Ships
- USS Hunt (DD-674) Captain, 1962 – 30 December 1963
Commander Stanley Hart Brittingham, called Britt by the people closest to him, was born in 1921 and grew up in Fairfield, Connecticut. As a boy he delivered newspapers by bicycle to earn a little money of his own. In high school he and Alice Burr were chosen class sweethearts, and the two stayed together from that point forward.
He attended the United States Naval Academy. He and Alice married on 14 June 1943, soon after his graduation, and friends and relatives pooled wartime sugar rations so the couple could have a wedding cake. His naval service ran from 1940 to 1965, about twenty-five years that included the Second World War, the Korean War, and duty in the United States during the Vietnam era. He also completed a postgraduate degree in electrical engineering.
The last ship under his command was the Fletcher-class destroyer Hunt (DD-674). She had entered service in September 1943 under Frank Paull Mitchell, Jr., served in the Pacific, and left the active fleet in December 1945. Recommissioned at San Diego on 31 October 1951 with Lynn F. Barry in command, she spent the 1950s in antisubmarine training and fleet exercises. Eugene Harrison Farrell and George Hand Sharp were among the officers who commanded her before Brittingham.
Brittingham became captain of Hunt in 1962, with the destroyer operating from Mayport, Florida. He remained in command through 30 December 1963. On that date Hunt was decommissioned and berthed with the Atlantic Reserve Fleet at Philadelphia, ending her second period in commission.
He left the Navy in 1965, and in 1966 the family settled in Florida. Brittingham earned a master of arts in teaching from Pennsylvania State University and taught at Daytona Beach Junior College, where Alice also taught. She had trained as a nurse, raised their three daughters, and later returned to nursing. The couple were active at First Presbyterian Church in Daytona Beach and square-danced with groups in the places they lived.
They traveled often, taking a recreational vehicle out to see family and friends and making five world cruises across seventy-eight years of marriage. In June 2019 they marked their seventy-sixth anniversary in Holly Hill, both of them 98, and he was looking ahead to a reunion of Hunt sailors in Jacksonville that September. Stanley Hart Brittingham died on 4 May 2021 at the age of 99, with Alice and their three daughters beside him. Seven grandchildren and nine great-grandchildren survived him.