Brett Crozier’s Santa Rosa High classmates salute him in a video

More than three decades after they graduated from Santa Rosa High School, former classmates of Brett Crozier are saluting the embroiled Navy officer in a video.

“The Santa Rosa High School Class of 1988 stands with Captain Brett Crozier. This tribute was lovingly made in his honor by his graduating class,” Stacey White, who produced the video, wrote in an introduction on her YouTube channel.

About 30 members of the Class of 1988 took part in the 3½-minute gesture of support for Crozier. The captain was relieved of his command of the aircraft carrier Theodore Roosevelt on April 2 after a letter in which he pleaded for more help to protect his crew from the coronavirus made headlines across the country and beyond.

The video opens with an American flag rippling behind a scrolling summary of Crozier’s naval career, the letter he emailed to superiors and to others, and his removal as the carrier’s captain by then acting Secretary of the Navy, Thomas Modly.

Modly resigned April 7 amid fallout of his decision to fly to Guam, where the ship is docked, and tell the crew that Crozier was “naive, or too stupid to be a commanding officer of a ship like this” if he didn’t know that the contents of his letter would make the press.

The video, directed by White and Aaron M. Lane, has ex-SRHS classmates of Crozier taking turns reading from a message of support for him.

“Oh captain, my captain!” the now 50-year-old Panthers declare, raising a hand to their temples. “I salute you.”

The video can be viewed on pressdemocrat.com.