Norfolk, Virginia

NORFOLK: A Fleet Town, a Sailor Town, a Holy Shrine.

Those bell-bottomed Navy kids were indoctrinated by world history they made from this place, and by difficult lives devoted to saying hail and farewell from her long and lonely piers.

Norfolk is so best defined by these, their seagoing experiences which started, and ended, in this hallowed place.

Here stands a modern city that once acted ashamed of them, these Navy kids. Embarking Civil War ironclads, then enduring world war trans-Atlantic convoys, and then dodging death on vicious carrier flight decks, or sailing below the sea in sophisticated killer submarines-- these Norfolk warriors would learn that the future of their Nation often rested in their tired, salt seasoned hands. Most of these Norfolkians became old by the age of twenty.

They once called this place their "home port," their home away from home. They still do, gratefully.

Over so many years, while this sleepy southern town slept softly, these, her liveliest inhabitants, almost always knew what waited outside their safe harbor, and over the uncertain horizon. Norfolk's Sailors knew what awaited America, too. They usually knew it FIRST.

Over two centuries, and after months at sea, countless Sailors would return to the town on the tide, and some would wonder, "Do these people have any idea of where we've been, and what we've done, coming and going from this place?" The city would become honored by their priceless sacrifices, a town with memorials to ship names like COLE, and SCORPION, and the NEW JERSEY. Nowadays, local billboards and news media try to tell these stories that once were ignored, but the networks, well, they seldom do pick us up. Norfolk brags to deaf ears of her younger citizens' greatest feats, which are many.

The ageless beauty of Norfolk was, and hopefully will always be, etched in the ruddy faces of Navy Chiefs, once the kids who scrubbed the decks of the steel greyhounds. Seems these "Blue Suitors" could never take their hearts from this port when the last liberty call sounded, no matter their destinations in the end. For them, the town became them, and they became the town, kindred spirits.

A Holy Shrine, a Sailor Town, a Fleet Town: NORFOLK

John G

Submitted: Thursday 22nd April 2004, 7:28 PM

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