The Admiral personally interviewed everyone applying to be a Navy nuclear propulsion officer. His interview was a stress test – looking for our resistance to pressure from superiors wanting us to cut corners. He was highly skilled at producing stress.
His office had no hint of high rank. My straight-backed wooden four-legged office chair had one leg shortened, tilting the chair forward. Under stress, wobbling back and forth induced yet more stress.
The questions:
“Are you engaged?” If “yes,” Rickover would inform the guy that being engaged or married while being in the nuclear program was impossible. If one chose the program over the fiancee, Rickover would direct him to call off the engagement, then and there, with his phone. I hid the fact that I was about to propose to my girlfriend. After he repeatedly pressed me, I raised my voice with a precise answer, “Someday I’ll get engaged and married.” I don’t know if anyone else terminated his engagement.
“So, you sang in the church choir? Excellent! Sing a song to my secretary. Mary, come in for a minute!” Fortuitously, I hadn’t put such items on my application.
Rickover asked about my “C” in a college physics course. I mumbled about it being only a one-credit lab course. After a series of penetrating follow-ups highlighting my evasiveness, I confessed that I hadn’t worked hard enough.
The end: “Get out of here!”
I was escorted to a room with several other visibly shaken colleagues who had preceded me. None of us knew if we were accepted. After more victims straggled in, an officer came in to tell us we passed. We were immediately enlisted in the Navy, keeping us from the greedy clutches of the Army.
Rickover’s abrasive personality was his technique. As a Jew in a Waspish profession, he founded and ran the Navy’s nuclear propulsion program over the objections of more senior officers. His hard work, engineering excellence, rock solid integrity, intolerance for BS, and focus helped us win the Cold War. Not a beer buddy – but a hero.
