New Commander Says Harassment Must End : Military: Woman who will replace El Toro officer convicted of charges is confident of change under new Navy secretary.

EL TORO MARINE BASE —  The woman who next month will replace a Navy commander convicted of sexual harassment said Tuesday that neither the Navy nor the American people will tolerate such behavior.

“We haven’t been following our own rules,” Lt. Cmdr. Lynn C. Reinbird, 44, said in a telephone interview. She welcomed the Navy’s crackdown on sexual harassment after recent scandals including the manhandling of women at a convention of Navy aviators last year in Las Vegas.

Quoting Acting Navy Secretary J. Daniel Howard, Reinbird said: “We will not tolerate a stone-age attitude any more. I saw him (Howard) on TV and I believe it,” she said. “It is behavior that has been institutionalized in the Navy, and Howard is going to get rid of it.”

On Tuesday Reinbird said she was packing boxes at her home in Pensacola, Fla., where she had been assigned at the Pensacola Naval Air Station for the last eight years of her 14-year Navy career.

Reinbird said she had been preparing to be reassigned to a naval facility in Philadelphia until Cmdr. Steven Tolan was removed from his post as head of the Aviation Physiology Testing unit at El Toro pending investigation of the sexual harassment charges.

Two weeks ago a court-martial found Tolan guilty of conduct unbecoming an officer in his treatment of a female sailor who reported to him. Tolan was found guilty of repeatedly making offensive comments of a sexual nature to Kathryn Sparre and of paddling her on her 21st birthday. He has said he plans to retire soon.

Tolan said in court that he had encouraged the bawdy behavior he had found among his staff as a way of building esprit de corps. But Reinbird said she will go by the rules.

“It is just manners,” she said, “kind of like the book, ‘All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten.’ ”

Reinbird, the Navy’s senior female aviation physiologist, was not chosen to head the El Toro survival training unit because she is a woman, according to the Bureau of Naval Personnel in Washington. Bruce Williams, spokesman for the bureau, said she was chosen because she was best qualified.

Reinbird said that when she received her revised assignment, she knew nothing about the troubled history of the unit under Tolan and only learned of it later.

But Reinbird said she is already impressed by the competence of the 20-member El Toro training unit she will head, which recently passed an inspection of their water survival training program “with flying colors.”

“I know all the personnel are supposed to be excellent and their training capacity is excellent,” she said. “They are probably looking for a good leader and will probably be more comfortable having me around than someone who can’t keep his hands in his pockets.”

She added: “I am just going to do a good job. I hope we all have fun and are safe and give high-quality training.”

Reinbird, who has a master’s degree in physiology from the University of Buffalo, said she does not regret choosing the Navy as a career. She said that when she applied to the Navy she had two children and was surprised she was accepted. She said she graduated from the Navy Aviation Safety School in Monterey, where she learned to investigate airplane accidents and run safety programs.

At Pensacola, she said, she was a medical safety officer who made certain that pilots were assigned to planes that they were physically able to operate. Reinbird, who is 5-foot-3, said most Navy planes are designed for medium-sized men.

At the El Toro assignment, she said, she will be in charge of “teaching pilots to meet the challenges of any environmental stresses in flight from ejecting over water to using night vision systems.”

Reinbird said the Navy has only about 80 physiologists, about 10 of whom are women.

Aviation, Reinbird said, is both her profession and favorite pastime. “I love to fly,” she said, boasting that she has flown old Marine fighter planes, ferried training aircraft across the country and sat in the cockpits of jets landing on carriers at sea.

“Where else can a 44-year-old mother of two get to do 27 carrier-arrested landings?” she observed with a laugh. She said she owns a restored 1946 airplane that she hopes to fly in Southern California when she finds a field for it.

Reinbird said she and her 16-year-old daughter plan a five-day drive across country to a new home she has rented for them in Mission Viejo. “We will leave (Thursday),” she said. “I am looking forward to hitting the road.”