Secretary of the Navy Nomination of W. Graham Claytor, It.

The President today announced that he will nominate W. Graham Claytor, Jr., of the District of Columbia, to be Secretary of the Navy. Claytor is presently chairman of the board and chief executive officer of the Southern Railway System.

He was born in Roanoke, Va., on March 14, 1912. He received a B.A. degree from the University of Virginia and is a graduate of the Harvard Law School, where he was president of the Harvard Law Review from 1935 to 1936.

After serving successively as law clerk to the late U.S. Court of Appeals Judge Learned Hand and to the late U.S. Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis, Claytor was admitted to the New York and District of Columbia bars, and from 1938 to 1967 practiced law in the District of Columbia, with the firm of Covington and Burling.

He served on active duty in the United States Navy during World War II. Entering service as an ensign in 1941, he was promoted to the rank of lieutenant commander prior to his release from active duty in 1946. During this period, he served as commanding officer of a submarine chaser, the U.S.S. SC-516, in 1942-43, and as commanding officer of the U.S.S. Lee Fox from 1943 to 1944, and of the U.S.S. Cecil J. Doyle from 1944 to 1945.

He joined the Southern Railway System on September 1, 1963, as vice president-law. He was elected president, Southern Railway Co., on October 1, 1967, and chairman of the board, effective March 1, 1976.

Claytor also serves as president and a director of Southern Railway System companies and as chairman of the board of the Central of Georgia Railroad Co. and other affiliated lines of the Southern Railway System.

He married the former Frances Hammond in 1948 and has two children, a daughter, Murray, and a son, Graham III.