HONOLULU (AP) — Retired Adm. Robert L.J. Long, who was the Hawaii-based commander in chief of all U.S. military forces in the Pacific for four years, has died at the age of 82.
Long, a resident of Annapolis, Maryland, died Thursday at the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland.
“I think we’re all tremendously saddened,” Adm. Thomas Fargo, who now heads the U.S. Pacific Command and who was Long’s aide in the late 1970s, was quoted as saying in Saturday’s edition of The Honolulu Advertiser. “He was a very strong yet, I would say, a warm and charismatic leader.”
Long headed the Pacific Command from Oct. 1979 until his retirement in July 1983.
He was also principal executive of President Ronald Reagan’s fact-finding committee that investigated the 1983 bombing of Marine barracks in Beirut, Lebanon.
Long is survived by his wife, Sara, and sons Charles, William and Robert. Funeral services were set for July 11 at the U.S. Naval Academy Chapel in Annapolis.
