Monument honors those who served aboard submarines
The submarine veterans who gathered with loved ones Saturday weren’t that far from one of their own.
“(Edward Yoder) was the only submariner that we know that’s buried here,” said Joe Campisi of Pittsburgh, a U.S. Navy veteran who, like Yoder, served on a submarine. “He’s overlooking the memorial now, keeping it safe.”
Campisi was one of about 20 people who attended the dedication of a monument honoring the sailors of the U.S. Navy’s submarines.
The USSVI Requin Base – the Pittsburgh-based chapter of the national group U.S. Submarine Veterans Inc. – placed the monument in the National Cemetery of the Alleghenies in Cecil Township.
“We got some (funds) from the national” and raised the rest locally, said member Eric Bookmiller of Washington. The 20 years Bookmiller spent in the Navy before he retired as a senior chief included stints aboard several submarines.
The Pittsburgh-based chapter has 225 members from Western Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Ohio, said Huey Dietrich, the base commander.
Most of them were in the Navy during the Cold War, several of those in attendance said Saturday.
Carl Stigers of Dormont, the group’s chaplain and first vice commander, joined in 1975 and left in 1993.
Campisi was in the Navy from 1968 to ’75, completing a series of 2 1/2-month underwater patrols in the North Atlantic and Mediterranean aboard the ballistic-missile submarine USS George C. Marshall.
“Our job was to hide and be ready to launch missiles in 15 minutes,” Campisi said.
Similarly, Yoder – a member of the group who lived in Hempfield Township, Westmoreland County, and died in 2015 – was aboard the USS Burrfish during the Korean War. On Saturday, his grave was marked with twin American flags.
A few hundred yards and down a gentle hill, the new monument to him and his shipmates bears a submarine between two dolphins.
That same design adorns the pin sailors earn when they pass the rigorous process to qualify to work on submarines.
“That engenders you into a brotherhood that is very unique,” Stigers said. Less than two percent of the Navy serves aboard submarines, he added.
“You may have petty bickering” aboard ship, “but when you have a casualty, everybody has everybody’s back,” Stigers said.