Captain Forrest A. Todd, USN

Naval ROTC Unit Commanding Officer 1961 - 1966

Captain Todd was born on August 24th, 1917 in Kearney, Nebraska. He graduated from Hastings College in Nebraska and went on to teach for a year before joining the United States Navy in 1940. He became a Naval Aviator flying patrol planes in the Pacific.

On December 7, 1941, then ENS Todd, along with his co-pilot ENS Joe Garrett, were on a mission to deliver mail to islands within the Pacific. However, with the attack by the Japanese Fleet at Pearl Harbor, their mail-delivery mission was promptly aborted at the Johnson Islands: For the next thirty hours, the two searched for the Japanese carrier fleet, purportedly heading to bomb Midway and the Johnson Islands.

In 1961, Captain Todd moved to Madison, WI to command the Naval Reserve Officer Training Corps, University of Wisconsin, Madison. In 1966 he took over as Director of the Space Management Office at the University of Wisconsin, the position from which he retired as Director Emeritus in 1983.

In 1942, he married Catharine Hampton and fathered four children.

Captain Todd passed away on 15 September 2001.