Watching my old ship, the ‘USS Ford,’ decommission

There are beginnings and there are endings; sometimes beginnings and endings have personal resonance. I recently had such an experience.

June 29, 1985, the USS Ford (FFG-54) commissioned at Naval Station Long Beach, Calif. She was a Perry-class guided missile fast frigate, abbreviated as “FFG.” I am a “plankowner” of that ship – I was a fire controlman who served on the ship’s commissioning crew. So as a plankowner, I was there at the ceremony when the ship began its U.S. Navy service.

Oct. 31, the ship decommissioned. I went to Naval Station Everett, Wash. to attend the ship’s decommissioning ceremony; I was there when the ship ended its 28 years of U.S. Navy service.

My first three ships in the Navy were all FFGs. In my years as a frigate sailor, I’d assembled four patches related to the fire control systems that were part of the ship’s initially installed weapons systems. These included one patch for the Mark 92 Fire Control System (FCS), which was the weapon system I was assigned to when I served on that ship. There was a patch too for the Tartar missile’s fire control, as part of the Mark 92 FCS – the Continuous Wave Illuminator that helped guide type 1 Standard Missiles (SM1s) fired by the ship’s missile launcher – was originally a subsystem part that guided Tartar missiles (the precursor to SM1s) on Brooke Class FFGs. A third patch was for the Harpoon FCS, which was another type of missile fired by Perry Class FFGs. The last patch was for the Phalanx Close-In Weapon System, which was a last ditch system designed to shoot down sea-skimming cruise missiles that could destroy ships.

I took those four patches, along with a USS Ford ship’s patch I bought on eBay, made into a shadow box. A bronze plate displayed in the shadow box included my rank in the Navy (FC1), my current name, and the ship’s commissioning date, as well as FC1 (SW) Robert M. Dorn’s rank, name and the ship’s decommissioning date. Petty Officer Dorn was a fire controlman first class petty officer and a Mark 92 FCS technician on the Ford, just as I was when I was assigned to the Ford. I presented the shadow box to Petty Officer Dorn as a marking of fire controlmen’s service from the beginning of the ship’s U.S. Navy service until the ending of it.

Tradition holds that when a ship’s captain is ceremonially recognized as a ship’s captain, he takes on the name of the ship. In the case of the Ford, a current captain of a ship with that name would receive “four bells” (a bell is struck four times, in pairs of two bells), and then that would be followed by “Ford, arriving” or “departing” as the case may be. A commander or captain without a command would receive four bells, followed by “Commander, United States Navy, arriving” or “departing” as the case may be.

Well, the decommissioning ceremony for the Ford had a poignant moment in it for me. When the ship’s captain ceremonially arrived for the ceremony, he was rang in as “Ford, arriving.” When the ceremony was over and he departed the ceremony, it was “Commander, United States Navy, departing.”

The ship was truly gone from service.

Throughout the ceremony I wept. It was an emotional experience to see a beginning and an end. It reminded me of the Scripture that says there is a time for everything, including a time to live and a time to die.

When I served on the USS Ford, I came as Petty Officer Stephen Sandeen. The beginning and end of the USS Ford overlapped my personal end of unsuccessfully living my life as male and my beginning of a more gratifying living of my life in a manner consistent with my female gender identity.

But reflecting on my life, I realized there will come a time when I’m “decommissioned.” When that happens, I hope what was said of the USS Ford’s life will be said of me and my life: she served with honor and distinction. With effort, I hope to facilitate that happening.