from the Port Isabel-South Padre Island Press
FINAL FAREWELL
Hundreds of people
gathered on the rocks of
the jetties at Isla Blanca
Park Thursday afternoon, June 1st, to say their final
farewells to the USS Independence,
a Forrestal
class aircraft carrier with
nearly four decades of
service in the American
Navy fleet.
“I just wanted to see it,”
said Pete Rico, who traveled
with his wife all the
way from Tulsa, Oklahoma
just for the occasion.
“(It was) a 14 hour drive,”
he said. Rico served
aboard the Indy from
1965 to 1968, he said.
Though he was somewhat
sad to see that the
ship will be dismantled,
he understood why it will
be. “It needs to be recycled.
The taxpayers have
been paying the storage
fees up in Bremerton,
Washington where it
came from,” he said. After waiting on the
jetties for six hours, Rico
stood with his back to the
water as his wife took a
photograph of him holding
a sign in the Independence’s
honor.
“We served with a lot of
people. I think there was
175,000 crewman that
served on it, both officers
and enlisted people, over
the 38 years that it was on
active duty,” Rico said.
Seeing a ship that could
comfortably hold the
same number of people as
a small town was definitely
a spectacle for another
Navy veteran, Brownsville
resident Doug Nelson.
“It’s just amazing,
especially these big aircraft
carriers that are so
large that my little guy,
we had 100 people, and
these had 5,000 of them,”
he said. Nelson served aboard
the USS Lowe, a radar
picket ship, in 1972, he
said.
Asked why he came to
see the Independence off,
he replied simply, “It’s a
Navy thing.”
Another Independence vet, James Ory, traveled
from San Antonio to say
goodbye to the old girl.
“Came to see my boat for
the last time. This is her
last port of call,” he said. “It’s sentimental. Never
going to see it again,” Ory
said.
He previously saw the
ship in Bremerton, Washington,
where it was held
in storage until the government
decided what its
final fate would be. But it wasn’t just Navy
veterans who came to
say goodbye. La Grulla
resident and Army veteran
Juan Antonio Garcia,
and his wife Isabel, sat
in camp chairs facing the
calm ship channel waters.
The couple are currently
staying at Isla Blanca
Park for the summer.
“Es un orgullo verlo ya
por última vez y ya no
vamos oírlo. Ya no se va
volver a ver,” Garcia said.
“It’s a proud moment to
see it for the last time, and
we won’t hear of it again.
It will not be seen again,”
he said. He likened attending
the Independence’s arrival
as attending the funeral
of a loved one. He
came to pay his respects,
he said.
“Es como cuando
acompañas un difunto al
cemeterio. Eso se trata
aquí, ahorita,” he said.
“It’s like when you accompany
a deceased
loved one to the cemetery.
That’s what’s happening
here, right now.”
Ory said he was happy
to see so many people
turn out for the farewell
voyage. “I’m glad there’s
a lot of people here. All
up and down here, there’s
a lot of old Indy shipmates
and everybody has
a different story,” he said. “I really hope nobody
forgets her; she was a
great ship, the last of her
kind,” Ory said.
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