Families, colleagues pay tribute to lost Scorpion crew

NORFOLK

Many of the men attending Saturday's 40th anniversary memorial service at Norfolk Naval Station were retired submariners.

A few dozen visitors were related to the 99 men aboard the Scorpion, including children born after the submarine disappeared at the height of the Cold War.

Four were widowed too young - wives who had no graves to visit, mothers with no good answers for anxious children.

The four spouses clutched hands as they walked from the tent to a wreath adorned with red carnations. With the U.S. flag above them snapping in the wind and Navy submarines gleaming in the sunlight behind them, the widows presented the wreath to representatives of the submarine Boise, who will take it to sea.

The widows did not speak. That was left to Capt. Mary Etta Nolan, one of the driving forces behind the gathering of about 200.

The daughter of Chief Petty Officer Wally Bishop, the chief of the boat, Nolan was 8 when the Scorpion failed to return home in May 1968.

While their mom went to greet Bishop at the pier, she and two brothers stayed at a friend's house.

When they got home, the siblings tore around the house, looking for Dad under beds and in closets. It was their ritual whenever he came back from sea.

Her mother told them he wasn't in the house, that the boat hadn't arrived. They thought it was just part of the game and kept looking.

A few hours later, Nolan recalled in an interview, her brother yelled from the living room, "They're talking about the Scorpion on TV!"

Nolan wasn't too worried by the bulletin about the missing sub. In her 8-year-old mind, sailors whose boat went missing could be found somewhere else. She pictured Gilligan and the Skipper on their fictional television island.

Months later, the Navy found the Scorpion's wreckage in 10,000 feet of water in the eastern Atlantic.

Nolan is glad she has memories of her father.

"I only wish that I could have known him as an adult," she said. "Many people that I've talked to have mentioned how their lives were changed by him when they were young sailors."

Doug Kariker was one of those.

"There are five or six people that affected the outcome of my life, or had tremendous influence on the way I turned out, and he was one of them," said Kariker, who did a hitch on the Scorpion.

In 1967, he was torn between a $10,000 re-enlistment bonus and going to college. Kariker chose college.

He came back to Norfolk in late May 1968, as a Navy reservist, arranging his duty so he would be there to greet his shipmates.

"I'm not a believer in predestination," Kariker said. "I don't know why the good Lord would spare me, with 55,000 men dead in Vietnam."

Kariker hadn't returned to Norfolk since. He came from Alabama with his wife and a son to help keep the memory of his friends alive.

Their story has been almost lost to history, something he attributes to the tumult and nationwide grief of 1968.

Martin Luther King Jr. was murdered while the Scorpion was at sea. Days after the boat disappeared, Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated.

Vice Adm. John J. Donnelly, commander of the Navy's submarine force, told the crowd it's important to honor the crew and their families even though "we may never truly know the circumstances of the loss of the Scorpion."

That's a sore point for some.

The Navy never has given a detailed explanation of the loss, even after Robert Ballard led a secret mission to photograph its wreckage on the sea floor in 1985.

Ballard explored the Scorpion wreck on the same trip he pinpointed the Titanic's resting place. His mission to the Scorpion was kept secret, and many of the photographs have not been released.

Lt. Karen Eifert, a Navy spokeswoman at the Pentagon, said the 1968 investigation "was unable to determine the cause of the loss."

The Navy concluded that "a cataclysmic event occurred that resulted in uncontrolled flooding." What happened is unknown, she said.

Some have theorized that the Scorpion was sunk by one of its own torpedoes after unintentionally launching it.

Others think that the Soviets sank it in retaliation for the loss of one of their subs in the Pacific months earlier.

A third group insists that the Scorpion was doomed by a mechanical malfunction, probably the trash disposal unit.

"It would be inappropriate for anyone to comment on theories," Eifert said. "We don't know the cause, and we're not going to speculate."

That doesn't make sense to Kariker.

"It leaves too much room for the imagination to run wild," Kariker said.

Nolan, a nurse in the Navy reserve, doesn't believe the service is covering anything up. But she doesn't mind the scrutiny recent books have put on the submarine's fate: The more people hear about the Scorpion, the better, in her opinion.

"I've always said that it didn't really matter what happened. To me, it's just important the men be remembered. I really want people to keep in the forefront that, yes, it was the 'silent service,' but people died."

Saturday, two enlisted submariners in summer whites read aloud the names of every crewman.

"Commander Francis Atwood Slattery," the recitation began. The commanding officer's name was followed by the tolling of a bell.

Ninety-seven times later, the final crew member, Petty Officer 2nd Class Clarence Otto Young, Jr., was remembered.

The bell tolled again.

Kate Wiltrout, (757) 446-2629, kate.wiltrout@pilotonline.com