Enterprise veterans return to carrier for birthday bash

The scene at Pier 13 was a homecoming in reverse.

Usually, it's the ship that returns after months away, bringing home sailors, eager to resume lives on land, their rucksacks bulging with purchases from foreign ports.

Monday, it was the other way around: hundreds of former crew members made their way back to the Enterprise to help celebrate the aircraft carrier's 50th birthday. Among the crowd were dozens who'd been assigned to the ship when it entered service in 1961.

Instead of souvenirs from abroad, they carried recollections of themselves as young men and tales of trips around the Horn of Africa or through the Straits of Gibraltar. A few came back with heavy memories of Jan. 14, 1969, when an explosion on the flight deck sparked an inferno that killed 28 sailors.

David Garrett of St. Louis was an airman with one the squadrons assigned to the Enterprise that day.

"I hauled away body parts," he said quietly after a memorial service for the dozens of crew members killed in the line of duty while serving on the Enterprise over the years.

"It doesn't go away," he said, but the service provided "a little bit of closure."

Known as The Big 'E,' the Enterprise was the Navy's first nuclear-powered carrier and is the only one powered by eight nuclear reactors. It has served in almost every U.S. armed conflict since its commissioning, starting with the Cuban missile crisis in 1962.

Don Rasmussen remembers that well. He was aboard as an aviation machinist's mate. The ship had just returned to Norfolk when it was suddenly ordered back out to sea.

Rasmussen found a pay phone to call his parents in Minnesota. "I said, 'I can't tell you where we're going, but I think if you read the newspaper, you'll know.' "

The 69-year-old sported his original blue wool crackerjack jumper and the traditional white Dixie cup hat. Being aboard his old ship brought back lots of memories. He teared up trying to explain the significance of that period in his life - from a teenager who'd never left Minnesota to a disciplined sailor exploring ports in Brazil, Pakistan and Australia.

"This was part of my life - a big part of my life. You lived so close to the next guy. You get close to everybody."

He recalled standing a few dozen feet away from President John F. Kennedy one time when he came aboard, and laughed about getting in trouble with a bunch of other young sailors for drinking illicit whiskey.

But a few things have changed, as he was reminded when he went to find his old rack - the berthing where he slept for three years. He was close when a chief petty officer stopped him - he was about to enter a women's berthing area.

Plank owners like Rasmussen - Navy slang for original crew members - weren't the only ones with long memories of the ship.

Over a brief lunch in the wardroom, where veterans mingled with young officers, Capt. Steve Paulette, an oral surgeon assigned to the Enterprise, said he vividly remembers touring the carrier as an 11-year-old Boy Scout. The ship's history was one of the reasons he chose to serve on the Enterprise, he said.

He's looking forward to being part of the carrier's 22nd - and final - deployment next year. "It's going to take a lot of work to keep this bucket afloat," Paulette said with a smile.

The Enterprise - the eighth ship to bear the name - is scheduled to be decommissioned in 2015. And while it may be showing its age, Howard Jones remembers it as the most modern ship in the fleet.

He came to the Enterprise in 1961 from the carrier Shangri-La, where he slept in a canvas bunk rigged up with rope. The Enterprise featured foam mattresses and air-conditioned berthing spaces.

A gunner's mate technician, Jones worked in the ship's weapons magazines, maintaining nuclear weapons and warheads.

It's a sign of progress that his old job no longer exists. After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the U.S. reduced its nuclear arsenal and the Navy removed all nuclear weapons from its surface ships.

Still the Enterprise plies the seas. In the weeks after Sept. 11, its flight deck launched some of the first sorties into Afghanistan. It has returned to the Middle East four times since, its planes providing air support for troops on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan.

To close out Monday's festivities, the ship held an evening birthday party in the hangar bay, complete with cake and singing. Dozens of plank owners attended, along with hundreds of other current and former Enterprise sailors and officers.

Speaking to the crowd, Adm. James Winnefeld, who was the carrier's 17th commanding officer and now serves as vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, recalled the first time he saw the Enterprise, in a picture on a National Geographic cover in 1963.

"I remember thinking, 'There's something special about that,' " Winnefeld said.

Decades later, he led the ship as it responded after the 9/11 attacks.

"I can only stand here and wonder what the next Enterprise will be," he said.

Pilot writer Corinne Reilly contributed to this report.

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