Alexander G. B. Grosvenor
American navy pilot
Alexander Graham Bell Grosvenor (December 7, 1927 – April 7, 1978) was a United States Navy pilot, carrier officer, and avid yachtsman credited with promoting the resurgence of sailing at the United States Naval Academy. He was a great-grandson of the inventor, Alexander Graham Bell, and brother of Gilbert M. Grosvenor, former chairman of the National Geographic Society.
Early years
Grosvenor was born in 1927, the son of Helen Rowland and Melville Bell Grosvenor, who later became president of the National Geographic Society and editor of the National Geographic Magazine. In 1937, ten-year-old Alex was present when the Smithsonian Institution's secretary, Dr. Charles Abbot, opened three boxes of Bell experimental materials that had been kept locked in the Smithsonian's secret archives. In September 1942 Alex enrolled at the Taft School, where he played football and was captain of the wrestling team.
Career
Grosvenor was appointed to the United States Naval Academy in 1945. In the summer of 1947, he sailed with many of his classmates on a Navy training exercise to Europe and subsequently wrote about his experiences in an article entitled "Midshipmen's Cruise" in the June 1948 issue of National Geographic, coauthored with fellow midshipman William J. Aston. Grosvenor sailed the Naval Academy's Star in the 1949 World Championships in Chicago, and “finished in the top third of the fleet, an accomplishment, which no former Navy Star had come anywhere near,” reported the Star Class Log. He earned a letter on the varsity dinghy team and was the first midshipman skipper of the yacht ROYONO in the 1950 Bermuda Race.
“Alexander G. B. Grosvenor” enters the record as american navy pilot. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Alexander, Grosvenor and American can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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This entry incorporates text from “Alexander G. B. Grosvenor” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.