A Coronado resident follows in her mother’s footsteps after she was chosen to christen the USS Coronado (LCS-4), the navy’s newest class ship and the third navy ship to be named after the City of Coronado.
Susan Keith, a member of the newly formed Coronado Commissioning Commission, will christen the ship (give the ship a name) in mid-January just as her mother, Eleanor Ring, christened the previous ship of that name in 1966. Both Keith and her mother were nominated based on recommendations then approved by the Secretary of the Navy to be the ships’ sponsors.
Keith served as Maid of Honor in 1966 when Ring, her mother, was sponsor. In mid-January Keith’s daughter, Belle Keith Drouin, will continue the tradition and serve as the ship’s Maid of Honor.
The ship will then be commissioned (become a part of the U.S. Navy) in early 2013 after her construction is complete and it has been tested. The independence class Littoral Combat Ship can travel at speeds of up to 40-plus knots.
Crews to staff the ship are training in Coronado and a ceremony will be held on Labor Day, Sept. 5, at the Coronado Promenade Concert at 5 p.m. to honor the crew. Some of the crewmembers will be manning a booth with the ship’s logo gear and information flyers. The event will kick off a fundraising effort to finance the commissioning through donations and sponsorships.
The Commissioning Commission, 15 volunteers responsible for the ship’s commissioning, will meet at 10 a.m. on Aug. 31 at the Coronado library.
More information on the USS Coronado and its sponsor, Susan Keith, can be found at here.
More information about Coronado Summer Concerts In-The-Park can be found at here.
Pictured Above: The Ship’s Crest
