St. Louis Council
Marks 50th Cardinal
Company Enlistment
The Navy League’s St. Louis Council, Navy Recruiting District St.
Louis and the St. Louis Cardinals
baseball team joined forces to mark
the enlistment of the 50th Annual
Cardinal Company Recruit Division in early August.
Since 1958, the organizations
have worked together to enlist the
Cardinal Company, which consists
of local Navy Delayed Entry Program recruits. The Cardinal Company is the longest-running sponsored recruit division in all of the
military services.
Eighty-nine recruits were given
the oath of enlistment Aug. 7, and
began their journey to becoming
Sailors, according to Upper Midwest
Area President Doyle Wilhite.
Cmdr. Steven J. Cincotta, commanding officer, Navy Recruiting
District St. Louis, conducted the official oath of enlistment for the 50th
Annual Cardinal Company Recruit
Division. The recruits, decked out in
red Cardinal Company T-shirts and
caps provided by the St. Louis Coun-
cil, with assistance from Anheuser-Busch, then moved to the Soldiers
Memorial Military Museum in
downtown St. Louis, where they
took the ceremonial oath of enlistment on the steps of the memorial in
the presence of family and friends.
Capt. John W. Peterson, commanding officer, Recruit Training
Command, administered the ceremonial oath. Following the enlistment, families, friends and Navy
League members joined in for a
picnic at Eternal Flame Park, adjacent to the memorial.
St. Louis Council member
Daniel Kloeppel presided over the
day’s events. He addressed the
recruits at the Soldiers’ Memorial
and threw out the first pitch at the
Cardinals-Los Angeles Dodgers
baseball game at Busch Stadium
later that day.
Prior to the game, the St. Louis
Cardinals organization hosted a
special repeat swearing-in ceremony at Busch. The recruits and their
families then watched the game,
before the recruits departed for
training at Recruit Training
Command, Great Lakes, Ill.
MASS COMMUNICATION SPECIALIST 2ND CLASS
(SURFACE WARFARE) THOMAS M. SMITH
50th Annual Cardinal Company Recruit Division Delayed Entry Program recruits
and Navy recruiting officials stand before the Soldiers Memorial Military Museum
in St. Louis. The St. Louis Council, Navy Recruiting District St. Louis and the St.
Louis Cardinals teamed up to mark the enlistment of the division in early August.
Naval Ship Museum
Effort in Jacksonville
Gaining Steam
Two Florida-based groups comprising Navy veterans, Navy Leaguers
and civic leaders are teaming up to
try to bring the former USS Charles
F. Adams to Jacksonville, Fla., as a
naval ship museum.
The Adams Class Veterans
Association (ACVA) and the Jacksonville Historic Naval Ship Association (JHNSA) already have
received a number of important
approvals and endorsements in their
effort to create a floating museum
with the first-in-class guided-missile
destroyer. The groups now are in the
midst of reviewing questions and
comments about their ship donation
application from Naval Sea Systems
Command’s Navy Inactive Ships
Program office (PMS 333), which is
responsible for ship donations,
according to ACVA Vice President
James H. Aldrich Jr., a retired Navy
captain and member of the Navy
League’s Tampa, Fla., Council.
The PMS 333’s questions are a
“normal” part of the ship donation
process, Aldrich said, noting the
groups have been given a Jan. 30
deadline to provide responses.
Considering PMS 333 had 24 questions from an application that
totaled more than 800 pages, “we
feel confident we can answer then
satisfactorily,” he said.
In the meantime, the groups are
moving forward with the process of
raising funds for the project, including collecting donations, working to
obtain corporate sponsorships and
“contributions in kind” from interested businesses. The groups hope
to be able to open Charles F. Adams
as a museum ship on the St. Johns
River in downtown Jacksonville in
mid-2010. The Navy League will
hold its annual convention in
Jacksonville that fall.
Charles F. Adams was commissioned in September 1960 as the
first U.S. Navy warship built from
