2007 Reunion

One great time and a milestone to Remember!
 

 Follow-up Message from the PCO - DDG 104

 Follow up Message from Capt. Cal Calhoun - DD 407 Shipmates Attending

Report of John  King,  Sterett Association President, to the membership:  

Your Association held our largest and most exciting Reunion during the weekend of 17-20 May 2007 in Portland,  Maine in conjunction with the Christening of Sterett DDG-104.
While the weekend started out cold and rainy (41 degrees), we enjoyed the Christening under dry skies with a full house of dignitaries, shipmates and Bath Iron Works teammates.

Mast Stepping

On Friday the Association officers were invited, along with the crew, Navy and BIW officials to the Mast Stepping onboard DDG-104.  The cold rain did not dampen our enthusiasm as a special box of  treasures was welded to the mast, high above the main deck.  The box contained, along with other memorabilia, 8 coins that tell the history of all ships STERETT.
 

The sum of those coins? 104!!

History of the tradition
 

The ancient custom of "stepping the mast," of placing coins under the step or bottom of a ship's mast during construction, dates from antiquity. One belief from Greek Mythology is that should the ship be wrecked during passage, the coins would ensure payment of the crew's wages for their return home. Since at least the construction of USS Constitution, this tradition has been passed on as a symbol of good luck for U.S. Navy ships.

Mast Stepping Website

Christening

Saturday dawned wet and cold, but the rain stopped and the skies grew a bright battleship-gray as our three buses made the 45 minute trip from Portland to BIW.  After a short walk (BIW graciously provided golf carts for the slower walkers) we turned the corner to see the hull of DDG-104.  The ceremony that ensued was nothing short of spectacular  (a local newspaper report follows at the end of this message) as local and national dignitaries  lauded the workers,  crew and your Association.  Sponsor Michelle Sterett Bernson broke the bottle on STERETT's bow and the ship began a slow movement ( 6 feet per minute) from dry land to the waiting dry dock.  After about two hours of transition and settling into the floating dry dock, she began her first voyage out into the river waiting to float off at slack tide.  By 0415 Sunday morning she was along the pier.

After a warm reception and ceremonial gifting, the buses departed back to the hotel for the business meeting and the Reunion dinner.


Christening Website

Association Business Meeting

Full minutes will be posted on the web site shortly, but here are the salient details from the meeting.

The next Reunion site was determined to be San Diego, beating out the Gulf Coast, Las Vegas and Reno.

Addition discussion was held on the possibility of a half-term Reunion in July/August of 2008* in conjunction with the commissioning of STERETT, hopefully in Baltimore, the home of Andrew Sterett. (* Latest estimate as of 8/3/2007 - official date yet to be determined)
The bylaws were amended to provide permanent membership without dues for all DD-407 shipmates.

A full slate of officers were elected by acclamation,  after shipmates volunteered for each position.

  Reception and Dinner

Shortly after the meeting we assembled for cocktails and at 1845 a color guard, composed of DDG-104 sailors,  presented the colors along with the singing of the National Anthem.

Capitan Eckerle was presented with  special gift from the Sterett family.   Constructed from the original timbers of Old Ironsides, containing a period replica of Andrew Sterett's sword and a period sword that the Barbary Pirates would have used, the massive  piece is truly exceptional. 

Captain Eckerle, Executive Officer Blakenship and Command Master Chief Johnson addressed the nearly 200 Association members, spouses, Sterett family members and DDG-104 crew. Three generations of STERETT sailors dined together, spanning nearly 70 years of STERETT history.

 
On Sunday morning our traditional Memorial Service was held with a bagpiper and a reading of the names of the shipmates lost on DD-407.

Meeting and Dinner Website


Media Coverage

Michelle Sterett Bernson christens the new USS Sterett on Saturday at Bath Iron Works. Bernson is a descendant of Lt. Andrew Sterett, after whom the vessel is named. Sterett was a Navy officer about two centuries ago.


BATH - Le T. Phung was one of thousands of Vietnamese boat people desperate enough for a better life to take to the ocean in small crafts. Many of them didn't make it, and for a time it looked as though Phung might suffer the same fate.

Her boat had lost power and was adrift in the South China Sea. She and the other occupants had been battered by a typhoon. They had run out of food.

After a week at sea, she feared that the wooden boat with 125 people packed tightly aboard would sink. Then aircraft flew over and a U.S. Navy ship appeared on the horizon. Hours later, she and the others were clambering up a net aboard the USS Sterett.

Phung, now a molecular biologist at the University of Illinois, joined two descendants of Lt. Andrew Sterett at Saturday's christening of the latest Navy warship to bear the Sterett name: a 510-foot destroyer built at Bath Iron Works.

"I became emotional listening to the national anthem," Phung said afterward. "It's a very special occasion for me."

The Sterett, christened with a splash of champagne by Michelle Sterett Bernson, is the fourth warship to bear the name of Sterett, who served aboard the frigate Constellation during the U.S. Navy's first victory against a foreign navy.

Sterett commanded a gun battery when Constellation captured the French frigate L'Insurgente during an undeclared "quasi-war" in February 1799.

During the battle, Sterett used his cutlass to execute a sailor who had abandoned his post, and he later boasted, "We put men to death for even looking pale on this ship." Sterett later commanded the first Enterprise and captured the French privateer L'Amour de la Patrie.

Among those in attendance Saturday were more than 80 sailors, including eight World War II veterans, who had served on previous Steretts.

Outside the shipyard, more than 40 peace activists held a demonstration. There were no arrests, according to Bath police.

The first Navy warship to bear the Sterett name served in World War I. The second was highly decorated for action in the Pacific in World War II. The third was the one that picked up Phung on July 22, 1983.

Phung said she was in her 20s when she learned of an opportunity to flee the country, which had fallen into Communist hands in 1975.

"I was told if I wanted to leave, I should try my luck," Phung said. "It happened just like that. You don't have a plan. You don't have an itinerary."

Once aboard the cramped boat, she soon realized no one knew where they were headed. The engine died within a day and the boat drifted. Bad weather struck. Phung recalled losing her raincoat, huddling amid sheets of rain in a corner of the boat, and throwing up as it was tossed by the waves.

Later, a passing fishing boat gave the hungry refugees fish and noodles. "I was quite lucky someone gave me a raw yam to take along. We split it among 15 people," she said.

The boat had been adrift for a week and the food was gone by the time the USS Sterett came along on patrol.

Retired Navy Capt. George Sullivan, the Sterett's skipper at the time, said Phung's boat was one of several picked up by the USS Sterett. His sailors were directed to take on refugees if their boats were deemed to be in trouble.

"You couldn't leave them there," Sullivan said. "You had to take them aboard. That's the law of the sea, and the Navy follows that routinely."

Michelle Sterett Bernson, a Boeing engineer from Seattle, served as ship's sponsor during Saturday's ceremony, breaking a bottle of champagne on the ship's bow. Her mother, Diana Sterett, was honored as a matron of honor.

The two of them had met Phung through the USS Sterett Association. Together, they decided to ask that Phung be allowed to serve as a matron of honor as well. "We both thought it would e great to have her engaged in it," Bernson said.

Phung happily accepted.

She owes a lot to the previous Sterett. Since being rescued, she has pursued her dreams in America. She earned a doctorate from the University of Chicago in 1997, and now she does research for the University of Illinois College of Medicine.

"It changed my life. It was the turning point for me," Phung said. "Without the Sterett, there wouldn't be me today."
 

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