The Liaison Committee · A History

The citizens behind the boat

For more than a generation the City of Newport News has kept a citizens' committee for the submarine that carries its name. This page tells that committee's history — because this address once carried the committee's own website, and the links that still remember it deserve a true answer.

What this page is, and is not

This is a history about the USS Newport News Liaison Committee. This site is not the committee, does not speak for it, and is not affiliated with it; the committee's current home is the City of Newport News's own boards-and-commissions listing. The account below is written in our own words from the committee's published history, preserved by the Internet Archive, and from the sources cited at the foot of the page.

The commissioning years, 1987–1989

In the spring of 1987 — two years before the submarine entered service — the Newport News City Council created a commissioning committee for the new boat. Its charge was the city's side of the commissioning: working with the Navy and the boat's pre-commissioning unit on the activities through which a namesake city welcomes a ship.

The committee's first recorded event for the crew was a picnic in July 1988, a year before the boat was commissioned. That August, committee members joined other civic leaders to form the Newport News Celebration Committee, which carried the city through the commissioning season: a prayer breakfast, a black-tie pre-commissioning dinner, a reception at Christopher Newport College after the ceremony, a dinner party for the crew, and the city's gifts to the ship.

The submarine commissioned at Naval Station Norfolk on 3 June 1989. A month later, on 4 July 1989, the city celebrated her homecoming — attended, in the committee's own telling, by the Vice President of the United States.

A standing committee, 1991–today

Most commissioning committees dissolve when the ceremonies end. Newport News's did not. In 1991 the City Council chartered the group as a standing body — the USS Newport News Liaison Committee — charged with keeping a continuous relationship between the city, the submarine, her crew, and their families.

The work it took on was the work of a home front: homecomings when the boat returned; picnics for the crew and their families; a scholarship program that has awarded more than $30,000 to crew members and their dependents; an annual holiday dinner-dance and a children's holiday party; softball jerseys and hats; blankets and pillow cases; the banners on the pier at each return; and a display case about the boat at the Newport News–Williamsburg airport.

Where the committee lives now

The committee remains a chartered body of the City of Newport News: fourteen public members serving four-year terms, joined as nonvoting ex-officio members by the boat's commanding officer, executive officer, chief of the boat, and ombudsman, and meeting monthly under the city's roster of boards and commissions. Its public listing — purpose, membership, and meeting times — is maintained by the city at nnva.gov.

The submarine's own story — her building, her crews, her record, and her 2026 inactivation — is told on The Submarine. Her reference facts are on the ship-information page.

Chronology: the Liaison Committee's own published history as preserved in the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine (capture of 8 February 2012) — the spring 1987 creation, the July 1988 crew picnic, the August 1988 Celebration Committee, the 4 July 1989 homecoming, the 1991 charter, and the activities list. Committee role and duties: Dick Brown, "Post-Commissioning Support of Namesake Submarines," The Submarine Review (Naval Submarine League), April 2013. Scholarship total: Hampton Roads Messenger, 21 July 2020. Present-day charter, membership, and meetings: the City of Newport News's committee listing, linked above.