Handshake There will be many stories about the commissioning of the Submarine USS New Jersey (SSN 796) but for me, there are some very special, important, and unforgettable memories of not only this commissioning but decades of personal appreciation for our US Navy and the men and women who serve it.
Joseph Azzolina, Jr. shaking hands and welcoming Commander Steve Halle, commanding officer of the new submarine, brought back vivid memories of Joe’s dad, former State Senator/Assemblyman/Navy Captain Joe Azzolina, a Highlands native, proud Navy Veteran and prominent local businessman who at one point owned The Courier newspaper in Middletown, the leading weekly in the Bayshore and environs for decades.
Joe, Jr. is a member of the Battleship New Jersey Museum Commission and an avid supporter and generous contributor to all the fine programs, activities and history lessons the museum offers.
He carries on the legacy of his dad, who was the very first person who worked long and hard to save the nation’s most highly decorated warship. Joe Senior’s long time efforts, after he himself served on the Battleship, to bring it to northern New Jersey were thwarted by an active political battle.
Yet he was successful in getting the ship back from its graveyard in Washington State through the Panama Canal and back to the Garden State. J
Joe invited me to go to Panama, along with great state leaders including then Governor Christie Whitman and the late attorney Tom Gagliano and so many other fine patriots, to board the ship as she started through the Panama Canal enroute to her permanent resting place in Camden.
It was an experience I could never forget.
Joe, Jr. knowing my pride in his father and love for the battleship, then invited me to go to the museum in Camden, participate in more than one ceremony honoring the ship and its history and once again be grateful for his dad’s hard work in preserving the vessel and helping to establish a truly dedicated and hard working volunteer commission for a state museum.
My own boasting of the New Jersey was apparently passed on to my grandson, Jay, and his son, my great grandson James, who as a young teenager volunteered many hours along with his dad on the museum ship. Jay continues to volunteer there, and I missed him by two days before Tuesday’s ship-to-ship event.
Volunteering at Naval Weapons Station Earle for many years, gave me more than one opportunity to make lunch available out on the pier to workers loading ships for destinations and purposes unknown . Working there for ten years after my husband died, I had the added thrill of being out on that three mile long pier in Leonardo every week, checking on the happy fishermen for whom I had checked and written the passes for their privilege of catching the largest bass from best pier over the best fishing hole in the world.
All these memories flooded back, from the outstanding commanding officers who served Earle and granted me the privilege of working there to the families of the officers with whom I still share so many e-mails and memories. Taking personal pride in their kids who have grown into wonderful, delightful, and hard working adults who continue to make their parents proud has brought so much joy for so many years to me who has always appreciated their friendship.
And it all seemed to come together this week. While I was in Camden with Joe Azzolina on the newly refurbished teak deck of the Battleship New Jersey admiring and appreciating the wealth of history of the Battleship, surrounded by the young, happy, and very intelligent crew of the Virginia-class submarine New Jersey (SSN-796) who represent the bright, brilliant and well planned and executed future of our US Navy, my daughter, Commander Tracie Smith Yeoman herself a Navy diver, retired veteran and now Chief Naval Instructor at MAST on Sandy Hook, was on the Leonardo pier with a group of her NJROTC students at MAST, making her first visit on the submarine New Jersey.
At the same time, her son, a naval officer and son of two military sailors, was hard at work studying and preparing for his own career as a helicopter pilot for that same US Navy.
Our nation’s Navy continues to give me perpetual pride, thanks for perfection, and confidence in the future.
