John L. McCrea; Naval Aide to President Roosevelt

John L. McCrea, 98, a retired vice admiral who was the naval aide to President Franklin D. Roosevelt during the first year of World War II. McCrea, who later became an aide to Roosevelt at the Casablanca Conference during World War II, left the White House in 1943 to become the first captain of the battleship Iowa, the ship that also carried Roosevelt to conferences in Cairo and Tehran. On Nov. 21, 1918, as watch officer aboard the battleship New York, McCrea entered in the ship’s log the surrender of the Imperial German Navy’s High Seas Fleet at the end of World War I. McCrea graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy in 1915, and left the service in 1953 as commandant of the 1st Naval District. After leaving the service, he joined John Hancock Mutual Life Insurance Co. as vice president for client relations, retiring in 1966. In Needham, Mass., on Jan. 25.