What's in a name? Plenty - The Final Word - Naval Submarine Base New London, Groton, Connecticut - street signs renamed as memorial

All Hands, April, 2004 by Charles L. Ludwig

About once a week, I'll gaze up at a street sign and quizzically wonder, "How in the heck did they come up with that name?" Or, "Could that street really be named after something?

When I was a child, these thoughts entered my head all the time. For instance, the house I grew up in (the same house my parents still live in) was on South Moss Drive in South Louisiana. To this day, I have no clue as to what it was named after. It's more than likely a mossy tree, and, if it is, all I can say is, "What?" I need something better than that. I need something like Kate Moss, or maybe even Randy Moss. A mossy tree isn't going to help me very much when "they" ask.

"They" are my children, all three of them (with another one on the way.) One day, we'll be visiting the grandparents, and they will ask me, "Dad, why Moss?" At that point, I'll be forced to give them my "the-lights-are-on-but-nobody's-home" look until they leave me alone.

Luckily for Navy kids and their parents living in Groton, Conn., the Naval Submarine Base New London (SUBASE) Public Works Department (PWD) is making the street sign subject as easy to understand as first-grade math.

At SUBASE, the home of the Navy's submarine school, among other sub-related commands, a new set of street signs is allowing parents to answer their children's street name queries quickly and with no undue stress on the brain.

The new signs, like the previous ones, feature the names of the lost World War II-era submarines. But PWD made one important addition: just below the street's name, people can now read the date the ship was lost, along with the total number of Sailors lost on each.

These add-arts separate the base's streets from many throughout the country. Hopefully, visitors and residents of the base will recognize through the signs what before may have been overlooked--the genuine meaning behind each thoroughfare's moniker.

"These new signs will have a greater significance than the old signs because now it will give the people a greater appreciation of the history of the different submarines and a little remembrance of the Sailors who were lost," said LTJG R.J. Kline, the SUBASE PWD operations officer. "... We wanted to recognize the Sailors who were lost."

To put it quite simply, it is well-deserved recognition. People know of the perilous situations submariners put themselves in every day. It may be considered cliche, but, owl a submarine, there's no going overboard when the boat is in a deadly, downward spiral. Speaking as a former member of the crew of USS Nassau (LHA 4), I took solace knowing if something went horribly wrong, I could possibly work my way to a lifeboat. On a submarine, I wouldn't have had that security blanket. On a sub, you put out the fire, you stop the leak or you die. Bottom line. There's nothing I can think of honoring more.

The new signs started popping up around base in mid-November, when PWD began the process of replacing nearly 175 signs. Since then, the intended message hasn't been lost on those newest of submariners--the students of the U.S. Navy Submarine School.

"It was a brilliant idea for (PWD) to put up these new signs," said sub school student Seaman Anton Harris. "Before the new signs went up, the names didn't mean anything to me ... Now I understand that (some) streets represent submarines that were lost, and I'll think about what happened back then"'

So while SUBASE can lay claim to streets by the name of Trigger, Shark and Grenadier, most towns (including the one I grew up in) will have to be content with blah streets like Main, Park or First.

Looks like I better start coming up with a good Moss story soon. I have a lot to compete with.

Ludwig is a photojournalist assigned to All Hands.