Safety-first monument climb is quick sans oil slick
By Arthur Hirsch, The Baltimore Sun
Minutes before members of the U.S. Naval Academy's Class of 2013 were to begin the annual first-year-ending assault on the Herndon Monument Monday afternoon, a chant went up from some of the hundreds gathered for the traditional climb: "Grease the pole. Grease the pole".
If "pole" seemed a disrespectful way to refer to the 21-foot granite obelisk erected for Capt. William Lewis Herndon, perhaps it expressed the measure of dissatisfaction in the throng. By order of Vice Adm. Jeffrey L. Fowler, superintendent of the service academy, the monument was not slathered with lard nor coated in Crisco, neither was it buttered as in one year gone by, nor treated with the dark petroleum-based, rust-preventing goop called Cosmoline.
The "pole" was dry this year, as it has been sporadically since the ritual began in 1940, and that made for a quick afternoon — and some letdown in the ranks.
A greaseless Herndon is just not "representative of the struggle," said plebe Max Cutchen, of Marietta, Ga., who said he and his classmates were "very disappointed" to hear their Herndon would be 100 percent fat-free.
Nonethless, they came running by the hundreds out of the Tecumseh Court toward the monument in their shorts, T-shirts and socks, hurriedly gathering around the stone base to form a human platform for others. Link
