I assure you that I am not offended by your comment because I think I understand where you are coming from. But we personally do know a member of the Zumwalt family. We care about her and respect her greatly. We last saw her a month ago at a Veterans Day event put on by one of our local VFWs. The Zumwalts are unquestionably a great and patriotic family. I will not go into detail, but ironically the ship seems to have some parallels with some of the family members which probably only those who are acquainted with them would recognize.
I don’t have any knowledge what the Admiral was like personally at the time he was making all his changes (acknowledged it was a difficult time) since I was a young teenager, but my dad and his associates were career military and I read the magazines avidly (Proceedings, etc) and they did not (overall) appreciate the direction he took the Navy in or how he did it. (I note that my father was very close-mouthed about these things, or just about anything, but the conversations that took place in his presence were NOT...)
I definitely took my cues from my dad and his associates, and later when I joined, from the lifers there before me.
I should reexamine my stance on him. It is like an opinion made under glass, when one is a child without any context or real world experience.
Those few years he was CNO were among the most difficult faced by our Navy, and I do have to respect a man who rose to that position at such a young age (he didn’t appear to be a total political animal). In thinking of it now, I wonder how much the resistance to his policies were based on that alone.