Ships
- USS Minneapolis (CA-36) Captain from 5 December 1935 · Relieved on 7 June 1937
Chester H. J. Keppler was a captain in the United States Navy. Born in Iowa City, Iowa, he graduated from the Naval Academy and served for forty-three years. In later life his home was Newtonville, Massachusetts, and he is buried in Newton Cemetery in Newton.
In the First World War he served in the battleships Minnesota and Nebraska, and afterward he was assigned to the Boston Navy Yard. His later work turned to engineering and fleet training. In 1924, while a commander and assistant director of fleet training in the Navy Department, he lectured at the Naval Academy postgraduate school on the fleet's engineering competitions and the rules used to judge a ship's engineering performance. He held a master of science degree from Columbia University.
The Naval Observatory put him in charge of three expeditions to observe total eclipses of the sun, in 1929, 1930, and 1932. On the first of those journeys a high chief adopted him and gave him an acre of palm trees.
Keppler took command of the heavy cruiser Minneapolis on 5 December 1935, relieving Gordon W. Haines, her first commanding officer. The New Orleans-class ship had been built at the Philadelphia Navy Yard and commissioned in 1934, with a main battery of eight-inch guns. During his tour she operated with the fleet on the West Coast. In the summer of 1936 the ship's company mustered on the after deck off Long Beach, California, and Keppler sat at the center of the front row. He was relieved on 7 June 1937 by Lucien Frank Kimball.
That June he became professor of naval science and tactics at Harvard University, and he stayed in the post for about two years. He then helped establish Naval Reserve Officers' Training Corps units at Brown University and at Tufts College, where he also served as professor of naval science and tactics. From there he became director of naval officer procurement for the First Naval District. In April 1944 he returned to Harvard as commanding officer of all the naval training schools at the university, and he remained in that billet through the last summer of the war. For his duty at Tufts, in officer procurement, and at the Harvard schools from 7 December 1941 to 31 August 1945, he received the Legion of Merit.
His third period at Harvard began in October 1946, while he was on terminal leave. The university named him counsellor for foreign students, and in that work he looked after the affairs of about five hundred students from abroad. He went on the retired list that December. Tufts had conferred on him an honorary master of arts.