Honoring Dr. Fawcett’s Navy Career
This month, in celebration of the 245th birthday of the United States Navy (October 13th) and Navy Day (October 27), we honor USC Sea Grant’s staff member, James Fawcett, and his military career where he served in the United States Navy in the Vietnam War. To help honor Dr. Fawcett, USC Military & Veterans Initiatives has dedicated a wonderful highlight to his military career on their USC Military Stories social media platform. We are proud to share a summary of their highlight on Dr. Fawcett below.
We honor an American urban planner, environmentalist, USC Professor, United States Navy Veteran, and University of Southern California alumni. As the Vietnam War continued to heat up and the demand for soldiers, sailors, and airmen grew, James Fawcett enlisted in the U.S. Navy in 1966, despite still being in college. He knew that he had two options: enlist or be drafted. He bravely chose the former after being encouraged by his father who was a naval officer during World War II. James served on the USS Eldorado (LCC-11) for three years between August 1968 and May 1971 as the Assistant Communications Officer and Radio Officer.
In the late 1960s, Fawcett and his crew were deployed to Vietnam twice for nine-month durations on each deployment where he was an underway officer of the deck for most of the second cruise, responsible for “driving” the 15,000-ton amphibious ship through congested waters and supporting Marines in the northern areas of South Vietnam. “Many of my shipmates are still friends of mine after many years,” James notes. These days, he’s grateful for a related occupation in a far less stressful environment – at USC he serves as the director of marine science and policy outreach for the USC Sea Grant Program.
His link to the ocean started in 1968 when for three years he served in the U.S. Navy as a communications officer and ship driver in the Western Pacific, much of it in Southeast Asia. Familiarity with that part of the world continues as he lectures frequently in Taiwan and Korea with occasional visits to Hong Kong, Singapore, and China. An urbanist favoring the coast and its uses, his interests have been in intergovernmental relations, especially the intersection of economic and environmental interests in the areas of land use, coastal management, and marine policy. Much of his current work is focused on seaport policy and marine transportation as the industry confronts issues of infrastructure concentration, economic development, and environmental externalities in an era of rapid change.
For a while in the 90s he took a hiatus from USC to join the public sector as chief of planning for the Los Angeles County Department of Beaches and Harbors, returning to academia after nine years of serving the public. Drawing on his expertise as an urbanist, he serves on the editorial board of the Journal of Urban Regeneration and Renewal. He is also the past international president of the honorary land economics society, Lambda Alpha International, now serving on its executive committee.
For more than 40 years, James Fawcett has been a man with one foot on land and the other in the sea. As a faculty member and researcher in the fields of marine and urban policy at the University of Southern California, he directs Marine Science and Policy Outreach for the Sea Grant Program. He holds concurrent appointments as an adjunct associate professor at USC’s Price School of Public Policy and the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences, teaching in the areas of public policy and environmental policy.
We thank you, Jim, for your dedicated service to the Navy and to protecting our seaports and marine transportation. We are honored to work with you! We also thank USC Military & Veterans Initiatives for writing this well-deserved honorable piece about Dr. Fawcett. Finally, we thank all those who have served, are serving, or will serve.