Fall 2006

Endowment blends love of Miami, love of the sea

In about 1947, Joseph “Ted” Lukens ’51 sat down at Miami University and typed a brief autobiography. In it, Lukens recalled how on a family vacation when he was 9, he visited Norfolk Naval Base. “I decided to be a sailor in spite of several cases of seasickness,” he wrote.

His daughter, Kathy Leugers, who found her dad’s writing after her father died recently, said that love of the sea was matched only by Lukens’ love of Miami.

So in Lukens’ estate planning, Leugers said her father was thrilled to find that his gift to Miami would not only carry his name, but would benefit fellow U.S. Navy ROTC students at Miami.

The Naval ROTC was founded at Miami in 1946, making it the longest running program in the nation. Graduates are commissioned as Ensigns in the U.S. Navy or as Second Lieutenants in the U.S. Marine Corps. Scholarship recipients receive a monthly allowance for living expenses as well as textbook funds. (The Navy pays for tuition, instructional fees, uniforms and other expenses.)

Lukens’ best friend since high school, Dr. David Gilboe ’51, said the two decided on the Naval ROTC “because our families weren’t fixed to send us to college.” They earned their degrees at Miami while taking classes in engineering and navigation.

Lukens completed his ROTC training and then served on the USS Murray as a Navy officer. When he returned to Ohio, he earned his master’s degree at Xavier University and embarked on a career in financial computer systems – a field that was just in its infancy. He and Gilboe, who went on to become a professor of neurological surgery at the University of Wisconsin, found that the naval experience gave them a love of travel. They and their wives took trips together, including a journey to Argentina and Chile. Later, when Lukens’ health was failing, their last adventure was to the Ohio State-Miami football game.

“I have played football for as long as I can remember,” Lukens wrote between his freshman and sophomore years at Miami. “The game is the finest sport I know. Because of football, I managed to get into Miami University… and enlisted in the Naval Reserves Officers Training Corps.”

The Joseph T. Lukens Navy ROTC Fund, a university endowment, will enable more students to blend a love of country, school and sea well into the future.