AGAWAM – Celebrating its 10th annual Veteran’s Day Ceremony on Nov. 2, 55 members of the U.S.S. Forrestal Association gathered at the U.S.S. Forrestal Monument on the Memorial Path in Agawam’s Massachusetts Veteran’s Memorial Cemetery.

Afterward, the veterans, all of whom served on the ship between its commissioning in 1955 and its retirement in 1993, met for lunch and reminisced at EB’s Restaurant in Agawam.

“There’s a bond [among sailors]”, said Chester Kuzontkoski, a second-class petty officer who served from 1968 to 1972. “When you’re out at sea, there's nowhere to go. You have to be very resourceful,” he said.

The U.S.S. Forrestal, named for James V. Forrestal, the first secretary of defense, was the largest ship ever built at the time. With a length of 1,039-feet, an angled flight deck, four deck-edge elevators and four steam catapults, it was the first of its kind.

The Forrestal saw 21 major deployments and traveled over 400,000 miles during its lifetime. Disaster hit the Forrestal in 1967 when an accidental missile launch set off explosions and a fire raged for 22 hours, killing 134 sailors and taking the ship out of service for a year. Ron Desmarais was on board the Forrestal during the incident.

“It was horrible. It’s a wonder we didn’t go down. At least they saved us a piece of the ship.” His son, Dale Desmarais, sang the national anthem at the ceremony earlier in the day.

“We can’t forget the sacrifices that were made of our military veterans. The saddest thing that can happen to a veteran is to be forgotten,” Kuzontkoski said.

The U.S.S. Forrestal Association is a group of former service members who served aboard the U.S.S. Forrestal at some point in its history. The Association began in 1991 with its first meeting in Washington, D.C. Currently, more than 3,100 active members.

Their commemoration ceremonies began in Newport, R.I., in 2002. “Two former shipmates gathered outside the fence, looking down at the pier to where the Forrestal was moored. There were a lot of words and memories that day,” the association stated in a press release. The reunion has grown each year since.

In 2007, the association placed the U.S.S. Forrestal Monument on the Memorial Path in Agawam’s Massachusetts Veteran’s Memorial Cemetery.

When the Forrestal was scheduled for demolition, the association tried to save the ship as a memorial or a museum, but was unsuccessful.

Two of the sailors who attended the reunion are “plank owners” who were on board when the ship was commissioned. Kuzontkoski explained that they are called plank owners because they, metaphorically, “own a piece of the ship.”

Gary Meyers was a chief petty officer on the Forrestal and a plank owner. He just learned of the association from a story in The Republican this year.

“Seeing all the people who came out remember the Forrestal, we feel that we’re not forgotten,” Meyers said.

Meyers told Reminder Publishing that he remembered the day of the ship’s commissioning.

Meyers reminisced about a training exercise at Guantanamo Bay in which a World War II drone was supposed to fly past the ship and the Forrestal was supposed to track it with munitions fire. Instead, the ship was too accurate.

“It blew the drone out of the sky with the first shot,” Meyers said with a chuckle.

Jim Michie, a boatswain’s mate third class from 1960 to 1963, said of the reunion, “It’s about six steps above a high school reunion – the familiarity, the camaraderie.”

“I wish [more people] would join. We have our reunion every year, different places. We’re a happy family when we’re all together,” said Desmarais.