Gilbert sponsors US Navy’s new USS Arizona submarine
At the Town of Gilbert’s Veterans Day ceremony on Nov. 5, Nikki Stratton fulfilled her grandfather’s dying wish: She told his story.
Nikki’s grandfather, Donald Stratton, was one of three of the last living survivors aboard battleship USS Arizona. He was a “small-town man who survived a historically tragic event,” one she feels is slipping away from Americans’ memory.
Gilbert will help people remember. The town will sponsor a new submarine named after the battleship USS Arizona, which was lost in the Japanese attack at Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, resulting in the deaths of 1,177 crew members.
The fast-attack submarine is being constructed in Groton, Connecticut. Gilbert’s Veterans and Military Advisory Committee hope it will be stationed in Pearl Harbor to continue the legacy.
The committee proposed the city sponsor the U.S. Navy’s new USS Arizona submarine in June. The town council voted 7-0 to become a sponsor on Oct. 13.
“For him, his dying wish was that nobody would forget the Arizona and this is a way for me to connect with older and newer generations to fulfill that wish,” Nikki told The Arizona Republic. “I see this new Arizona as a bridge and this bridge will carry his story to the other side.”
‘The spirit of the USS Arizona’
Sponsorship is a tradition intended to guide a ship and her crew. Sponsors participate in ship milestones and share the spirit of the ship’s mission.
Navy and Marine ships traditionally have a female sponsor in addition to a municipal sponsorship from a city or town, according to Navy veteran Bill Spence. However, most ships are sponsored by first ladies.
The Secretary of the Navy asked Nikki to sponsor the new submarine.
“It’s a very high level honor for Nikki to have this,” Spence said. He then ap
proached Nikki with the idea of Gilbert.
In a letter to the Town Council of Gilbert on July 6, the town’s100th birthday, Nikki proposed the idea to Mayor Jenn Daniels, adding Gilbert was the perfect place because “it best embodies the spirit of the USS Arizona.”
“It needs to have the small-town feel not unlike the towns where most of the sailors grew up — where neighbors look after neighbors, people say hello while walking down the street and, above all else, you feel welcome regardless of where you came,” Nikki wrote in the letter. “I believe that Gilbert, Arizona — the biggest ‘town’ in America — embodies the spirit of the USS Arizona.”
As a member of the Gilbert Town Council, Spence watched the sponsorship come to fruition over eight months. He agrees Gilbert is the perfect place to sponsor the submarine because of its overwhelming support of the U.S. military.
According to Spence, there are more than 600,000 veterans in the state of Arizona, and nearly 25,000 in the town of Gilbert.
“USS Arizona united the country once at Pearl Harbor, and perhaps the submarine USS Arizona is an opportunity for us to unite the country again and show some national pride and definitely some Arizona pride as well,”
Spence said.
Spence served as a Lieutenant Commander in the U.S. Navy for 24 years. He retired from service in 2010.
“You can’t really name another ship in U.S. history that singularly was so impactful and so influential to into what we consider our values and our service as Americans than the USS Arizona,” Spence said.
The town’s decision to sponsor the ship follows an unsuccessful attempt to create a Gilbert memorial park to honor veterans. After five years of trying to raise the more than $3 million it needed, the nonprofit Operation Welcome Home AZ threw in the towel in October 2019, dissolving as an organization and leaving Gilbert to figure out what to do with the park planned on town-owned land.
Stratton climbed into USS Arizona
Donald Stratton joined the Navy after he graduated from high school in 1940.
After boot camp, he was sent to the Navy shipyards in Bremerton, Washington, where he got his first look at the Arizona, in dry dock undergoing maintenance and, most people assumed, being fitted for war.
“It was quite a sight for an old flatlander like me to see a 35,000-ton battleship out of the water,” he told The Arizona Republic in 2014.
On Dec. 7, the Arizona was bombed by the Japanese in Pearl Harbor.
Nearly 10 minutes into the attack, a bomb pierced the forward deck and buried itself in the Arizona’s ammunition stores and the explosion lifted the ship out of the water. Minutes later, the heaving line secured to the tower, and six men climbed down the rope to the Vestal. Donald was second to go.
Donald was burned badly over much of his body. He was taken to a hospital in San Francisco, where he convalesced for the better part of 1942. Finally, he was given a medical discharge and returned to Nebraska.
A year later, he reenlisted.
After a long life of service, Donald died Feb. 15 at his home in Colorado Springs, Colorado. His wife, Velma, and his son, Randy, were with him. He was 97. He was buried in a family plot in his hometown of Red Cloud, Nebraska.
With his death, only two survivors remain from the last crew of the USS Arizona: Lou Conter, 98, of Grass Valley, California, and Ken Potts, 98, of Provo, Utah.
‘In Gilbert, the legacy lives on’
Nikki was a keynote speaker at Gilbert’s Veterans Day ceremony, a visit she said confirmed her faith in her choice.
“I really wanted to mix those two pieces — past and present — and I absolutely found that in Gilbert,” Nikki said. “The people of Gilbert support their veterans and their active military and I couldn’t be happier with my decision.”
In addition to telling her grandfather’s story, Nikki said she took the ceremony as an opportunity to spread a message of responsibility to Gilbert residents.
“I wanted to make sure they understand that now that the town is the host for the new USS Arizona, my story is now their story, along with the 1,177 sailors who perished and the 335 who survived,” she said. “Gilbert citizens are now guardians of that history.”