Civilian Head of U. S. Navy
Dartmouth alumni ranks gained their third Secretary of the Navy with the recent appointment of John L. Sullivan '21 to that post by President Truman. He succeeds James V. Forrestal '15, who was named Secretary of National Defense under the provisions of the armed forces unification law.
Sullivan's new post is another in a series of top Washington positions he has had since his appointment as assistant to the Commissioner of Internal Revenue in 1939.
From 1940 to 1944 he served as Assistant Secretary of the Treasury and from July 1945 to June 1946 as Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Air. He was Undersecretary of the Navy from June, 1946 until his present appointment.
His first association with the Navy was in September, 1918, when he interrupted his undergraduate work at Dartmouth to enlist as an apprentice seaman in the naval flight training unit at Yale.
Before going to Washington from his law practice in Manchester, N. H., Sullivan had been an outstanding Democrat in a Republican-dominated state. During the 1920 Presidential campaign he organized the Dartmouth Democratic Club in Hanover, for which he obtained 11 undergraduate members. The rival Dartmouth Republican Club led by Joseph E. Talbot '22 (later Congressman from Connecticut) boasted 1500 members.
Five years after his graduation from Harvard Law School in 1924, Sullivan was elected county solicitor in New Hampshire's Hillsborough County. He was Democratic candidate for governor in 1934 and 1938 and in the first election gave Styles Bridges the closest contest of the present N. H. Senator's political career.
The first Dartmouth alumnus to become Secretary of the Navy was Levi Woodbury of the Class of 1809. He held that cabinet post during Andrew Jackson's first administration, 1831-34. He later served as Secretary of the Treasury during Jackson's second term and also under Jackson's successor, Martin Van Buren.
JOHN L. SULLIVAN '21, named by President Truman as new Secretary of the Navy, shown at his New Hampshire summer home at North Hampton, where word of his appointment was received.
