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Julia C. Tobey

Goodreads Author

Born

The United States

Website

http://captainmccreaswar.com

Twitter

captmccreaswar

Genre

Memoir, History, Biography

Member Since

October 2016

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When Julia C. Tobey (a/k/a Judy) first met Vice Admiral John L. McCrea, she never dreamed she would one day edit his memoirs. When he started to pay court to her widowed mother in 1962, she regarded him with suspicion. He was 71 at the time and an admiral, a title holding member of the military industrial complex. She was a college student who fancied herself as a ‘60s flower child. But he treated her mother like a queen, and as she got to know him and heard his amazing stories, she warmed to him. They grew closer over shared an interest in music, and his appreciation of her struggles as a beginning cellist. By the time Judy became the Admiral’s stepdaughter, she thought he was a wonderful addition to the family.

But let’s return to the Adm When Julia C. Tobey (a/k/a Judy) first met Vice Admiral John L. McCrea, she never dreamed she would one day edit his memoirs. When he started to pay court to her widowed mother in 1962, she regarded him with suspicion. He was 71 at the time and an admiral, a title holding member of the military industrial complex. She was a college student who fancied herself as a ‘60s flower child. But he treated her mother like a queen, and as she got to know him and heard his amazing stories, she warmed to him. They grew closer over shared an interest in music, and his appreciation of her struggles as a beginning cellist. By the time Judy became the Admiral’s stepdaughter, she thought he was a wonderful addition to the family.

But let’s return to the Admiral’s amazing stories--“yarns” as he called them-- for they are the heart of Captain McCrea’ War.

So how did this book come to be?
The Admiral was a gifted storyteller, and his tales about his life were rich with firsthand accounts of famous people, epic events, two world wars, the sea, and humor. The stories were fascinating. After much prodding, during the 1970s and ’80s the Admiral dictated a lengthy memoir about his life and career for his family, producing 48 cassette tapes of material. The McCrea family in Boston listened to the tapes, but Judy lived in New York City and didn’t have time to listen, so she made arrangements to have the tapes transcribed. After the Admiral’s death, she began to read the tape transcripts as way to catch up on the stories she had missed. What she discovered was historical pay dirt and the chance to know her stepfather much more deeply than she had during his lifetime. Over the next 15 years, she corrected the transcripts, and then organized, edited, and fact-checked the material. The result was A Naval Life, an 800-page unpublished memoir completed in 2012. Captain McCrea’s War (2016), about the Admiral’’s experiences during WW2, was taken from the longer memoir.

In the extended McCrea family, the Admiral wasn’t the only person with interesting ports of call on his resume.
During Judy’s personal voyage, research and writing have been a constant. She taught at the Dalton School in New York City. At the NYC Department of Parks and Recreation in the Offices of Conservation and Cultural Affairs, she wrote the text for the animal signs at the Department’s zoos and developed nature education programs in parks. Afterwards she spent two years as a researcher, writer and editor of college textbooks for Appleton, Century, Crofts in NY. Entering the field of law, she was a teaching assistant in the moot court legal writing class at law school. After a federal district court clerkship in the district of New Jersey, she was a litigator and trusts and estates attorney at the NYS Attorney General’s Office and in private practice in New York City. Upon retiring from the law, she pursued her interests in gardening and the cello while working on the McCrea memoirs. Raising funding through grants, she helped set up an educational garden for the Booker T. Washington Learning Center in East Harlem. She gave a solo cello recital at New York’s CAMI Hall, and continues to perform chamber, orchestral and operatic literature in the New York area. She received her JD from Rutgers School of Law-Newark, her B.A. in zoology from Barnard, and attended Bryn Mawr College, the Manhattan School of Music (cello major) and the N.Y. Botanical Garden (ornamental horticulture).

Judy was raised in the Boston area. She currently resides with her husband in New York City.
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Julia C. Tobey's Blog

FDR: Humanity and Humor

[image error](John Nance Garner and President Franklin D. Roosevelt meet on the presidential train in Uvalde, Texas in September 1942.)

According to John McCrea, FDR’s naval aide, President Roosevelt was typically light-hearted and full of good cheer. He liked people and went out of his way to show his interest in them. He loved to banter and joke with his associates and enjoyed a good laugh over a