BATH, Maine — With an Irish flag overhead and bagpipes playing, three sisters of an Irish-born recipient of the Navy Cross christened a warship bearing his name on Saturday — and secured a promise that the ship will visit Ireland.
The future USS Patrick Gallagher is a guided missile destroyer that is under construction at Bath Iron Works and bears the name of the Irish citizen and U.S. Marine who fell on a grenade to save his comrades in Vietnam. Gallagher survived the grenade attack for which he was lauded for his heroism. But he didn’t survive his tour of duty in Vietnam.
Pauline Gallagher, one of his sisters, told a crowd at the shipyard that the destroyer bearing her brother’s name helps put to rest her mother’s fear that memories of her son would be forgotten.
“Patrick has not been forgotten. He lives forever young in our hearts and minds, and this ship will outlive all of us,” she said, before invoking the ship’s motto, which comes from the family: “Life is for living. Be brave and be bold.”
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Joined by sisters Rosemarie Gallagher and Teresa Gallagher Keegan, they smashed bottles of sparkling wine on the ship’s hull. A Navy band broke into “Anchors Aweigh” as streamers appeared in the air overhead.
Lance Cpl. Patrick “Bob” Gallagher was an Irish citizen, from County Mayo, who moved to America to start a new life and enlisted in the Marines while living on Long Island, New York. He survived falling on a grenade to save his comrades in July 1966 — it didn’t explode until he tossed it into a nearby river — only to be killed on patrol in March 1967, days before he was to return home.
The 510-foot guided-missile destroyer was in dry dock as work continues to prepare the ship for delivery to the Navy. Displacing 9,200 tons, the Arleigh Burke-class destroyer is built to simultaneously wage war against submarines, surface warships, aircraft and missiles. The newest versions are being equipped for ballistic missile defense.
From Gazette news services
