Biography
A native of Wymore, Nebraska, he was a 1926 graduate of the United States Naval Academy. He joined the Navy's air arm in 1928. In World War II he was executive officer of the carrier Mission Bay (CVE-59) in the Atlantic.
After the war he headed the aviation department at the Naval Academy and commanded two carriers, the Sicily (CVE-118) and the Coral Sea (CV-43), before assuming division and fleet commands. He was named Deputy Chief of Naval Operations in 1958, serving until his retirement.
In the 1950s, he was allowed to wear facial hair, unusual then, reportedly because of a skin condition. It was a distinguished-looking Van Dyke beard.
While serving as Deputy Chief of Navy Operation (Air) 1958-1962 and was credited with maintaining the Navy’s air traffic controller program, following the enactment of the Federal Aviation Act of 1958. The Air Traffic Controller of the Year award, named in honor of Vice Adm. Robert B. Pirie, is presented for outstanding contributions to operational readiness and safety applied by individual Navy and Marine Corps Air Traffic Controller.
After he left the Navy he held management positions with the Aerojet General Corporation. He was a former president of the Naval Academy Foundation and the National Naval Aviation Museum in Pensacola, Florida. He was inducted into the Naval Aviation Hall of Honor in 1986.
Read more about this topic: Robert B. Pirie
Famous quotes containing the word biography:
“A biography is like a handshake down the years, that can become an arm-wrestle.”
—Richard Holmes (b. 1945)
“A great biography should, like the close of a great drama, leave behind it a feeling of serenity. We collect into a small bunch the flowers, the few flowers, which brought sweetness into a life, and present it as an offering to an accomplished destiny. It is the dying refrain of a completed song, the final verse of a finished poem.”
—André Maurois (1885–1967)
“In how few words, for instance, the Greeks would have told the story of Abelard and Heloise, making but a sentence of our classical dictionary.... We moderns, on the other hand, collect only the raw materials of biography and history, “memoirs to serve for a history,” which is but materials to serve for a mythology.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)