Quechee
The ceremony at Iowa Point on Naval Station Norfolk in Virginia will include the reading of the names of those who died when the Iowa’s No. 2 gun turret exploded on April 19, 1989, during a training exercise in the Atlantic.
Lavertue, who grew up in Claremont and joined the Navy 12 days after graduating from Stevens High School in 1987, was just 20 years old at the time of the accident. Time has done little to erase the nightmarish scene he witnessed that morning when gunpowder used to fire one of the battleship’s 16-inch guns exploded, ripping through the turret, killing 47 sailors and injuring another 12.
“As old as it is, it still can have an effect on a daily basis,” the 49-year-old Lavertue said in an interview last week before departing for the ceremony. “I just try to keep busy.”
The Iowa, which saw action in World War II and the Korean War, was about 330 miles northeast of Puerto Rico when the explosion occurred. According to news reports, the sailors inside the turret, which had five levels, were loading 2,700-pound projectiles into the barrel of one of the ship’s 16-inch guns followed by bags of powder when the powder exploded. Explosion-proof walls in the ship’s magazine room where the powder is kept prevented further damage to rest of the ship.
Lavertue, who now lives in Quechee, was a welder on the nearly 900-foot Iowa.
“I was welding on the mess deck (below),” Lavertue said. “There were three explosions: one on the top of the turret, another one on the bottom of the turret, then a third one.”
When the captain sounded the alarm, he immediately went to his locker, grabbed his firefighting equipment and went topside.
“I was (a fire) investigator and I usually take the damage report. My division on the ship is half welders and the other half is fire department. That is why I was so involved,” he said. “I was picked out of say six or seven guys and I went forward topside to where the explosion was.”
Immediately after the explosion, part of the turret was flooded to prevent additional explosions and Lavertue was with the second fire team that worked on top of the turret with a fire hose.
“I got up inside the turret. I was part of a team up in there and I was the No. 1 nozzle man on the center gun where the explosion was. There were three guys to a hose. I was in front, right where the explosion was,” he recalled. “We had a light on our helmets and the bodies were in the bulkhead. It was like nothing I had ever seen before.”
As bad as that scene was, Lavertue’s role did not end when the fire was finally extinguished after several hours.
“We had to carry the bodies out,” said Lavertue, recalling his close friend, Brian Jones, who was among those killed. “He was a boatswain’s mate. He had two months left to go in the Navy.
“I was a welder so I had to go in with portal acetylene torches and oxygen on my back and cut the pipes so we could get the bodies out,” he said. “So, the initial firefighting part was pretty rough to take but my division was welders so we had to go in and help with the body removal. It was an all day, all night ordeal.”
The ship anchored off of Puerto Rico and the dead were taken off by helicopter. After five days, the Iowa returned to Norfolk.
Lavertue would serve another year on the Iowa before his discharge in 1990, the same year the Iowa was decommissioned. In 2012, the battleship opened as a museum in the Port of Los Angeles.
The Navy initially pursued a theory that the explosion was an intentional act by one of its sailors but eventually it concluded that an “overram” of one of the powder bags into the barrel sparked the explosion.
Returning to civilian life, Lavertue made a living as a welder for the next 12 years, working in the Claremont area but also as far away as Burlington. He also owned a landscaping business from 2002 to 2005. But the images from the explosion and recovery haunted him, and he struggled with alcohol at times.
“When I was welding I would relive the whole thing because I welded on the ship,” Lavertue said. “It was a really traumatic experience. I finally got help from the VA in 2002.”
Since 2002, Lavertue has been diagnosed with service-connected post-traumatic stress disorder. He said initially his PTSD was “50 percent” but in 2005, it was increased to 100 percent.
“They have helped me a lot,” he said about the VA Medical Center in White River Junction, where his wife, Penny, works.
Lavertue first visited the memorial — where a stone monument has the names of the dead — in 2010 with his father and son, Colin, but arrived a few days after the ceremony. He returned in 2013, and again with his family — which includes his daughter, Jasmyne, from his first marriage — the following year. He volunteered to read six of the names.
“I got to read my buddy’s name and was having a tough time,” he said. “That was 25 years, in 2014. It kind of brought closure for me. I do OK but I struggle and have nightmares and flashbacks. It has always been raw for me.”
In 2015, he visited the Iowa museum, and “signed my rack,” where he slept on the ship for three years. The small, yet symbolic gesture, was another piece of the healing process.
His decision to attend this year’s ceremony is mostly about honoring his fellow sailors, said Lavertue, who arrived in Virginia on Sunday and was hanging out with fellow Iowa veterans on Wednesday and said today’s ceremony will help give him “closure.”
“It is out of respect,” Lavertue said. “I’ve got to live my life but they didn’t get to live theirs. So, I think it is mostly out of respect. I don’t want to relive it and that is why I don’t go every year.”
Patrick O’Grady can be reached at pogclmt@gmail.com.
