LBJ’s daughters christen Navy ship bearing his name in Maine
BATH, Maine — Former President Lyndon B. Johnson’s daughters christened a stealthy warship bearing his name Saturday, smacking Champagne bottles against a metal star symbolizing Texas as a crowd roared in approval.
Champagne sprayed into the air when Lynda Bird Johnson Robb and Luci Baines Johnson smashed their bottles as they stood on the ship’s bow.
“Daddy would be proud to have a stealthy ship that’s looking forward, not backward at past things that have happened, but forward for the great things” to come, Robb said before Saturday’s ceremony.
The warship’s namesake was praised for his efforts to help the poor and to fight for equality in the civil rights era. The Texas-born Johnson signed the landmark Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act and designed “Great Society” domestic programs that included federally sponsored social welfare programs. But his presidency was dogged by a stalemate in the Vietnam war.
The nation’s 36th president died in 1973.
Outside the shipyard, police made several arrests when activists calling on the federal government to spend money to fight climate change instead of building warships blocked a public road.
The 610-foot warship is the last in a class of three ships that are the largest and most technologically sophisticated destroyers built for the Navy. The destroyers feature wavepiercing hulls, an angular shape that reduces their radar signature, and electric propulsion. Automation has halved the crew size compared with other destroyers.
Unlike its sister ships, the USS Zumwalt and USS Monsoor, the LBJ will have a deckhouse that’s made of steel, not composite materials, to save money.
The Lyndon B. Johnson will undergo further outfitting and sea trials before it’s commissioned into service.