MUSTIN-THOMAS

Excerpts from obituary published in San Diego Union Tribune on 7/17/2022:

Thomas Morton Mustin, a larger-than-life Navy veteran and lawyer who was part of a storied military family that dates to the Revolutionary War, died July 5 in Coronado of cancer.  According to a sister, the disease stemmed from his exposure to Agent Orange during the Vietnam War.  His grandfather, an early naval aviator, flew the first airplane catapulted off a moving ship.  VADM Lloyd M. Mustin, his father, fought in major World War II naval battles.  According to family history, his ancestors fought in the Revolutionary War, the War of 1812, on both sides in the Civil War, and World War II.  Mustin is a name so revered in Navy circles that it has twice been attached to Navy warships including the USS Mustin (DDG-89) which is homeported in San Diego.

Thomas Mustin was born February 11, 1941, in Annapolis, Maryland.  He graduated from Coronado High School in 1958 and then followed a string of Mustins -- great-grandfather, both grandfathers, father, uncle, and brother – to the Naval Academy.  After graduation in 1962 he served eleven years in the Navy, departing as a lieutenant commander, then went to Harvard Law School, and became a litigator for a Los Angeles firm.  While in the Navy he had service in Vietnam where he did tours on three destroyers to the Tonkin Gulf and a year on river patrol boats in the Mekong Delta.  Here he was awarded the Bronze Star with a “V” for valor after he took control of a boat when the commander was killed in a firefight.  According to his sister, Mustin was always at the center of family reunions, known for “a fiercely wicked wit and a vocabulary that sent us all running for our dictionaries.”  Concerning him a nephew wrote, “You combined the physicality and swagger of Clint Eastwood with the intellectual capacity of Albert Einstein.”

Mustin is survived by his wife, four step-children and eight grandchildren.  His ashes will be interred at the Naval Academy Cemetery close to other family members.

Submitted by CDR Roy A. Mosteller, USNR (Ret)