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    Centennial presentation highlights interesting facts, mysterious disappearance

    Centennial presentation highlights interesting facts, mysterious disappearance

    Photo By L.A. Shively | Capt. Steve Brown, Navy Operational Support Center San Antonio commander, spoke about...... read more read more

    SAN ANTONIO, TX, UNITED STATES

    03.30.2015

    Story by L.A. Shively 

    Joint Base San Antonio

    SAN ANTONIO - From current conflicts in the Middle East and throughout the world, to the First Texas Navy, Capt. Steve Brown, Navy Operational Support Center San Antonio commander, recounted the history of the Navy Reserve in San Antonio during a Navy League meeting and luncheon March 24 at the Fort Sam Houston Golf Club.

    The Navy Reserve was created March 3, 1915 by Congress as the result of a campaign launched by then-Secretary of the Navy Josephus Daniels and his assistant, a young New Yorker named Franklin D. Roosevelt in Washington, D.C.

    With WWI raging on all fronts overseas, Daniels and Franklin saw the need for a reserve force of Sailors ready to augment the active Navy in case of imminent threat to the homeland or U.S. assets abroad.

    Only honorably discharged Navy seamen were accepted at that time and in San Antonio, Sailors who affiliated mustered for inspection and pay on a quarterly basis. It was not until 1947 that a formal Naval Reserve organization in the Alamo City was announced and opened to veterans of all of the military services.

    “Does that date sound familiar? Does anyone else know what happened here in 1947?” Brown asked his audience. Someone answered that was the date the Department of Defense was implemented.

    “That’s right and it included the establishment of the Air Force,” Brown said. “So, the next time someone says, ‘Well I didn’t know we had Navy in San Antonio,’ you can say, ‘Well the Navy has been here just as long as the Air Force.’”

    The audience of retired, active-duty and reserve Navy members chuckled loudly.

    Brown showed images of the original drilling center on Arsenal Street that was commissioned in 1950. Pictures taken during the first annual inspection the following year showed Sailors in their service dress blue uniforms and inspecting officers in service dress khaki, a popular uniform that had been considered for re-issue.

    Throughout his presentation, Brown illustrated the partnership between the Navy and San Antonio through participation in events such as Safe Driving Day, blood drives and Fiesta. In 1955 reserve Sailors decorated an automobile, drove it into a downtown intersection and then demolished it with sledge hammers to illustrate the dangers of unsafe driving.

    In 1956, Sailors from the reserve center designed and built a miniature, to-scale destroyer, complete with gun turrets and manned by a crew of two plus one passenger. It operated under its own power and was christened the Commodore Edwin W. Moore during a ceremony on the Lone Star Lake at the Lone Star Brewing Company in San Antonio.

    The battleship honored Moore who commanded the First Texas Navy and in 1842, during the Mexican Revolution, he blockaded the Mexican coast and destroyed the Mexican fleet. But since Republic of Texas President Sam Houston had ordered the Texas Navy home to Galveston to be sold, Moore was accused of rebellion and suspended. The commodore was later convicted of only four minor charges and remained in the Texas Navy.

    That battleship carried its crew through nearly five decades of Fiesta River Parades and then in 2003 was seen dry docked in the parking lot of today’s reserve center on Binz-Engleman Road.

    The Commodore Edwin W. Moore was floated once or twice more but as a result of age and disrepair, the battleship was retired unceremoniously. Eventually it disappeared. But scuttlebutt has it that the crew of the Navy Recruiting District San Antonio knows its present location.

    Today, NOSC San Antonio has nearly 630 reserve officers and enlisted Sailors assigned to 15 actively drilling units. Many of the Sailors have been deployed to the Middle East fighting terrorism. Currently, 80 Sailors are deployed supporting various missions around the world.

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    NEWS INFO

    Date Taken: 03.30.2015
    Date Posted: 03.30.2015 12:55
    Story ID: 158559
    Location: SAN ANTONIO, TX, US
    Hometown: DAYTON, OH, US
    Hometown: SAN ANTONIO, TX, US

    Web Views: 35
    Downloads: 0

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