With the 1848 subscription for a monument honoring classmates lost in the Mexican War, midshipmen at the United States Naval Academy inaugurated a tradition of erecting memorials to classmates who had died in nautical accidents or military engagements. The nexus for these commemorations eventually shifted to Memorial Hall, designed by architect Ernest Flagg in the late 1890’s, which contemporaries envisioned as “The Westminster Abbey of the Navy” or, more poetically, “The Naval Valhalla.” This paper will explore the history of these memorials; investigate changes in who donated them and who was thought to merit them; and survey continuities and innovations in design over the past 170 years. At a surprisingly early date the impulse to erect monuments provoked determined efforts to limit their proliferation, and by 1908 the Academy administration had promulgated a set of regulations to define eligibility for inclusion in Memorial Hall as well as to govern the artistic form memorials took. This paper will also examine the ongoing conflict between alumni and Academy administrators that has led to periodic purges of the memorials and their banishment to less prestigious sites, culminating in the replacement of individual class memorials with composite “Operational Loss Panels” in the early twenty-first century.
About the presenterMichael P. Parker
Michael P. Parker, a professor of English at the United States Naval Academy, has written several articles on death, mourning, and funerary practices in Annapolis.