CVN-71 USS Theodore Roosevelt Aircraft Carrier Patch

The two roses stitched beside CVN-71 on this patch come from the Roosevelt name itself, which is Dutch for "field of roses." The family arms carry a rose bush, and the family motto, Qui Plantavit Curabit, "He who has planted will preserve," is the ship's motto as well. USS Theodore Roosevelt was commissioned on October 25, 1986, the fourth Nimitz class carrier, and the fleet has called her the Big Stick from the start. Her radio call sign is Rough Rider, after the volunteer cavalry regiment TR took to Cuba in 1898. She was also the first aircraft carrier assembled with modular construction, which cut about 16 months from her build and has been used on every carrier since.

Her first deployment left on December 30, 1988, for the Mediterranean with Carrier Air Wing 8 (CVW-8). In Operation Desert Storm her air wing flew thousands of combat sorties, and afterward she flew patrols over northern Iraq for Operation Provide Comfort. CVW-8 aircraft from her deck led NATO strikes over Bosnia in Operation Deliberate Force in 1995 and flew strikes over Kosovo during Operation Allied Force in 1999. After September 11 she sailed with Carrier Air Wing 1 (CVW-1) for Operation Enduring Freedom and stayed underway for more than five months without a port call. In March 2003 she launched strikes into Iraq for Operation Iraqi Freedom alongside CVN-75 USS Harry S. Truman.

The patch is a 4 inch circle with a white merrowed edge around a brown rope ring. A white band inside the rope reads USS THEODORE ROOSEVELT across the top and CVN-71 across the bottom, with a brown rose on each side of the hull number. The center is sky blue, with Roosevelt's bust in profile in silver and gray and his TR monogram in black script beside it. Below him the carrier comes at you bow first through white water, and QUI PLANTAVIT CURABIT curves across the navy blue sea under the bow. The backing is iron-on, and it sews on just as well.

The name comes with expectations, since Theodore Roosevelt was a Navy man before he was president, serving as Assistant Secretary of the Navy and sending the Great White Fleet around the world in 1907. The ship has carried that name through the Persian Gulf, the Adriatic, the Arabian Sea and the western Pacific. She finished her refueling and complex overhaul at Newport News in 2013 and shifted her home port from Norfolk to San Diego in November 2015. Carrier Air Wing 11 (CVW-11) has flown from her in recent years. Generations of airedales, nukes and deck apes have called her the Big Stick, and the name still fits.

Put it in a shadow box with your cruise book and CVW-8, CVW-1 or CVW-11 squadron patches, or on the vest you wear to a Big Stick reunion. It also makes a good gift for a Sailor reporting to her for the first time, or for the parent who served aboard before them. A field of roses and a hull number, on one 4 inch circle.