USS Utah had long, distinguished history in naval fleet

Warren Upton will never forget the ship named after this state. He managed to get off the USS Utah after the ship was torpedoed at Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941. When he finally climbed the ladders and reached the main deck that Sunday morning, he said, "The ship was beginning to list a little more" and Japanese planes were "strafing heavily."

Upton, now 89, had planned to travel from his home in San Jose, Calif., to Salt Lake City for a reception to be held on March 9 marking the 100th anniversary of the laying of the battleship's keel. However, he said, his wife has a medical appointment that will prevent his attending.

William Hughes, 87, another survivor from the Utah on that 1941 day of infamy, will be at the reception, scheduled from 5 to 6:30 p.m. in the Capitol rotunda. Hughes, who lives in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, told the Deseret News that he believes about 40 survivors may be still living.

The USS Utah Association held its first reunion in Salt Lake City in June 1988, Hughes said. "I cannot explain what a thrill it was seeing old shipmates," he said. Other reunions also were held in Utah, he added.

An exhibit of art, photographs and artifacts of the USS Utah will be available for public viewing for several months starting March 9. The display, planned by the Capitol Preservation Board and the Fort Douglas Military Museum, will be on the fourth floor of the Capitol.

The reception and exhibition are sponsored by Ancestry.com, the genealogical research site.

The first mention in the Deseret News of a battleship to be named for Utah was in May 1903. President Theodore Roosevelt and Navy Secretary William Henry Moody were in Utah's capital, speaking in the Salt Lake Tabernacle.

Following Roosevelt's address, Utah Gov. Heber M. Wells said Moody also would speak, and he mentioned that "some day we may want him to name a battleship Utah." The paper reported, "This sentiment took immediately with the audience, which cheered enthusiastically."

Some six years later, on March 9, 1909, work began on the USS Utah at the Naval Shipyard at Camden, N.J., under the symbolic sponsorship of Mary Alice Spry, daughter of then-Utah Gov. William Spry, according to the Web site honoring the ship and crew, www.ussutah.org. Information in this article is derived from the site as well as from Upton, Hughes and reports and historic photos in the Deseret News archives.

On Dec. 23, 1911, at precisely 10:53 a.m., Mary Alice, then 18 and resplendent in a white fur-trimmed coat, recited the standard words: "I christen thee Utah. Godspeed." And the ship slid into the water to begin its varied career.