A Final Cruise and Then On To Life As A Museum
See also: USS Midway Museum Aerial view of the USS Midway Museum in 2011.In August 1991, Midway departed Yokosuka and returned to Pearl Harbor. Here, she turned over with Independence which was replacing Midway as the forward-deployed carrier in Yokosuka. Midway then sailed to San Diego where she was decommissioned at Naval Air Station North Island on 11 April 1992 in a ceremony in which the main speaker was Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney. She was stricken from the Naval Vessel Register on 17 March 1997. During the decommissioning process, she was used to film portions of the movie At Sea, a documentary on carrier life shown only at the Navy Museum in Washington, D.C. Both sailors and their families participated in the filming of the homecoming scenes.
On 30 September 2003, Midway began her journey from the Navy Inactive Ship Maintenance Facility, Bremerton, Washington, to San Diego, California in preparation for use as a museum and memorial. She was docked at the Charles P. Howard Terminal in Oakland, California, during the first week in October while the construction of her pier in San Diego was completed. Then, on 10 January 2004 the ship was moored at her final location at the Broadway Pier in downtown San Diego, where she was opened to the public on 7 June 2004. In the first year of operation, the museum doubled attendance projections by welcoming 879,281 guests aboard.
On 3 April 2012, it was announced that Midway would be the site of a college basketball game between the Syracuse Orange and the San Diego State Aztecs on 9 November 2012; this game was later postponed to 11 November (Veteran's Day) due to expected rain. The Orange won the game, 62-49.
Read more about this topic: USS Midway (CV-41)
Famous quotes containing the words final, cruise, life and/or museum:
“Waiting for the race to become official, he began to feel as if he had as much effect on the final outcome of the operation as a single piece of a jumbo jigsaw puzzle has to its predetermined final design. Only the addition of the missing fragments of the puzzle would reveal if the picture was as he guessed it would be.”
—Stanley Kubrick (b. 1928)
“Life begins to happen.
My hoppped up husband drops his home disputes,
and hits the streets to cruise for prostitutes,”
—Robert Lowell (1917–1977)
“All my life I’ve been harassed by questions: Why is something this way and not another? How do you account for that? This rage to understand, to fill in the blanks, only makes life more banal. If we could only find the courage to leave our destiny to chance, to accept the fundamental mystery of our lives, then we might be closer to the sort of happiness that comes with innocence.”
—Luis Buñuel (1900–1983)
“The back meets the front.”
—Hawaiian saying no. 2650, ‘lelo No’Eau, collected, translated, and annotated by Mary Kawena Pukui, Bishop Museum Press, Hawaii (1983)