
diplomacy, perseverance, and great stamina while serving behind the “Iron
Curtain” under conditions involving danger to life and limb.
Professor Fahey led over ten study tours to the USSR, studied in a Moscow State
University program, and conducted a site visit to the new U. S. Embassy in
Moscow for an American contractor. Professor Fahey has assisted in a number of
US/USSR exchange visits, including high school student exchanges under the
People-to-People program and in the visit of the Defense Council of the USSR
Supreme Soviet to the NATO Supreme Allied Commander Atlantic in the summer of
1990.
He has served three years as President of the Virginia Chapter of the American
Association of Teachers of Slavic and East European Languages, two years as
President of the Virginia Foreign Language Association, nine years as a member
of the Virginia Beach City Public School Board, three years as Chairman of the
Board of Directors and Executive Committee and sixteen years a member of Hampton
Roads Educational Telecommunications Association, WHRO-TV, WHRO-FM, and WHRV-FM,
President of the Virginia Beach Rotary Club, Governor of Rotary International’s
District 7600 in central and southeastern Virginia, Secretary and Treasurer of
the Virginia Beach Unit of the American Cancer Society, President of Chapter
4643 of AARP, and two years as President of the Naval Airship Association, and
two years as President of Old Dominion University Institute for Learning in
Retirement. He served three terms on the Virginia Beach Mayor’s Commission on
Aging.
His excellent teaching at Old Dominion University was recognized in several
awards: 1974 Delta Phi Omega Distinguished Faculty Award, 1980 Robert L. Stern
Award for Outstanding Teacher in the College of Arts and Letters, 1982 Alan
Rufus Tonelson Distinguished Faculty Award and 2000 Delta Sigma Lambda Most
Favorite Professor Award. The Virginia Beach Education Association awarded
Professor Fahey the 1990 Academic Freedom and Educational Excellence Award.
He has authored five books, CARTOON VIEW OF RUSSIA, WASN’T I THE LUCKY ONE,
LICENSED TO SPY, KREMLIN KAPERS, and. MAVERICK ON THE SCHOOL BOARD. His
articles have appeared in Missiles and Rockets, Space Journal, The Russian
Review, The Russian Language Journal, U. S. Naval Institute Proceedings, Officer
Review, and Torch. A proposal, “Military Liaison Missions Between NATO and the
Warsaw Pact,” co-authored with Dr. Philip S. Gillette, was selected in a
nationwide search by the Johns Hopkins University Foreign Policy Institute for
innovative ideas to increase cooperation between the United States and the
Soviet Union in order to access the changing nature of United States - Soviet
Union relationships and to devise an agenda for the future. The proposal was
published in The Future of U.S.-Soviet Relations Twenty American Initiatives
for A New Agenda, Foreign Policy Institute School of Advanced International
Studies, Washington, DC, 1989
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