Jessi Reyes-Murray

--


Navy ship to be named after Cesar Chavez
By Gary Robbins
Monday, May 16, 2011 at 11:06 a.m.

- Ferris State University
Labor leader and civil rights activist Cesar Chavez
 
The last of the 14 Lewis and Clark-class cargo ships that General Dynamics
NASSCO is building in San Diego will be named after Cesar Chavez, the late civil
rights and labor leader. Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus will visit NASSCO on
Tuesday afternoon to make the formal announcement. Some members of the Chavez
family are expected to be in attendance, says NASSCO, which recently laid the
keel of the ship.
 
"We suggested the name Cesar Chavez for the ship because we're in Barrio Logan
and want to be good neighbors, and we want to show respect for our workers,"
said James Gill, a NASSCO spokesman.
 
About 60 percent of NASSCO's 3,600 employees are Hispanic.
 
Over the past decade, NASSCO has been building dry cargo ships for use by the
Navy's Military Sealift Command. All of the ships are named after explorers or
people who were pioneers in their fields. The names of the other 13 ships are:
 
Lewis and Clark
 Sacagawea
 Alan Shepard
 Richard E. Byrd
Robert E. Peary,
Amelia Earhart
Carl Brashear
Wally Schirra
Matthew Perry
 Charles Drew
Washington Chambers
 William McLean
 Medgar Evers.
 
The newest vessel in this line will be the first to be named after a
Mexican-American. Chavez was born in Yuma, Arizona in 1927, and died in San
Luis, Arizona in 1993, at the age of 66.