USS Vermont gets its due: A 'commemoration' of its 2020 commissioning
Groton — In the Navy, you can count on pomp.
You might have to wait a bit if, say, a pandemic intrudes, but you’ll get it. Circumstance, too.
The crew of the USS Vermont (SSN-792) was seeing to that Friday morning at the Naval Submarine Base, preparing to deliver on the Navy’s promise of a full-fledged commissioning ceremony the next day. More precisely, Saturday's event was being billed as the "commemoration" of an “administrative commissioning” of the submarine that took place some 16 months ago at a time when COVID-19 dictated small crowds and social distancing.
On April 18, 2020, the Vermont transitioned to "normal operations" without so much as a public salute.
The day before, the Navy had taken delivery of the submarine from Electric Boat, whose Groton shipyard helped build it. Since then, it’s circled the globe a couple of times, according to the boat’s commanding officer, Charles Phillips III, who said Friday it had made stops in Brazil, where it hosted Brazil's president, Jair Bolsonaro, and in Europe.
In the face of COVID-19, “the crew’s been very resilient,” Phillips said, who likened much of time spent aboard the submarine to “being in an office building without windows.”
On Friday, under a blazing sun, the 130-man crew had to rehearse.
Enter David Anderson, a 31-year Navy man, now retired, who’s been readying crews for christenings, commissionings and the like for the past six years, a job that takes him all over the country.
“Planning for a ceremony like this starts two to three years out,” he said Friday. “Usually, I’ve got a week to rehearse. This is the first time I’ve ever done it in a day, but this boat just pulled in yesterday.”
Anderson approached the task good-naturedly, with humor and an air of solemnity.
“We’re keeping a promise Secretary Guerts made to the crew, their families and the people of Vermont,” he said. “They have a right to a celebration. ... The Navy’s all about tradition."
James Guerts, then the assistant secretary of the Navy for research, development and acquisition, had vowed last year the Vermont would have a proper commissioning ceremony.
During an early run-through, Anderson admonished the lined-up crew to practice saluting crisply, in unison.
“We don’t want to look like we’re doing the wave at a ballgame,” he told the crew. “Now, in one voice, it’s 'Aye, aye ma’am.'”
In the “run aboard,” the crew members, one at a time, trotted along Pier 6, crossed a gangplank to the Vermont and took positions shoulder to shoulder on the deck of the 377-foot-long, fast-attack sub.
A recording of “Anchors Aweigh,” the Navy’s official song, accompanied them.
Scheduled to speak at Saturday’s commissioning are U.S. Reps. Joe Courtney of Connecticut and Peter Welch of Vermont, U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro and Rear Adm. Douglas Perry, director of undersea warfare on the chief of naval operations’ staff.
The Vermont’s sponsor, Gloria Valdez, who retired in 2018 as a deputy assistant secretary of the Navy, a role in which she oversaw naval shipbuilding programs, ship conversions, maintenance and modernization, is not scheduled to speak. She did, however, attend Friday’s preparations at the base, having traveled from her home in New Mexico. She has an enduring affiliation with the Vermont, having smashed a bottle of sparkling wine across its bow at its Oct. 18, 2018, christening at Electric Boat.
Valdez said she returned to the shipyard the following year to christen the Vermont with water taken from Lake Champlain in Vermont.
Saturday’s commemoration of the Vermont's administrative commissioning is “a special day” for the people of Vermont, she said.
"As for the crew," she added, "they represent the best of America in my eyes.”
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