Captain Slade Cutter, Naval Athlete and Submariner, Dies (Washington Post)
Slade D. Cutter, 93, the U.S. Naval Academy athletic icon who
later amassed one of the great World War II combat records as a
submariner, died June 9 at Ginger Cove retirement community in
Annapolis. He had Parkinson's disease.
"College
football players should forget the game the moment it is over," Capt.
Cutter once said. Still, he will be remembered for his sporting efforts
as much as the far more dangerous work he completed during the war,
exploits that earned him four awards of the Navy Cross and two awards
of the Silver Star. The Navy Cross is the highest award for valor after
the Medal of Honor
Capt. Cutter once wanted to be a professional flutist but was
pressed into athletic duty at the Severn School, the preparatory feeder
school for the Naval Academy. Being tall (6-2) and husky (215 pounds),
the "blonde, easy-moving chunk of brawn," as one reporter wrote, became
one of the collegiate athletic world's celebrated Depression-era
figures.
He won the intercollegiate heavyweight
boxing championship, became an All-America tackle and, in 1967, was
inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame.
His
most acclaimed feat came Dec. 1, 1934, the day of a wet mudfest against
Army at Philadelphia's Franklin Field. He said he exchanged long cleats
for shorter ones -- giving him better advantage for a smooth kick --
surprising coaches who expected him to fake-kick the ball.
"When
they saw it was going to be a real kick, they yelled, 'The damned
fool!' " he said years later. "Then it went through, and they thought
it was great."
He kicked a game-winning, 20-yard
field goal before 79,000 people, giving Navy its first victory against
Army in 13 years. The final score was 3-0, and Capt. Cutter was
heralded as the "hero of the day."
Slade Deville Cutter was born Nov. 1, 1911, in Chicago and raised on his family's corn and alfalfa farm in Oswego, Ill.
He
was steered away from sports by his father, who had been severely
injured as a college athlete. Encouraged by his mother, Slade learned
piano and then the flute. He won an interscholastic solo flute
championship at which John Philip Sousa was a judge.
Later, in his Naval Academy yearbook, he listed the flute, along with chewing tobacco and swearing, as among his major vices.
At
Severn, he was spotted by Paul Brown, later the famed coach of the
Cleveland Browns, who called Capt. Cutter's father to plead permission
to sign up his son. That began his athletic career, which accelerated
when he entered the academy in 1931.
Despite lucrative temptations to became a professional boxer, he stayed in the Navy and attended submarine school.
Early in the war, he served as executive officer of the
submarine Pompano and was mentored by then-Capt. Lewis Parks, who
encouraged aggressive action by his crew. Parks also wanted his
officers to calculate firing trajectories in their minds, which he felt
would save time and allow quicker maneuvering and successful attacks.
Made
executive officer of the submarine Sea Horse in early 1943, Capt.
Cutter soon clashed with his new commander over what he viewed as the
man's cautious tactics. Capt. Cutter was relieved of duty and ordered
to his quarters. He wrote in a letter to his wife that the officer was
letting enemy vessels go by "like trolley cars."
Back at Pearl Harbor, a vice admiral agreed with Capt. Cutter
and gave him command of the Sea Horse for its second patrol. He
received the Navy Cross awards while on the Sea Horse, which sunk more
than 100,000 tons of Japanese vessels in enemy-controlled waters.
Although
he is sometimes credited with sinking 23 ships, four were believed to
be unarmed Japanese trawlers. Capt. Cutter expressed regret at having
torpedoed those vessels, despite orders to shoot all enemy craft. He
preferred to say he sank 19 ships, mostly troop transports and oil
tankers.
Capt. Cutter once said his most worthy
wartime contribution was a reconnaissance mission in the southern
Philippines in June 1944 that warned of the massive and fast-moving
Japanese fleet off Mindanao, preparing for a surprise attack against
the Americans.
"The U.S. hadn't known where that
task force was for two weeks," he told a reporter in 1997. "It was far
ahead of us and we couldn't catch up, but we radioed its position,
course and speed to headquarters."
After every
battle or depth-charging, he was known to meet with his crew to explain
what they had just been through. This openness earned him great
admiration among his sailors.
Known for his great
tenacity, he had a blunt personal style that often rankled superior
officers and may have hindered his advancement to flag rank, said Carl
LaVO, author of "Slade Cutter: Submarine Warrior" (2003).
LaVO
cited Capt. Cutter's invitation to witness the 1954 launching of the
Nautilus, the first nuclear-powered submarine. According to LaVO, he
told the media that the Nautilus was not an offensive fighting ship but
instead a vehicle meant to test nuclear propulsion -- the opposite of
how the military had sold the expensive vessel to the public.
In
the late 1950s, Capt. Cutter was made the Naval Academy's athletic
director to encourage popular football coach Eddie Erdelatz to resign.
LaVO said that Erdelatz was running a "professional-style football
program" but that too few players were opting to remain in the Navy
after graduation because of his reputed disparaging of the service.
Capt. Cutter's knowledge of the sports program and his feeling that
Erdelatz was "disloyal to the Navy" led to Erdelatz's departure. Much
of the task was helped by Capt. Cutter's stature as an athletic and
wartime hero.
His final active-duty assignment, in
1965, was head of the Naval Historical Display Center in Washington. He
later became headmaster of a boys school in Tucson, where he moved to
care for his first wife's asthma condition.
His first wife, Frances Leffler Cutter, died in 1981.
Survivors
include his wife of 23 years, Ruth McCracken Buek Cutter of Annapolis;
two children from the first marriage, Slade D. Cutter Jr. of Austin and
Anne McCarthy of Santa Fe, N.M.; three stepchildren, Scott Buek of
Delran, N.J., Harvey Buek of Conshohocken, Pa., and Pamela Sullivan of
Sparks, Nev.; a sister; nine grandchildren; and five
great-grandchildren.
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