Joseph Powel Franklin

West Point, 1955

Be Thou At Peace

Posted by West Point 1955 on July 6, 2019:

Joseph Powel Franklin 1955 Cullum No. 20207-1955 - March 8, 2017 Died in Arlington, VA Cremated. To be interred in Arlington National Cemetery Arlington, VA December 22, 2017 Joseph P. "Joe" Franklin was born in Cumberland, MD and attended public school through the sixth grade there. He entered the McDonogh School, Baltimore, MD, and graduated in 1951 with an appointment to West Point. Joe entered West Point on July 3, 1951, lettered in football and golf, and graduated in the top 10 percent of the Class of 1955. He was commissioned in the Corps of Engineers then completed Airborne and Ranger training. He and his wife, Constance Marie Smith, grew up together and were married in March 1956. They enjoyed the rest of their lives together with their four sons. Joe"s first assignment was to Karlsruhe, Germany, where he served as a platoon leader and company commander in the 499th and 78th Combat Engineer Battalions and the 502nd Floating Bridge Company. Selected for graduate schooling at MIT in 1959, Joe earned master"s degrees in civil and nuclear engineering. In 1961, Joe joined the Nuclear Power Field Office at Fort Belvoir, VA as project manager for the design and construction of the world"s first floating nuclear power plant, the SS Sturgis. In 1963, he led a team of enlisted specialists to dismantle the nuclear power plant at Camp Century, located on the Greenland ice cap, 300 miles from the North Pole. This involved the first-time shutdown and disassembly of an operating nuclear power plant. In 18 months, his team of soldiers accomplished the shutdown, disassembly, and movement of the highly radioactive components of the nuclear power plant to CONUS. Greenland duty included inspecting the nuclear power plant and measuring residual radiation levels after shutdown before work began on disassembly. Joe did this alone; he prohibited soldiers from entering areas that might be highly radioactive (those areas actually measured 2,000 rads). It took less than two minutes, but Joe absorbed some 60 rads, which probably contributed to the cancers that appeared in him several years later. In 1965, Joe completed the Engineer Officer Advanced Course and was assigned to the Department of Military Art and Engineering at West Point. He wrote a new, full-year curriculum in nuclear engineering as an alternative for the civil engineering course required for all First Class cadets. After studying for a year in 1968 at the Naval War College in Newport, RI, Joe was assigned, in 1969, to U.S. Army Vietnam. Initially, he oversaw construction of diesel power plants for sites from the Mekong Delta to the northern provinces of South Vietnam. Subsequently, he commanded the 299th Combat Engineer Battalion, conducting combat operations in Vietnam and Cambodia. In 1970, Joe was assigned to the Office of Plans and Policy, J5. He led the study that was the basis for recasting the United States" nuclear weapons arsenal under the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT). He attended the Army War College in 1972, then was assigned as Army Staff Group Executive for the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in 1973. In 1975, Joe went to Fort Knox, KY to command the 4th and 5th Combat Training Brigades, after merging them into a single unit. He transferred back to the Pentagon in 1977 as special assistant to the director of the Joint Staff. In 1979, West Point had a "cheating scandal" involving take-home exams; women also had recently joined the Corps of Cadets. General Andrew Goodpaster "39 was brought back on active duty as Superintendent, and he selected Brigadier General Joe to be the new Commandant of Cadets. He led the Cadet Honor Committee to review and strengthen the Honor System. He also persuaded the Army to assign a senior non-commissioned officer to each cadet battalion and later to each cadet company. In 1982, Joe was assigned to Hawaii as assistant division commander of the 25th Infantry Division. He was promoted to major general in 1983 and assigned as Chief of the Joint U.S. Military Group in Madrid, Spain. Spain had just joined NATO. Joe worked with the Spanish military to align their armed forces with NATO standards. When his tour ended in 1987, he was awarded Spain"s highest decoration for foreign military officers. Joe retired in Spain and formed a Spanish company, Franklin Sociedad Anonima. He worked with American companies to expand business in Spain and with Spanish companies to do the same in the United States. In 1992, he returned to the United States when he was recruited to become the chairman and CEO of Frequency Electronics, Inc. (FEIC), an American Stock Exchange company that designs and builds high-precision timing and frequency components for space, defense, and commercial applications. FEIC and four senior executives had been indicted on charges that included a number of highly classified space contracts. Joe brought this case to a satisfactory conclusion, exonerating all four officers who had been indicted. He stepped down from CEO in 2002 and remained chairman of the board at FEIC. Joe turned his attention to giving back to West Point and began his service with the Association of Graduates in 1993 on the Alumni Support Committee. He was elected to the Board of Trustees, appointed chairman of the Alumni Support Committee and then vice chairman of the AOG, where he served for four years. Joe was a driving force behind the Bicentennial Campaign, which exceeded its $150 million goal by $75 million. Joe wrote and published a book: Building Leaders the West Point Way: Ten Principles from the Nation"s Most Powerful Leadership Lab. In 2007, Joe was recognized as a Distinguished Graduate of West Point. Throughout his life of service as an Army officer, scholar, diplomat, and business leader, Joe dedicated himself to the principles of Duty, Honor, Country.

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