Roosevelt Roads Puerto Rico Naval Station Patch

Rosy Roads got its name from Franklin D. Roosevelt, who toured Ceiba as Assistant Secretary of the Navy in 1919, liked the ground, and ordered the base built when he was President. U.S. Naval Station Roosevelt Roads sat on the east end of Puerto Rico, looking out over the water toward Vieques. For sixty years it was the Navy's anchor in the Caribbean, and the patch says it plainly: Crossroads of the Caribbean. Ships, squadrons, Seabees and fleet staffs came through it on their way to somewhere else, and plenty of them still talk about it. This patch is for everyone who knew it as Rosy Roads.

In 1941 Congress appropriated $50 million for a protected fleet anchorage there, and on May 15, 1941 Navy Secretary Frank Knox named the waters Roosevelt Roads. The base was commissioned as a Naval Operating Base in 1943, went into maintenance status in March 1944, and came back as a Naval Station in 1957. Its airfield, Ofstie Field, sat about a mile north of Ensenada Honda, and the station held about 29,000 acres on Vieques for the Vieques Naval Training Range and the Atlantic Fleet Weapons Training Facility. Fleet exercises ran through there for decades, and Seabees of the rotating Naval Construction Battalions lived at Camp Moscrip. U.S. Naval Forces Southern Command and Special Operations Command South were tenants until they moved to Florida.

This is a round patch, 4.5 inches across, with a red merrowed edge. A globe with green grid lines fills the face, with the coast of Florida and Central America on the left, South America along the bottom, and Puerto Rico in green at the center. U.S. NAVAL STATION ROOSEVELT ROADS arches across the top in red, with PUERTO above the island, RICO below it, and CROSSROADS OF THE CARIBBEAN across the blue sea. A blue patrol plane flies at the upper left, a gray and blue warship rides at the right, and a sailboat and two palm trees fill out the scene. It has an iron-on backing and can also be sewn on.

The station's main job was supporting the training range on Vieques, and when the range closed the Navy no longer needed the base. Naval Station Roosevelt Roads closed on March 31, 2004, with nearly 1,200 active-duty sailors still assigned. Its main runway, 11,000 feet of concrete, now serves Jose Aponte de la Torre Airport. For the sailors, Marines and families who lived there, it was warm water, long runways and a front-row seat to the Atlantic Fleet at work. That is the base on this patch.

Put it in a shadow box with your squadron or ship patches from a Caribbean deployment, or on the vest you wear to reunions. It also makes a good gift for a parent or grandparent who was stationed at Rosy Roads, or for a kid who was born there. Crossroads of the Caribbean, stitched the way the sailors remember it.