Old friends visit new commander of U.S. Pacific fleet

Two Eastport residents were in the front row on January 20 in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, during the U.S. Pacific Fleet's change of command ceremony. New four-star Admiral Cecil D. Haney, who was replacing Admiral Patrick M. Walsh, mentioned his friends "Skip and Judy McGarvey from Eastport, Maine," as some of the special people in his life who were on hand for the historic event.
``The Haneys and McGarveys met back in 1980 when they were neighbors in Summerville, S.C. "He was an officer and we were enlisted, so we wouldn't have been able to socialize if we'd been on a base," recalls Judy. "Cecil had just become a lieutenant j.g., so he was a nothing, but he became a big something."
"Bonny [Haney] would trade babies with Judy," says Skip. "Judy would take their Beth, and Bonny would take our John. If they were at the mall, they would attract attention because the Haneys are black, and that's not really accepted down there."
Through the years, the McGarveys watched their hardworking and very intelligent friend Cecil become commander of Submarine Group II and work out of the Pentagon. "He's one of the Centennial Seven, a superior group of black officers who have contributed a lot to the Navy. Cecil was recognized for his engineering skills," reports Skip. "He's the smartest man I've ever met. He also wears the same size uniform he wore as a cadet at Annapolis. That shows you how committed he can be."
But when Cecil Haney became a three-star admiral one year ago, everyone expected the next promotion to be at least two or three years in the future. "This was very, very fast," says Judy of his rise to commander of the Pacific fleet. "And Bonny and I had less than 30 days for us to plan our trip to Hawaii so we could help them move."
Thinking back on the January 20 ceremony, she says, "We had a ball. Jim Nabors sang the national anthem. We met four out of the nine four-star admirals in the Navy, and we met the secretary of the Navy, but their ranks mean nothing to me. I was hugging everyone from culinary specialists to the ambassador to Laos."
"Judy won a lot of hearts," chuckles her husband.
Skip's favorite moment of the three-week visit with the Haneys was seeing Cecil receive his fourth admiral's star. "His wife Bonny and daughter Beth put the mortarboard epaulet on his uniform. And we were in an office that was full of historic documents and paintings of Admiral [Chester] Nimitz. The samurai sword that was surrendered to him by the Japanese was there. So was the red phone direct to the president's office. [Cecil] wouldn't let me play with any of those things."
"I love to see it when a friend makes it to the big time," says Skip of the new commander of the Pacific Fleet. "He's a totally amazing guy who works darn hard. The Navy is 100% his life."