Naval base memorial opens to public

Persistence to a vision

With most of America's able-bodied young men off fighting in World War II, sisters Frances and Alice Delk answered the call for welders needed at the Charleston Naval Base in 1944.

They drove from their home in Orangeburg seven days a week until Frances began losing so much weight from the traveling and hard labor of nine-hour workdays that they moved to Charleston to keep their jobs until the war ended.

"I dropped out of school and lied about my age so I could work with my sister," Alice, then 17, said.

"It was good money," Frances said, "and they needed us."

The two sisters, now Frances Webb, 87, of Roswell, Ga., and Alice Ray, 80, of Columbia, were among the 5,000 or so women who worked at the base at the height of the war.

They were also among the hundreds of people who traveled to North Charleston Monday for the opening of the $3.5 million Greater Charleston Naval Base Memorial at Riverfront Park on the banks of the Cooper River.

The memorial, with photographs and flowing water, gangplanks and statues, maps and memorabilia, pays homage to the tens of thousands of men, women, sailors and civilians who labored at the 1,600-acre former military installation from 1901 until 1996, when it fell victim to base closure after the end of the Cold War between the U.S. and the former Soviet Union.

"They could not have done a more excellent job in getting this together," Webb said as she and her sister stood between a statue of a sailor with his bag packed to go to sea and of another embracing his wife and child after returning from a tour of duty. "It touched me so that I had to cry because my husband couldn't be here."

Webb met her late husband Joe while working at the Navy base. They moved away after the war.

Harry Harken, 87, of Charleston, was proud of the memorial as well. "I never realized it would be so nice," the former base worker of 42 years said as he stood under a wall arced like the side of a ship, which bears photographs of the base's history.

Larry Starland, 61, of Ladson called it fabulous.

"Those are the submarines that I served on," pointing to a bronze model of a submarine near the river's edge.

The memorial also brought back a flood of memories for Mary Bette Jameson, 78, of North Charleston.

She worked at the child care center on the base for 37 years until she retired in 1995.

"They practically dragged me out," Jameson said. "The children I cared for, I could look into their eyes and tell whose daddy was home, whose was gone and whose wasn't coming home."

She called the monument a wonder and thanked those responsible.

The Greater Charleston Naval Base Memorial Commission raised nearly $600,000 for the memorial. North Charleston paid the rest.

"It's definitely a tourist draw," North Charleston Mayor Keith Summey said. "Hundreds of thousands of people came through the Naval Base, and it touched a lot of families."

He predicted it would be a popular attraction for schoolchildren and those with ship reunions in Charleston.

"Down the road, we will look for some form of museum out here," Summey said.

Guest speaker retired Rear Adm. Ted Walker of the U.S. Navy Memorial Foundation could not say enough about the memorial.

The people who worked on the base made sure that those who went to sea had all they needed, he said. The memorial, more than eight years in the making, embraces the work of sailors and civilians, he added.

"This epitomizes persistence to a vision," Walker said.

Reach Warren Wise at 745-5850 or wwise@postandcourier.com.