Veterans honor 65 lost U.S. submarines during USS Lexington ceremony<\/a><\/p>\nThe effort received renewed attention this week as Corpus Christi hosted the U.S. Submarine Veterans National Convention, drawing hundreds of submarine veterans from across the country.<\/p>\n
Among those attending was retired submarine captain George Wallace, the former commander of the USS Houston and a submarine fiction author.<\/p>\n
Wallace has a unique personal connection to the USS City of Corpus Christi. He was initially assigned to be the submarine’s commanding officer, but was reassigned “at the last minute” to the USS Houston.<\/p>\n
Wallace says part of his work is educating the public about the modern submarine service.<\/p>\n
“The general public is my audience, if you will. That’s who I want to tell what submarining is like, what submariners do, and the importance of the submarine service,” Wallace said.<\/p>\n
Wallace said he has seen firsthand how outdated some people’s perceptions of submarines can be.<\/p>\n
“We (he and his wife) were at a coffee shop having a cup of coffee, and the barista said ‘You’re too young to be a submariner because we don’t have submarines anymore.’ She thought of submarines in terms of World War II submarines. We don’t have any of them anymore, and we most certainly do,” Wallace said.<\/p>\n
A submarine with a Corpus Christi connection<\/p>\n
The USS City of Corpus Christi visited the city three times during its service, drawing large crowds each time, according to Lt. Commander Phillip Kimbro, commander of the U.S. Submarine Veterans Inc. Sea Turtle Base.<\/p>\n
Kimbro said even a former commanding officer of the submarine, Vice Admiral Rauscher, enjoyed the convention’s visit to Corpus Christi and is supporting the effort to create a memorial here.<\/p>\n
“Everyone enjoyed their stay here, including Vice Admiral Rauscher, the former commanding officer of the City of Corpus Christi … He’s pushing the memorial here,” Kimbro said.<\/p>\n
The submarine’s remains were transported to Corpus Christi from Washington state on three 18-wheeler flatbeds.<\/p>\n
Kimbro said the veterans organization has an agreement with the city to pursue the memorial project. The Ed Rachal Foundation has also contributed $500,000, but about $2 million more is needed to move the project forward and get the remains to Sherrill Veterans Memorial Park.<\/p>\n
A legacy worth remembering<\/p>\n
The USS City of Corpus Christi was decommissioned in 2017 after 33 years of service.<\/p>\n
Kimbro said the submarine earned a reputation for excellence during its service, including multiple trips around the globe on missions for the United States.<\/p>\n
“It was a submarine that had a reputation for excellence, it circumnavigated the globe multiple times on critical missions for the nation,” Kimbro said.<\/p>\n
Kimbro said there is currently no set timeline for the memorial, but architects are already working on drawings for the project.<\/p>\n
“The submarine, the City of Corpus Christi, visited this city three different times during her lifetime, always to huge crowds … There is no timeline, but you know the architects are working on the drawings as we speak,” Kimbro said.<\/p>\n
For the veterans involved, the proposed memorial would preserve the history of a submarine with a unique connection to Corpus Christi while helping educate future generations about the service that continues beneath the surface today.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A group of submarine veterans is hoping to give Corpus Christi a permanent reminder of a submarine that…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":435438,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[150977,150978,155,157,156,9650,87354,150974,150975,150973,150976,10122],"class_list":["post-435437","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-corpus-christi","tag-commander-phillip-kimbro","tag-commanding-officer","tag-corpus-christi","tag-corpus-christi-headlines","tag-corpus-christi-news","tag-george-wallace","tag-sherrill-veterans-memorial-park","tag-submarine-service","tag-submarine-veterans","tag-uss-city-of-corpus-christi","tag-uss-houston","tag-veterans-memorial-park"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/435437","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=435437"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/435437\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/435438"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=435437"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=435437"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=435437"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}