The annual Submarine Veterans Memorial Day ceremony will take place at the USS Requin on the North Shore this Sunday. About 40 members of USS VI Requin Base will perform a bell tolling ceremony during which they’ll ring the submarine’s bell for every vessel that’s been lost.
The servicemen will also cast flower petals into the Ohio River “so they can travel the rivers to the oceans where the submarines are at rest,” according to Carnegie Science Center submarine operation manager Maria Renzelli.
“It’s beautiful, it’s very moving.”
The annual ceremony has been taking place for the past 15 years, Renzelli said, but the submarine itself has floated next to the science center since 1990. After serving around the world from roughly 1945 to 1968, the submarine served as a museum in Florida. The group maintaining it fell on financial hardship, and Renzelli said the Navy could have sunk it so it’d “become an artificial coral reef.”
But in 1990, former U.S. Sen. John Heinz introduced a bill that would allow the vessel’s transfer to Pittsburgh after hearing about it from Science Center board member Jim Winokur, a Navy veteran himself.
“It’s very unique to have a submarine so far inland,” Renzelli said. “Most submarine museums are on the coasts. That’s always important to remember.”
The Science Center offers visitors the chance to walk through the submarine, and Renzelli said folks aren’t often aware of the impact of such vessels.
“Submarines were involved in developing the space program because the environments on board are so similar to what’s in a space shuttle,” she said. “Every single person who was involved from the people who built them to, most importantly, the men who served on board, deserve to be remembered.”
The ceremony will begin at 10 a.m., and visitors can get the best view from the riverfront trail.
