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NASA JOHNSON SPACE CENTER ORAL HISTORY PROJECT NASA J
OHNSON
S
PACE
C
ENTER
O
RAL
H
ISTORY
P
ROJECT

O
RAL
H
ISTORY
T
RANSCRIPT


C
HARLES
F. B
OLDEN

I
NTERVIEWED BY
S
ANDRA
J
OHNSON

H
OUSTON
, T
EXAS
6 J
ANUARY
2004


J
OHNSON
: Today is January 6
th
, 2004. This oral history interview is being conducted with
Charles Bolden in Houston, Texas, for the NASA Johnson Space Center Oral History Project.
Interviewer is Sandra Johnson, assisted by Rebecca Wright and Jennifer Ross-Nazzal.

I want to thank you again for joining us today.

B
OLDEN
: Thank you.

J
OHNSON
: And I want to begin today by asking you, what made you decide to pursue a career in
the military and in aviation?

B
OLDEN
: The military first, because I never wanted to be an aviator. I saw a program on
television called Men Of Annapolis when I was in seventh, eighth grade; fell in love with the
uniform; fell in love with the fact that they seemed to get all the good-looking girls. And then at
the same time, there were other programs on television, West Point Story, which was okay.
There was a program about the submarine service called Silent Service, and then one other one.
But they were all Navy or naval oriented.

So I just became infatuated with the Navy, and decided thats what I wanted to do when I
went to college. And I wanted to go to the United States Naval Academy [Annapolis,
Maryland]. So, over the whole process of my junior high and high school years, everything I did
6 January 2004
1 Johnson Space Center Oral History Project
Charles F. Bolden
was focused toward getting a congressional appointment to the Naval Academy; actually getting
a Vice Presidential appointment to the Naval Academy. I grew up in Columbia, South Carolina,
and at the time, a congressional appointment was out of the question.

So, I wrote my congressman, my senators; yes, my two state senators, my congressman,
and the Vice President of the United States, who at the time was Lyndon B. Johnson, every year
from ninth grade, saying that I wanted to go to the Naval Academy. I would get letters back,
very kindly, from each of them each year, saying, Well, its not until your senior year that
youre eligible, so just kind of relax and enjoy life. I would write them back and say I just
wanted them to know who I was, because I was serious about it.

Finally, in my senior year, President [John F.] Kennedy was assassinated, in the fall of
my senior year, which, the impact for me was that this relationship I had been nourishing with
the Vice President over four years was out the window, because now I would have to deal with a
new Vice President. My father, although he had served in World War II, his service was not
such that I was eligible for a Presidential appointment. So my only hope was the Vice President,
I thought.

Nonetheless, I applied through the normal procedures. I went to my congressional
representative, Albert [William] Watson back then, and my two state senators, [J.] Strom
Thurmond and Olin D. Johnston, and wrote a letter to the President and said, I know Im not
eligible for an appointment from you, but Ive been writing for the past three years, and you told
me you would help when I became a senior. And I need help, because I cant get an appointment
from my state. Is there anything you can do?
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2 Johnson Space Center Oral History Project
Charles F. Bolden

Never heard from him, but about a week or two later, got a knock on the door from a
Navy recruiter who said that he had learned that I was interested in going to the United States
Naval Academy.
Almost simultaneously, a former federal judge by the name of Judge Bennett came to my
school, and he was sent there by President Johnson, sent throughout the South, looking for
minority students who were interested in going to the service academies, because they were
trying tothis was 1963, actually. They were trying to find young menno women at the
timebut young men of color who were interested in going to the service academies, since there
were very few, if any.

I told him that I was very interested in going to the Naval Academy. There was another
classmate of mine named Wilson Rorie, his father was a career Army officer, so he was eligible
for a Presidential appointment. But he also was interested; he wanted to go to [United States
Military Academy at] West Point [West Point, New York]. Then we had a third guy by the name
of Coroy Ferguson, who we tried to interest in going to the [United States] Air Force [Academy,
Colorado Springs, Colorado], because we thought it would be great to have somebody from one
class be at all three service academies. We could never convince him, so he ended up at
Bowdoin [College] in [Brunswick] Maine, and Wilson and I both got appointments.

Mine came from Congressman William [Levi] Dawson in Chicago, Illinois, and Wilsons
actually came from the President. So we went to West Point and Annapolis, respectively. The
only things I knew at the time that I went to Annapolis was, I was not going to be a Marine,
because I thought they were a little different, and I was not going to fly airplanes, because that
was inherently dangerous. And my mom had alwaysI tell people, My mother did not raise a
fool.
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Charles F. Bolden

So I went to the Naval Academy. My intent at the time was to become a [Navy]
Frogman, what is now a SEAL [Sea-Air-Land]. When I got there, my first year was typical
bad, horrible. Plebe year is just rough. I cried all the time. I wanted to go home, and my father
kept me there. Every time Id call on the weekends, hed say, Stay one more week and then
well talk about it. And so thats the way I went through plebe year.

My second year, the new superintendent became Admiral Draper [L.] Kaufman, who was
the father of UDT [Underwater Demolitions Teams]. He was actually the person who had
established the Underwater Demolitions Teams in the United States Navy, and Admiral
Kaufman and I became at least communicative. I was on the chapel choir and some other stuff,
and I was the president of my class, so I had an opportunity to meet with the Superintendent
periodically.

When he found out I was interested in UDT, he broke the news to me that I couldnt do
that out of the Naval Academy, because at the time UDT was what they call a restricted line
billet, so you had to be in it as an enlisted person, and then be promoted into the officer ranks to
become an officer in UDT. So, that kind of broke my heart. I had no idea what I was going to
do.

Sort of a difficult time, but I thought then about nuclear power. That kind of turned me
on and off. Id never met anybody at the Naval Academy who was a nuclear power officer that
impressed me positively, so that went no way. I thought about aviation, but I really didnt want
to do that, because I hadnt changed my mind about aviation.

Over the course of the four years, the one person that kept coming back to me was my
first company officer at the Naval Academy, who was a Marine Corps major, an infantry officer,
03 grunt by the name of Major John Riley Love. When it was time for me to decide where I was
6 January 2004
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Charles F. Bolden
going my senior year at the Naval Academy, I said, I want to be an infantry officer. I want to
be like him.

I had no idea what that would mean. I just knew that infantry officers died real quick
when they went to Vietnam. This was the height of Vietnam [War]. The Tet Offensive had
occurred during my senior year, the end of my junior year, actually, and then into my senior
year. And although the life expectancy of a second lieutenant at the time was expressed in
months, Ive always believed that, you know, it wont happen to me. So I decided I wanted to be
an infantry officer.

I got into the Marine Corps and went to Quantico, Virginia, for a six-month course of
study that every Marine officer undergoes, called The Basic School. Its intent is to prepare you
to be a rifle platoon commander, to be an infantry officer. And then from there, everybody gets
sent out to other occupational fields, but the intent is that, as youve heard about the Marine
Corps, every Marines a rifleman, and so every Marine officer has to be a rifle platoon
commander, or at least qualify to be one.
So, as I was going through the basic school from July through November, December of
1968, the weather turned brutal in Quantico. It was much worse than today in Houston. It was
snowy and frigid, and we had our three-day war toward the end of my time there. We were in
the field. And I never have liked the cold. Although I had done very well at the basic school, I
really enjoyed infantry and all that, I decided theres no way in the world I could live like this.
And so I looked for somethin