Ernest Graves Jr. followed family example and entered West Point on July 1, 1941. He had to wear civilian clothes and even pay the War Department room and board for the privilege of participating in the first week of Beast Barracks, until he turned 17 on July 6.

Graves graduated with the Class of 1944 and served on active duty for 37 years. He died in his home in Arlington, VA on May 21, 2019, from natural causes, lovingly attended by his wife of 68 years, Nancy Barclay Graves.

“Ernie” was born July 6, 1924, in New York City. He was the only child of Colonel Ernest Graves (USMA 1905) and Lucy Birnie Graves. When he was two years old, Ernie’s family moved to Washington, DC, where he spent the rest of his childhood. He graduated from St. Albans School in 1941.

At West Point, Ernie roomed with Ken Cooper. Together they presided over the Mecca of Knowledge, dispensing the poop to less academically gifted classmates. Graves graduated number two in General Order of Merit, matching his father’s performance but trailing his grandfather Rogers Birnie, who graduated number one in the Class of 1872.

After three months at Fort Belvoir, VA, Lieutenant Graves initially joined the Communications Zone staff of Lieutenant General John C. H. Lee in Paris, France. Then he became a platoon leader in the 1282d Engineer Battalion in England, France, and Germany. He departed with the 1282d for the Pacific in June 1945, arriving in the Philippines in August. By then the war had ended, so he joined the Construction Division of the Eighth Army in Yokohama, Japan. 

In 1946 Graves was assigned to the postwar Manhattan Project, where he began his long involvement in the nation’s nuclear programs. Until 1948 he was part of a group of young officers who were trained in the assembly of the project’s early weapons and escorted bombs by train and ship to the Marshall Islands for detonation. This led to graduate school at MIT, where Ernie earned a Ph.D. in nuclear physics and, while in Boston, met and married Nancy.

From 1951 until 1954 Graves served at SHAPE headquarters in Paris, where he worked on airfield construction throughout Western Europe. From 1955 to 1957 he was the chief of the Training Section of the Nuclear Power Branch at Fort Belvoir, supervising enlisted training and the construction of a training reactor.

After CGSC at Fort Leavenworth, KS, Graves commanded the 44th Engineer Battalion in Korea, 1958-59. Between 1959 and 1964 Graves worked on efforts to develop peaceful uses of nuclear explosives. The most salient idea was to build a sea-level canal across the Isthmus of Panama, which ultimately succumbed to environmental concerns, the Test Ban Treaty, and Central American politics.

Then came the Army War College at Carlisle Barracks, PA, followed by a Pentagon tour, during which he served as executive officer to Secretary of the Army Stanley Resor. Graves deployed to Vietnam, where in the Mekong Delta between 1968-69 he commanded the 34th Engineer Group, whose major construction projects included 9th Division headquarters at Dong Tam and the rebuilding of highway QL-4. 

Graves’s most powerful ambition, however, had always been civil engineering, and he had a variety of increasingly responsible assignments in the Corps of Engineers. The earliest of these was deputy district engineer in Los Angeles in 1961. From 1969 to 1970, Graves was Deputy Director of Military Construction in the Office of the Chief of Engineers in Washington, DC. Following that, until 1973, he was Division Engineer of the North Central Division in Chicago, IL. From 1973 to 1975, Graves returned to nuclear work as the Director of Military Application in the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission in Washington, DC. 

Then, in 1975, he was assigned to the job he had first dreamed of getting when he was a boy, Director of Civil Works for the Corps. He took one further step when he became Deputy Chief of the Corps in 1977.

In 1978, General Graves filled what was to be his last active duty position, Director of the Defense Security Assistance Agency. In that role he oversaw all U.S. arms sales to foreign governments. Much of his efforts in his three years there were directed at supporting the Camp David accords, which achieved peace between Israel and Egypt. 

In 1981 Graves retired from active duty as a lieutenant general. During his career he earned the Defense Distinguished Service Medal, the Army Distinguished Service Medal, the Legion of Merit, a Bronze Star, two Air Medals and an Army Commendation Medal. 

In retirement, Graves worked as a consultant and was active in the governance of the Army-Navy Country Club, where he chaired committees responsible for the construction of new clubhouses at both the Fairfax and Arlington locations. 

General Graves loved his family, and, despite his demanding career, he and Nancy devoted themselves to raising their four children with the same values of education, integrity and professionalism that characterized their own lives. Ernie loved golf and spent many of his scarce free hours teaching his children the game. Rude conduct on the links was not tolerated—family foursomes on the 1st tee sometimes became twosomes (or less) by the 18th.

General Graves is survived by his wife, Nancy; his sons: Ralph Graves (USMA ’74, Colonel, U.S. Army, Retired) and his wife, Carol (Lieutenant Colonel, U.S. Army, Retired), Robert Graves and his wife, Linda (Major, U.S. Army, Retired), and William Graves and his wife, Debbie; his daughter, Emily Graves Odria (Lieutenant Colonel, U.S. Army, Retired) and her husband, Luis; seven grandchildren and five great-grandsons.