RADM Samuel Eliot Morison Award for Naval Literature

The RADM Samuel Eliot Morison Award for Naval Literature dinner is an annual event held by the New York Commandery, and recognizes an author "who by his published writings has made a substantial contribution to the preservation of the history and traditions of the United States Navy."

At the beginning of World War II, President Roosevelt appointed Samuel Eliot Morison as the nation's official historian of naval operations during that war. His only restriction was to safeguard information that would endanger national security. He served on eleven different ships in both the Atlantic and Pacific. The result of his work is a unique "shooting history" of 16 extraordinary volumes, the only work of its kind created to date. He was a Pulitzer Prize winning author and a Trumbull Professor of American History Emeritus at Harvard. 

A Retired Rear Admiral in the United States Naval Reserve, Admiral Morison died in Boston on 15 May 1976. As he requested, the epitaph on his gravestone reads: "Dream dreams, then write them - aye, but live them first."