William "Ted" Hussey was born in 1933 in Washington, D.C., and lived in that area five different times during his life. His father was a career naval officer and moved his family around the United States with his job as an ordnance specialist. Hussey was the second son of a strong woman who drove an ambulance in Seattle during World War 1 and afterward was a highly successful competitive golfer. In 1940, Hussey's father was stationed in Pearl Harbor and the family lived there for about 18 months. His father usually worked on shore, and the family would frequently go on outings to nearby beaches. It was a great life, and he really enjoyed it there. Like all the other children, Hussey said, he went to school barefooted. He and his brother walked to Punahou private school, which was taken over by the Coast Guard after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. Hussey remembered his father had a beautiful 1931 grey Chevy sedan when Pearl Harbor was attacked by the Japanese and had it parked on the pier. A large piece of shrapnel pierced the roof of the car and tore its seat covers which "annoyed the hell out of him."

In the days leading up to the attack on Pearl Harbor, William Hussey's father was about 400 miles to the south with a squadron of the newly-converted high-speed mine sweepers that the Navy was putting into service. As soon as they heard the news, they returned to base to set up the offshore patrol around the island. For Hussey, the day started as a routine Sunday, and he was waiting for a ride to church when his mother got word that a battleship had been blown up in the harbor. She turned on the radio, and they heard a call for emergency personnel and cement truck drivers who were needed to fill in the craters on the runways to report to duty. Hussey went out to their front yard and saw a couple of Japanese planes from the second wave fly over. He doesn't recall thinking, as a boy of eight, that anything was amiss. The family stayed home that morning, but in the afternoon, they took a drive to the top of Mount Tantalus from where they could see great columns of black smoke drifting off the harbor. That made an impression on Hussey. He stayed in Hawaii until April [Annotator's Note: April 1942] when his father got orders to return to the Bureau of Ordnance. The family traveled on the USS Henderson (AP-1) out of Pearl Harbor in a convoy that included the USS Nevada (BB-36) that was going back to the United States to be refitted after having been beached during the attack of 7 December [Annotator's Note: 7 December 1941].

Even though he was a small boy, William Hussey was aware that there was a fear that the Japanese would invade Hawaii. He remembers the family dug a bomb shelter in their back yard, but by mid-January the children were back in school. In April 1942, Hussey traveled by ship to San Francisco. The ship rolled while he was taking a shower one morning. He backed into a steam pipe that burned his buttock, and bed rest was ordered. When they arrived in San Francisco, Hussey was lowered from the ship on a Stokes stretcher and the orderlies were shouting, "make way for the wounded." {Annotator's Note: Hussey chuckles.] He lived for a while in Brentwood, California with an uncle, until the family traveled by train to meet his father in Washington, D.C. The family stayed there during the entire period of the war, and somehow Hussey skipped a grade in school, and missed learning to write in cursive. Hussey said he was 11 or 12 when President Franklin Roosevelt died. He was the first president Hussey knew of, and he remembers attending the funeral parade. He also recalls learning from newspaper headlines that the atomic bombs had been dropped, and knows that his father was out at Bikini Atoll when the bombs were later being tested.

When William Hussey graduated from high school he was too young to enter the Naval Academy, so he signed up for the Naval ROTC [Annotator's Note: Reserve Officer Training Corps] program at Yale and was commissioned upon graduation. He was sent to the USS Everett F. Larson (DD-830), a radar picket destroyer where he served three years and then went to submarine school. He married while he was in submarine school, and upon completion of training was stationed at Pearl Harbor while qualifying on the USS Tunny (SSN-682). He was approved for Nuclear Power School in New London, Connecticut, then went to West Hartford, where combustion engineering had the S1C [Annotator's Note: S1C nuclear reactor] prototype. He was on the inaugural crew of the USS Thresher (SSN-593), where he served for about two years. He had been transferred out to California to the USS Andrew Jackson (SSBN-619) before the Thresher went down with 129 men on board, 69 of whom were Hussey's former shipmates. From the Andrew Jackson, Hussey was made executive officer of the USS Pollack (SSN-603) for a couple of years. Then he went to the Pentagon in submarine warfare for two years, where served under Admiral Hyman Rickover. One of Hussey's duties was to review Rickover's testimony before Congress to make sure that nothing classified was revealed; Hussey considered Rickover a wonderful politician. After his tour in the Pentagon, Hussey went to San Diego to take command of the USS Snook (SSN-592), then moved to the Trident program [Annotator's Note: submarines armed with Trident submarine launched ballistic missile].

William Hussey enlisted in the Navy because he grew up with it, and it seemed the thing to do once he reached adulthood. He was commissioned in 1954, and retired as a commander in 1976. His decision to go into submarines was influenced by one of his instructors in the NROTC [Annotator's Note: Naval Reserve Officer Training Corps] at Yale who was submarine qualified, and whose father had served on the first American submarine in 1901. Hussey had a chance to tour a sub while he was serving on his first destroyer, and decided to volunteer for submarine service. At the time, the Cold War was at hand, and he found the work exciting, but classified, so he couldn't tell his wife where he went or what he did. Hussey takes credit for the term "Crazy Ivan," which he coined while his ship, the USS Pollack (SSN-603), was shadowing a Soviet missile-carrying submarine off the North Cape in 1965. His first submarine, the USS Tunny (SSN-282), was a Second World War-era boat, built with three diesel engines; he contrasted it with the later editions of the submarines he served on, and observed that the technology had advanced exponentially. By 1968, he recalled, there were five Regulus boats [Annotator's Note: submarines capable of carrying the Regulus cruise missile] that "carried the load" in the Pacific until the Polaris [Annotator's Note: submarines capable of carrying the two-stage solid-fuel Polaris nuclear missile] boats came out in 1964 or 65.

Advances in submarine technology, William Hussey acknowledged, were directly related to the Navy's experience during World War 2. Developments in sonar [Annotator's Note: a system for the detection of objects under water] and submarine quieting were noticeable. Asked if he had much contact with foreign vessels, Hussey responded that when a ship is in the "deterrent business, carrying missiles," the crew makes it a point to remain undetected. Among his more interesting experiences, Hussey recalled the memorial for the USS Thresher (SSN-593) which commends the ship, the crew, and it's SUBSAFE [Annotator's Note: a quality assurance program designed to maintain watertight integrity] program. Hussey said SUBSAFE was a major change in how the Navy designed, built, tested and operated submarines. He had been part of the original commissioning crew on the Thresher, and its loss affected him greatly. The weapons used on submarines, too, changed dramatically after World War 2, according to Hussey, from the Mark 14 torpedo and steam fish, which ran on alcohol, to the nuclear powered missiles of his days in the Navy.

William Hussey feels World War 2 is still relevant today because it was an outstanding example of how the United States could take on a specific mission, stop the Axis and get an unconditional surrender, and accomplish it. Fighting modern day "terror," according to Hussey is less definable. He feels it very important for there to be institutions like The National WWII Museum that teach the lessons of the war to future generations, because it is not being taught in the schools. Hussey mentioned that in 2001, for the 100th anniversary of the Submarine Force, he put together a presentation about submarines that included his own progress through the ranks to independent command, and his final coming ashore in 1972. He has been proud to make that presentation to members of Kiwanis Clubs and other organizations.