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Jay Horan: What would you like me to call you?

Joe Fowler: You can call me Uncle Joe, or whatever you want.

JH: Maybe we could begin at the beginning: Your experiences at Annap- olis and subsequently in World War I.

JF: I grew up on a farm in Maine and always wanted to go to the Naval Academy and I was successful in doing that. While at the Naval Academy I had a very interesting life. We graduated a year early, on account of World War I, but in the interim, at my senior year, I was the Midshipmen Com- mander of the Regiment of Midshipmen. I was captain of the crew and still managed to stay on high enough in my class in order to be appointed later to MIT. We graduated in 1911, a year early, and I did two years of Transatlantic duty. I had every job on a cruiser escorting ships to Europe. Very interesting experience. Ultimately, I had a tour on the battleship New Mexico before the war ended. Then I was appointed to MIT and there I had three years to complete my post-graduate course in Naval Architecture and Marine Engineering. From then on, my career in the Navy was shaped up entirely with work: The design, the construction, and the management areas of the shipbuilding of the Navy.

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