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20 years on watch for the Lone Sailor

When the U.S. Navy turns 232 on Saturday, its 7-foot-tall bronze ambassador will also celebrate his 20th birthday, along with the popular Washington, D.C., Navy Memorial where he stands watch.

The Lone Sailor, a petty officer second class who stands with his sea bag on the memorial’s enormous stone map of the globe, has become an icon for the sea services, said Navy Memorial CEO retired Vice Adm. Rick Buchanan.

“My sense is that whenever an individual looks into the statue they see themselves,” he said. “They can identify that that sailor carries with him the burdens of separation, the responsibility of learning a skill they’ll put into action, that they will carry a sense of self-confidence about their ability to operate on the waters of the world, to represent the U.S. in trying to keep the seas of the world free for democracy.”

The Navy Memorial and the Lone Sailor have excelled in their mission to represent the Navy in downtown Washington, Buchanan said, thanks primarily to their location in the midst of a heavily trafficked area — above a Metro subway stop, a block away from the National Mall, behind the National Archives and less than a block away from FBI Headquarters.

Every year about 250,000 people visit the memorial’s visitor center, which includes exhibit space and the Navy Log, where active and former members of the sea services can set down their experiences. The number of people who visit the above-ground Navy Memorial is “uncountable,” Buchanan said, because of the daily rush of Metro and pedestrian traffic.

Politicians and the admiralty had talked for years about how to honor the Navy in the capital city — even the French architect who designed Washington, Pierre L’Enfant, included in his plans a column “to celebrate the first rise of the Navy and consecrate its progress and achievements.”

President John F. Kennedy asked in 1960 that there be a formal Navy Memorial, and by 1977, Adm. Arleigh Burke said: “We have talked long enough about a Navy Memorial and it’s time we did something about it.”

With Navy and civilian colleagues, Burke founded the Navy Memorial that same year as a nonprofit organization, and it began work with Congress and the District of Columbia to set aside land for a memorial. Work started in 1985 and was finished in time for a dedication on the Navy’s 212th birthday. The memorial was dedicated “in grand style,” Navy Times reporter Rosemary Purcell wrote in 1987, with more than 7,000 retired and current sailors in attendance.

In addition to the naval history represented in the memorial — which includes fountains with water from the seven seas, ship’s masts and an enormous stone map of the globe — even some physical history of the Navy went into the Lone Sailor. The bronze from which he was cast was mixed with “copper sheeting, spikes, hammock hooks and other fragments” from eight warships, including revolutionary war frigates, a Civil War-era steamer, and a nuclear submarine.