Naval Postgraduate School Naval Station Monterey California Patch

The 1909 stitched in red on this patch goes back to 9 June of that year, when Secretary of the Navy George von L. Meyer signed General Order No. 27 creating a school of marine engineering at Annapolis. That small engineering course grew into the Naval Postgraduate School. For its first four decades it lived at the Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland. In December 1951 it moved across the country to Monterey, California, and it has been there ever since. Officers who studied there know the campus, the old hotel and the Monterey fog.

The Navy first came to the Monterey grounds in 1942, when it took over the Hotel Del Monte and ran a pre-flight school for aviators during World War II. In 1945 Congress made the postgraduate school a fully accredited, degree-granting graduate institution, and in 1947 it authorized the purchase of the hotel and 627 surrounding acres for an independent campus. The move came in December 1951, with about 500 students and roughly 100 faculty and staff, supervised by Rear Admiral Ernest Edward Herrmann. The hotel's main building is now Herrmann Hall, home to the school's administrative offices. Today the school is organized into four graduate schools covering international studies, operational and information sciences, engineering and applied sciences, and defense management. More than 40 astronauts have earned degrees there.

The patch is cut to a shield shape, with a white field inside a light blue line and gold scrolls wrapping the top and bottom. NAVAL POSTGRADUATE SCHOOL is lettered in black across the top scroll, and PRAESTANTIA PER SCIENTIAM, excellence through knowledge, across the bottom. A gold fouled anchor sits inside a green laurel wreath at the top. Below it a torch with a red flame rises from an open book, a gold chain angles across the field, and the founding year 1909 is stitched in red. The anchor and the book share the field, the sailor and the scholar on one shield.

NPS has always been where the Navy sends officers to come back sharper. Students arrive from every branch of the U.S. military and from allied nations, and they leave with degrees that put them on staffs, in program offices and in command with a deeper bench of knowledge. Many remember Monterey as the one tour where the work was hard in a different way, with problem sets and a thesis instead of watch bills. Some went on to fly in space. Others carried what they learned into strategy, engineering and acquisition for the rest of their careers.

The iron-on backing presses onto a jacket, a laptop bag or a backpack, and a few stitches around the cut edge will keep it secure. It frames well in a shadow box beside a diploma, a thesis cover and a class photo from Herrmann Hall. For a new graduate, or a retired officer who still talks about his Monterey tour, it makes a thoughtful gift. Excellence through knowledge, stitched in gold.