Coast Guard cutter named for late Washington veteran
U.S. Coast Guard photo by Auxiliarist Trey Clifton
Coast Guard Cutter Richard Snyder approaches Coast Guard Sector Field Office Fort Macon in Atlantic Beach, N.C. The Richard Snyder is the newest cutter in the Coast Guard’s fleet.
U.S. Coast Guard photo by Petty Officer 3rd Class Ronald Hodges
Coast Guard Cutter Richard Snyder sits in port Tuesday in Key West, Fla., before departing for its new home port in Atlantic Beach, N.C.
Most of Dick Snyder’s family don’t have to look far to find reminders of his life.
Like him, many of them train and race harness horses in Washington County. But Danielle Snyder said the U.S. Coast Guard’s decision to name a vessel for her late grandfather has given her family a window into an entirely different period of his life.
“We’ve always known about the legacy through the horse racing, and this is all kind of new to us – the war hero side,” she said.
Danielle Snyder, 38, of Canton is one of about 25 family members and friends who plan to attend the commissioning of the U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Richard Snyder in Atlantic Beach, N.C., Friday.
Dick Snyder was a welder in Cleveland before he enlisted in the Coast Guard in late 1941, when he was 19. He went on to serve on landing craft in the Pacific Theater of World War II.
In 1973, he and his family moved to Washington, where the third-generation horseman started a stable of harness horses. His sons, Dane and Doug Snyder, now have their own stables in Meadow Lands. His daughter, Dee Smith, and her husband, Perry, have one in Illinois.
“Basically, all three of his children, and now some of the grandchildren, do it,” Danielle Snyder said.
Her grandfather died in 1989. His wife, Rosie, died in 2012.
For a long time, Dick Snyder’s family members didn’t know much about what Snyder did in the military.
“We knew he had a Silver Star, but it wasn’t something he ever talked about,” Danielle Snyder said of her grandfather.
Dick Snyder earned the medal during the amphibious assault on Biak – an island just north of Indonesia’s Papua province – for attacking Japanese defensive positions in caves near the beach where Americans were landing.
A Coast Guard news release said the cutter named for Snyder will do fisheries enforcement, search and rescue missions and port security from Charleston, S.C., to New York City.
The 154-foot fast response cutter was built in Louisiana and went through sea trials in Key West, Fla., where Danielle Snyder said she was able to board and take a tour.
“We’re just pretty proud and honored,” she said.
She agreed it was an unusual experience to look at a military vessel that shares her last name: “It’s almost surreal, yes, I would say.”