USS Zumwalt nearing completion

In life, Tulare native Elmo “Bud” Zumwalt led a distinctive, storied career that included being the youngest-ever chief of U.S. Naval Operations and the architect of Navy personnel policies that eased racial tensions in the service.

Though he died in January 2000, Zumwalt’s name took a step closer this year to becoming immortalized in a new way by the Navy.

The first of a new class of navy destroyers bearing his name was christened in April at the General Dynamics Bath Iron Works in Bath, Maine. Five months earlier, the future “USS Zumwalt,” was put in the water for the first time for the final phases of construction.

Read more