U.S. Navy launches carrier Reagan

NORFOLK, Va. -- The USS Ronald Reagan, the nation's first aircraft carrier named after a living president, was commissioned into service Saturday in a ceremony that extolled his achievements in office and his personality.

Under a blue sky that cleared of clouds just minutes before the ceremony began, about 15,000 people gathered on a pier at Naval Station Norfolk to watch a seagoing tradition that dates from the start of the U.S. Navy.

Before the actual commissioning rite, they heard speeches by Vice President Dick Cheney, Virginia Gov. Mark R. Warner, Sen. John Warner, R-Va., and Hansford T. Johnson, the acting secretary of the Navy.

But they gave their biggest applause and a standing ovation to former first lady Nancy Reagan, the ship's sponsor who, two years ago, christened her husband's namesake ship with a bottle of champagne.

"I only have one line," said the former actress, who co-starred with her husband before he entered the political stage. "Man the ship and bring her alive."

With those time-hallowed words, hundreds of crew members wearing dress whites ran aboard the 20-story Reagan and lined the flight deck while four fighter jets flew overhead and every crane, radar, whistle and alarm aboard was turned on simultaneously.

The pageantry of the event was something the 92-year-old former president, who suffers from Alzheimer's disease, would have appreciated. Pennants fluttered from the carrier deck, the lifelines were wrapped in bunting and the Navy Band played "Anchors Aweigh" and the national anthem.

In a bow to former president Ronald Reagan's well-known favorite snack, visitors were given small bags of jelly beans. Many people purchased ball caps with the ship's patch of a horse and a rider. According to Navy officials, the insignia represents the nine western films between 1938 and 1955 in which Reagan appeared with a horse and the 51 weeks of his eight-year presidency that he spent on his ranch outside Santa Barbara, Calif.

A small shipboard museum is still a work in progress, with the main contribution so far a slab of the Berlin Wall that Reagan visited and famously urged the then-Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev to "tear down this wall."

Noting that the ship's motto is "Peace Through Strength," a sentiment Reagan expressed often as he oversaw a dramatic increase in defense spending that his supporters credit with hastening the demise of the Soviet Union, Warner said the carrier symbolizes Reagan's "rugged spirit."

Cheney predicted America's foes will "take notice when word arrives the USS Ronald Reagan has been sighted offshore."

The USS Ronald Reagan, eight years in construction, is a nuclear- powered Nimitz-class carrier. To the layman it looks little different from other carriers, but it was built with a number of major design changes, including a bulbous bow to make it more stable in rough seas and a slightly more angled flight deck that will allow planes to be launched and to land simultaneously.

In a major break with tradition, the ship was named after Reagan while the former president is still alive. Two other ships are under construction that will also bear the name of living presidents. A Seawolf-class submarine, to be called the Jimmy Carter, is expected to be commissioned next year. And it has been announced the next Nimitz-class aircraft carrier, not expected to be commissioned for another seven years, will be named the George H.W. Bush, after the 41st president.

The USS Ronald Reagan eventually will head for its home port in San Diego, where it will replace the USS Constellation. But over the next year it will stick close to Norfolk while its crew runs it through its paces.

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