President's Message
RADM Robert C. Olsen, Jr. USCG (Ret.)
Academic Year 2007 was an excellent one. The graduating class performed very well while at school and in their job or grad school hunting. Good luck to them all!
We will start Academic Year 2008 with a very full house - 92 students in all. I am told that this is some kind of record. The class of 2011 will be 26 strong and I am hopeful that they will succeed as well as the current classes who finished the year with no one in serious academic trouble. Retention is excellent for all the right reasons and that is a very strong indicator of a program in excellent health.
Inside you will read about fund raising results for the year and I won't repeat all the information, but I will say a huge thanks to everyone who supported the Annual Fund and the Capital Campaign so successfully.
Capt. Dick Miller ‘40 prepared background biographical information on two of his classmates who passed away this year, and the stories about these gentlemen are very interesting because of their diversity of interests and influences in their very different fields of endeavor. Steve Towne is one of these men, and I feel so fortunate to have met him on two occasions and talked on the phone with him frequently over the past two years before he died. Clearly, it's a wonderful thing that he is contributing such a large sum of money to support Webb, but he became an inspiration to me because of his personality, his love of Webb and all it stands for, and his love of life. This is the second time in my career to work with someone this generous in support of something that was extremely important in their life and the passion and revelation of character that accompanies the process had a very lasting and positive influence on my own life both times. It was an incredible honor and privilege to know Steve Towne.