The U.S.S. Bulkeley and its skipper symbolize everything that is great
about America.
Wall Street Journal.
Friday, December 14, 2001 12:01 a.m. EST
Most Americans today would have a hard time placing the name John Duncan
Bulkeley, notwithstanding that the Medal of Honor winner and World War II hero
was once given a ticker-tape parade through Manhattan. But at the Del Toro
family table, they know all about the Navy legend. And not just because Carlos
Del Toro now commands the latest addition to the U.S. fleet and arguably the
most sophisticated warship ever built: the U.S.S. Bulkeley.
Cmdr. Del Toro, you see, was born in Havana and fled Cuba when Fidel Castro,
who once imprisoned the commander's father, came to power. At about the same
time the Del Toro family left for America, Castro was trying to push America out
of its military base at Guantanamo Bay. The commander of that base was Rear Adm.
John Bulkeley.
Plainly Castro did not know whom he was dealing with. Scarcely a generation
earlier, then-Lt. Bulkeley had earned his Medal of Honor when he rescued the man
who would win the war in the Pacific. Put it this way: Gen. Douglas MacArthur
would have never said "I shall return" had it not been for the young
lieutenant who spirited him out of Corregidor and through Japanese-infested
waters to safety on his plywood PT boat.
In 1964, Fidel accused the American base on Cuba of stealing water even as
he cut off the flow. Bulkeley responded by taking reporters out to the two water
pipes, cutting off a section of each and showing that the insides were dry--and
that Castro was a liar. Such was the Cuban communists' appreciation for Bulkeley
that they honored him with a wanted poster offering a bounty for a man they
described as "a guerrilla of the worst species."
At the commissioning ceremony for the U.S.S. Bulkeley last Saturday, Deputy
Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz told the audience that "when a ship is
named, the name is never chosen lightly." The name, he said, "forms
the heart of the ship's identity." Surely if there's any Navy man who
appreciates the power of that particular name, it's the ship's skipper.
"I am living the American Dream," Cmdr. Del Toro told us. "As
a kid my father and I used to stand on the docks of the Hudson to watch the
ships go by. From this same harbor I became the first commanding officer of a
ship whose motto is 'Freedom's Torch.' " And when the Bulkeley sailed past
the ruins of the World Trade Center on the way to last Saturday's commissioning
ceremony, the commander told his sailors "to take a long hard look." "Freedom,"
he said, "does not come cheap."
Few countries in this world possess the greatness necessary to build a ship
as magnificent as the U.S.S. Bulkeley. Fewer still would entrust the command of
such a ship to an immigrant son. Only America could do both. |