DD-537 USS The Sullivans Patch

The green shamrock behind this destroyer is the same mark The Sullivans still wears on her stack, a salute to five Irish-American brothers from Waterloo, Iowa. George, Francis, Joseph, Madison and Albert Sullivan enlisted together and served together aboard the light cruiser USS Juneau CL-52. All five were lost when Juneau was sunk on 13 November 1942 during the Naval Battle of Guadalcanal. The Navy answered by naming a new destroyer for all of them, the first U.S. Navy ship named for more than one person. Their mother, Alleta Sullivan, sponsored the ship, and the brothers' motto came with her: We Stick Together.

Bethlehem Steel's San Francisco yard built DD-537, and she was commissioned on 30 September 1943. After training off Pearl Harbor she joined Destroyer Squadron 52 and screened the fast carrier task forces of the Third and Fifth Fleets through 1944 and 1945. Her war ran from the Marshall Islands to the Battle of the Philippine Sea, Leyte Gulf and the waters off Okinawa, where she helped rescue sailors from the burning carrier USS Bunker Hill CV-17 in May 1945. She came home with nine battle stars from World War II. Reactivated for the Korean War, she earned two more, then operated in the Atlantic and Mediterranean until she was decommissioned at Philadelphia in 1965.

The patch is round, 4 by 4 inches, with a cut edge and a black-and-white rope border stitched all the way around. U.S.S. THE SULLIVANS arches across the top in bold black letters, with DD 537 at the bottom. At the center, a black Fletcher-class silhouette runs straight across a big green shamrock, framed by an inner ring of rope. WE STICK TOGETHER curves beneath it, the brothers' own words. It has an iron-on backing and can also be sewn on.

In 1977 the ship and the cruiser USS Little Rock CG-4 were donated to the city of Buffalo, New York, and she is now a memorial at the Buffalo and Erie County Naval and Military Park, where visitors still walk her decks. A second ship, the Arleigh Burke-class destroyer USS The Sullivans DDG-68, carries the name in today's fleet. For the tin can sailors who rode DD-537 in the Pacific or the Med, and for every family that sent more than one son to sea, the name means the same thing it did in 1943. Five brothers went down together, and the Navy made sure the fleet never forgot them.

Mount it in a shadow box with a photo of the ship at Buffalo, or sew it on the vest you wear to destroyer reunions. It also makes a fitting gift for a family of brothers who served, or for anyone with roots in Waterloo or family who served on USS Juneau CL-52. The shamrock says the rest.