San Diego Union-Tribune (Sunday)
FORMER CAPTAIN FIRED FOR COVID PLEA REFLECTS ON NAVY CAREER
In new book, Brett Crozier details situation on aircraft carrier during pandemic’s earliest days as virus tore through ship
Brett Crozier had one last bag to pack. Days before, in March 2020, he’d sent an email to U.S. Navy leaders pleading for help. There was an outbreak of a new virus on the aircraft carrier he commanded, and Crozier believed lives would be lost without drastic action.
But some officials felt his message was out of line, and the email soon leaked to the press, a bad look for top brass.
That morning, Crozier learned he was losing his job.
He picked up his backpack. Inside was a photo album of his children. Maybe a surfing magazine. He didn’t feel particularly spry, although that was mainly because he’d just contracted COVID.
Wearing a flight suit and ball cap, he stepped inside the hanger bay of the USS Theodore Roosevelt, thinking he’d leave on his own.
Staring back were hundreds upon hundreds of people.
He felt a moment of shock. What was going on?
Then it registered.
Videos of sailors cheering and chanting Crozier’s name as he walked off soon went viral. News outlets picked up the story nationwide. His exit became one of the biggest moments in the pandemic’s early days — a high bar — and eventually led to the downfall of the acting secretary of the Navy.
Through it all, Crozier largely stayed silent.
Yet as the 53-year-old ref lected on how his decadeslong career had led up to that moment, he realized he might have a book.
“Surf When You Can: Lessons in Life, Loyalty, and Leadership from a Maverick Navy Captain” comes out this month, and Crozier will speak June 20 at Warwick’s bookstore in La Jolla.
Despite losing a job he loved and seeing his ascent in the military come to a screeching halt, Crozier seems to have no bitterness.
In fact, he’s convinced just about everyone involved, from reporters at The San Francisco Chronicle that published his email to the bosses who pushed him out, were all doing what they thought was best to protect people’s lives.
“But I also think nobody wanted that more than I did,” he said in a recent interview.
The outpouring of support makes more sense in context.
Three people who served on the Roosevelt under Crozier, and who asked that their names not be used because they’re still in the Navy, said he’d made several decisions that built up goodwill long before the email.
The captain remembered people’s names. He expanded computer access for those with lower ranks. More than one person recalled Crozier telling everyone to “huddle up” during meetings on the flight deck, turning what were often stiff, formal affairs into something akin to a coach pumping up his team.
A Navy chief said he’d served with leaders more concerned about their careers than the crews. Not Crozier.
“He’s actually motivated me to speak my mind and stand up for what’s right for my sailors,” the chief said. “That moment has allowed me to unlock that part of me where it’s like, don’t be afraid of the repercussions.”
Megan Buriak, who lost her husband James “Jimmy” Buriak two years ago in a helicopter crash, said the outbreak’s early days had been especially scary for families.
James Buriak was one of the people who got sick on the Roosevelt, but he wasn’t particularly fearful, Megan Buriak said.
“Jimmy felt safe knowing that he had somebody that was a really good leader that had his best interests at heart,” she said, referring to Crozier. “It crushes me that it cost him his whole entire career.”
In his book, Crozier said the decision to send the email was heavily influenced by two fatal accidents.
In 2017, multiple people died when the USS Fitzgerald and the USS John Mccain each crashed into other ships.
Crozier saw parallels with COVID. Here was a potentially lethal threat, barreling silently toward the ship, that demanded immediate course correction. He wanted to send sailors en masse to hotel rooms in Guam, where they were docked.
Yet the government’s response had been “maddeningly slow,” he wrote. “We were ready to take action, but folks kept putting up barriers that slowed us down.”
More than a thousand sailors ultimately tested positive and one died.
Crozier acknowledged using an unclassified network to send the email. But he said pretty much all COVID communication had been through unclassified channels because that was the only way to include medical officers, and he denied leaking the message to the press.
While the Navy did end up housing sailors in hotels, leaders eventually released an 88-page report defending the firing.
The review found the captain didn’t let sailors stay far enough apart and exhibited “questionable judgment” by letting people out of quarantine too soon, among other complaints.
“Crozier did not act according to the standards I expect of our commanding officers,” Admiral Michael M. Gilday wrote in the introduction.
Crozier’s book rebuts several of those points.
Yes, there wasn’t great social distancing on board, he wrote. It was an aircraft carrier. And yeah, people who’d been in close contact with positive cases were freed from quarantine. Because everyone had been in close contact.
Walking through the cheering sailors, Crozier said he felt validated. While part of him believed he’d let the crew down by not seeing the deployment through, he trusted in the officers replacing him.
Would he make the same decision again?
Oh, yes.
The months after his removal were emotionally turbulent. He was excited to learn he might be reinstated, only to face the “crashing reality” that it wouldn’t happen.
While he never sounds angry, Crozier comes off as clearly annoyed with thenacting Secretary of the Navy Thomas Modly, who, in an address to the Roosevelt’s crew, called the captain “too naive or too stupid” to be leading an aircraft carrier.
Modly apologized and resigned soon after.
A Navy spokesperson didn’t respond to a request for comment on Crozier’s book.
Other parts of the narrative cover lighter territory.
While Crozier grew up in Santa Rosa, much of his life has been spent in and around San Diego. (Exhibit A: He still calls the Padres’ old home “Jack Murphy Stadium.”) Years ago, he bought a 9-foot-long Russ K board and likes to surf Old Man’s and the waters near Mission Beach.
The sport serves as one of the book’s main messages: Making time to do what you love creates a richer life.
Crozier now lives with his wife in Coronado. Hanging on a wall is a Captain America shield, which a group of sailors signed and gave to him. Two of his boys joined the Navy and the third is a student at the University of San Diego. After retiring, he took a job as chief operating officer with the Veterans Village of San Diego.
He also did end up being there at the end of the Roosevelt’s deployment.
In the summer of 2020, when the ship returned to San Diego, Crozier and a friend grabbed their paddleboards and dove into the water.
They stopped about a half-mile out.
The carrier was only a few hundred yards away, and Crozier could see sailors standing on deck.
Had any turned, they would have spotted their former captain, floating in the waves.