A Navy that names a warship for a sitting president would be breaking with two centuries of its own custom — and taking something away from a sailor who earned it the hard way.
Twice in my life I have stood on a steel deck at quarters and heard a ship’s name read out loud. A ship’s name is not decoration. It is the argument the Navy makes to its own crew about what the service values.
That is why the reporting out of Washington last week bothers me.
On Aug. 20, CNN reported — citing three people familiar with internal discussions — that the Navy is working to rename the aircraft carrier CVN-81, the ship designated in 2020 to be the USS Doris Miller, and that Trump’s name has come up inside the building as the replacement. NBC News confirmed the discussions with two U.S. officials; ABC News and others followed. The Navy’s only public response has been that it “has no announcement to share at this time.” Notably, officials have reportedly stopped using Miller’s name internally and now refer to the ship only by hull number, and the president’s own shipbuilding executive order called it CVN-81.
Nothing is final. But this is a rumor with fingerprints on it, and it deserves an answer from people who wore the uniform before the decision hardens.
Who was Doris Miller? He was a sharecroppers’ son from Waco, Texas, who joined a Navy that would let him do exactly one job. On the morning of Dec. 7, 1941, Mess Attendant Second Class Miller was collecting laundry aboard the battleship USS West Virginia when the bombs came. He went topside, helped carry his mortally wounded captain off the bridge, and then manned a .50-caliber anti-aircraft gun he had never been trained to fire — because the Navy of that era did not give gunnery training to Black sailors in the steward’s branch. He fired until he was ordered off the bridge, then helped pull wounded men out of the water and oil. Admiral Chester Nimitz pinned the Navy Cross on him at Pearl Harbor on May 27, 1942, the first Black sailor to receive it.
He did not survive the war. On Nov. 24, 1943, during the Gilbert Islands campaign, a Japanese torpedo hit the escort carrier USS Liscome Bay and the bomb magazine went up. More than 600 men died. Miller, by then a cook third class, was among them. He was 24.
In January 2020, on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, the Navy announced that CVN-81 would carry his name — the first carrier named for a Black American and the first named for an enlisted sailor. That decision was made during this president’s first administration. It was right then. It is right now.
The counterargument is that carriers are traditionally named for presidents, and that Medal of Honor recipients usually get destroyers. Fair enough as a rule of thumb — the Navy is reportedly weighing a Medal of Honor upgrade for Miller and a different ship to carry his name. But the tradition being invoked has a second half that is being quietly skipped: presidential carriers have been named for former presidents, not sitting ones. The Navy has named ships for living Americans — Carl Vinson, John Stennis, George H.W. Bush — but never for a president still in office. There is a reason for that restraint. A warship outlives an administration. The name is supposed to be the country’s verdict, rendered with some distance, not a serving officeholder’s own.
And there is the arithmetic of the swap. Miller’s name was given on a national holiday, with ceremony, in front of his family. Taking it back — even with a smaller ship and a bigger medal offered in trade — tells every mess attendant, every enlisted kid, every sailor who thought the Navy meant what it said in 2020 that the promise was provisional. Miller’s great-nephew told ABC News the family learned of it the same way the rest of us did: from the news. That is not how you treat a Gold Star family.
I am not neutral here, and I will say why. I enlisted in the Naval Reserve in 1969, went to active duty in 1971, and stood watches in Combat Information Center aboard the ocean escort USS Bowen out of Newport. I finished a military career in uniform, and I have spent the years since caring a great deal about what the services choose to remember. From where I sit, this one is simple.
Give Dorie Miller the Medal of Honor; the record has supported it for eighty years. Name more ships for enlisted sailors. And leave CVN-81 alone. If a future generation decides this president belongs on a carrier, it can say so with the perspective the tradition requires — after he has left office, the way we have always done it.
Keep the name. It was earned at a gun he was never trained to fire, on the worst morning in the Navy’s history.
Jerry Katz is a former Navy operations specialist (OS2), a retired military officer, and publisher of the Opelika Daily News.
I totally agree with you. The decision was made by top Navy officials in 2020 who understand the significance of this sailors service to our country. This administration should honor their decision.