By Taylor Boyd
Thirty-seven years after an explosion aboard the USS Iowa killed 47 sailors and destroyed its No. 2 gun turret, a Patrick County man who served aboard the battleship still remembers the day clearly.
Lester Harrell said he was a young sailor when the tragedy occurred April 19, 1989.
“I had only been on board about a month,” he said.
Harrell, now the Peters Creek District representative on the Patrick County School Board, has resigned from the position effective May 31 after taking a job that will require him to relocate.
“I joined the Navy in July 1988. I did boot camp up in Great Lakes outside of Chicago, and my Navy A school was in Virginia Beach. I left there in early March and checked onboard the Iowa there in March also,” he said.
