SOUTH PARIS – Rear Adm. Willard Merton Sweetser, U.S. Navy, retired, of Gray, died in South Paris on Nov. 30. He was 105 years old, and the oldest alumnus of the U.S. Naval Academy at the time of his death.

He was born in Gray in 1902. He attended grade schools and Pennell Institute there, Severn School in Maryland, and graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy in 1926. He retired from the Navy in 1956, and was advanced to the rank of admiral on the basis of combat citations. Prior to World War II, he served in the Atlantic on the USS Marblehead, the USS Charles Ausburne, and the USS Wyoming, in the Pacific, on the USS Lexington and the USS Mississippi and in the Asiatic Station, on the USS Tracy and the USS Panay of the Yangtze Patrol. During this period he also served two tours as assistant professor of naval science at Yale University and one year in Shanghai as a student of the Russian language.

During the war, he commissioned and served as commanding officer of the USS Lardner and the USS Hickox and as commander, destroyer division 92. For service during this period he was awarded the following citations; two commendation ribbons, both with the combat “V,” two Bronze Star Medals, both with the combat “V” and a Silver Star Medal. From Feb., 1945, until the end of the war, he served on the staff of the commander in chief, U.S. Fleet, and chief of naval operations in Washington.

After the war he served as Naval Attaché, American Embassy, Belgrade, Yugoslavia (and while on this duty as naval advisor to the United States Representative at the International Conference of the Danube, in 1948), professor of naval science, Dartmouth College; Commander, Destroyer Squadron 32; chief of staff to commander, Hunter Killer Force, Atlantic; Naval Attaché, American Embassy, Moscow, USSR and president of the General Court Martial of the First Naval District.

After retirement from the Navy in 1956, Adm. Sweetser attended graduate school at Purdue University and was awarded a Master of Science degree. Following this, he taught mathematics at LaSalle University until 1972, when he returned to Gray. There he and his late wife, Barbara (Bigelow), assisted in preparing and published a history of Gray.

He is survived by a son, Willard Merton Sweetser Jr. of Annapolis, Md.; a daughter, Ellen S. (Mrs. Philip B.) Allen, of Stony Brook, N.Y.; seven grandchildren; and five great-grandchildren.