Slade Deville Cutter, Sr.
Captain, U.S. Navy

Slade Deville Cutter, Sr. was born on 1 November 1911 in Oswego, IL.

Cutter entered the U.S. Naval Academy in 1931 on a Congressional appointment. He was an all-American football player and achieved instant fame as a first classman when he won the 1934 Army-Navy game with a first-quarter field goal. On the basis of his Academy football career, he was later inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame. He graduated from Annapolis in 1935.

His first sea duty was aboard the battleship USS Idaho (BB-42), where he coached another winning football team. Entering the Groton Submarine School in June of 1938, his first submarine duty was as the Executive Officer of USS Pompano (SS-181) under Lieutenant Commander Lew Parks. The Pompano left Pearl Harbor on her first war patrol on 18 December 1941, just 11 days after the Japanese attack. Eventually Slade Cutter transferred to the USS Seahorse (SS-304) and was the Executive Officer; after just one war patrol he was given command of the Seahorse.

He had an uncanny ability to find and destroy enemy targets wherever he went. It was said by Vice Admiral Charles Lockwood that Cutter "could find Jap ships in Pearl Harbor if asked." Slade Cutter's four war patrols as Commanding Officer of USS Seahorse netted 19 sinkings and more than 70,000 tons of shipping in the postwar accounting, and he was awarded four Navy Crosses.

In the late 1950s, he was made the Naval Academy's Athletic Director. His knowledge of the sports program and his stature as an athlete and wartime hero was invaluable in this position.

His final active-duty assignment was in 1965 as head of the Naval Historical Display Center in Washington, DC.

In Retirement

After his retirement from the Navy, he became headmaster of a boy's school in Tucson.

Death and Burial

Captain Slade Deville Cutter, Sr. died on 9 June 2005 in Annapolis, MD. He is buried at the U.S. Naval Academy Cemetery in Annapolis, MD.