On summer nights in 2000, the commander and the executive officer of the USS Jarrett sat together in the dark of the Persian Gulf, awaiting Iraqi ships to search for smuggled oil. They talked about their children, from whom they had been separated for months.
Thousands of miles away, two preschoolers were the first children in U.S. history to miss their warship commander mommy.
Kathleen McGrath, an admired captain and the first woman to command a Navy warship, died September 26, of cancer, at the Bethesda (Md.) Naval Hospital. She was 50.
The daughter of an Air Force pilot, McGrath was born in Columbus, Ohio, and raised at military bases all over the world. She studied forestry at Cal State-Sacramento, then struggled to find a full-time job with the seasonally oriented U.S. Forest Service until her father reminded her of the opportunities in the Air Force. McGrath went to the Air Force recruiter’s office but found him out to lunch—so she talked to the Navy recruiter instead.
As a newly commissioned officer on an assignment in Japan in 1980, McGrath participated in exercises on a visiting frigate. It was there that she began to dream of commanding a warship—an impossibility for a woman in the 1980s Navy.
“She was in no way a radical feminist,” says her husband, retired Navy Lt. Cmdr. Gregory Brandon. “She was determined and set her sights. She could see that her day would come.”
From then on, McGrath worked to position herself for command. She earned a master’s in education from Stanford and went through department-head training at Surface Warfare Officer School. In 1987, she became operations officer on the USS Cape Cod, followed by similar duties on the USS Concord. Those assignments took her to the Indian Ocean, the Mediterranean and the Red Sea, including stints with operations Sharp Edge and Desert Shield.
In 1993, McGrath assumed command of the rescue-and-salvage ship USS Recovery. The following year, Congress widened the opportunities of McGrath and every other Navy woman when it opened warships to them. McGrath next served as chief staff officer on a destroyer, and in December 1998, she took charge of the USS Jarrett, becoming the first woman to command a U.S. warship. The achievement brought a flood of publicity.
“She tried to stiff-arm the attention as best as possible,” says Cmdr. Joe Chiaravallotti, her executive officer aboard the Jarrett. “She was not looking for her own fame; she wanted the ship to succeed.”
McGrath completed one deployment with Jarrett as it carried 1,100-pound missiles through the Persian Gulf to intercept oil smugglers. Not one of the 262 crew members questioned her ability or authority, Chiaravallotti recalls.
“You never thought of her as a female C.O.,” Chiaravallotti says. “It was just, ‘Gosh, that’s my captain.’”
McGrath stood at the helm for 21 months before transferring to the Institute for Defense Analyses in Alexandria, Va., for what would be her final tour of duty. Her career awards included the Legion of Merit, three Meritorious Service medals, three Navy and Marine Corps Commendation medals, and the Navy and Marine Corps Achievement Medal.
She is survived by her husband; her children, Nick and Clare; her parents; two brothers; and three sisters.
