Page 92 - Leadership Lessons of the White House Fellows

LEADERS ACT WITH INTEGRITY

better assign someone else as training officer. He backed down. Yes, we took
hits on the inspection, but then we put in a good training program. I learned
that if you compromise on the little things when you’re a junior, it’s murder
to stand up for the big things when you’re a senior.”
It wasn’t long after the training incident that Larson was selected for a
White House Fellowship, and halfway through his Fellowship he was
assigned to be a military assistant to President Nixon. His honesty was
tested when a two-star admiral asked him to poke around the White House
for information. “He said there were some things they needed to know. He
wanted me to snoop around in the in-baskets and find some stuff, to be
their spy and bring information back to them,” Larson explained. “I told
him I’d always be loyal to the Navy and I’d always represent the Navy well,
but I support the Commander-in-Chief and my loyalty is there, and if he
wanted that sort of person in the Fellowship, then he’d better tell the White
House they selected the wrong guy and send me back to sea. He backed
down, and I was never asked to do anything like that again.”
Larson went on to have a stellar career. He served as U.S. Naval Acad-
emy superintendent twice and also served as Commander-in-Chief of the
U.S. Pacific Command, the highest-ranking officer in charge of all Ameri-
can forces in the Asia-Pacific zone. In 2002, Kathleen Kennedy Townsend,
the oldest child of the late Senator Robert Kennedy, chose Larson to be her
running mate for lieutenant governor in her unsuccessful run for governor
of Maryland. Currently, Larson is a founder, director, and board chairman
of ViaGlobal Group, an executive leadership company based in Annapolis,
Maryland, that provides training, leadership development, and technical
support to the military and to corporations.
Another former Fellow who, like Chuck Larson, served as commander
in chief of the U.S. Pacific Command is Dennis Blair (WHF 75–76). Blair
is a sixth-generation naval officer and former Rhodes Scholar who served
over thirty years in the Navy before retiring in 2002 at the rank of admiral.
During Blair’s White House Fellowship, he was one of a group of special
assistants to Housing and Urban Development Secretary Carla Hills. In
that capacity he witnessed how Secretary Hills fought to maintain an hon-
est, aboveboard environment despite ample opportunities for duplicity.
“The Department of Housing and Urban Development has been rocked
by one scandal after another over the years. It moves a lot of money around
and sends it down to the local level, where things can get pretty raw,” Blair

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