Brooklyn Navy Yard gets a makeover

Brooklyn Navy Yard gets a makeover
By Richard Pyle - The Associated Press
Posted : Monday May 19, 2008 10:29:02 EDT

NEW YORK — Audrey Lyons was a $40-a-week parts inspector at the Brooklyn Navy Yard in 1944 when Margaret Truman was invited to christen the brand-new carrier Missouri.

“We all took time off to see it,” recalls Lyons, now 84 and retired in Essex, Conn.

But the daughter of Sen. (and soon-to-be-president) Harry S. Truman needed help to break the champagne bottle on the third try — a less than sparkling debut for the “Mighty Mo,” the last famous warship among hundreds produced at the yard since 1801.

The Pentagon closed the Brooklyn Navy Yard in 1966, an obsolete facility awash in history but torpedoed by time.

Yet behind the nondescript facade visible to motorists rushing past on the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, the 40-plus buildings of the former shipyard have become a modern beehive of activity.


Rest of article at: http://www.navytimes.com/news/2008/05/ap_brooklynnavyyard_051908/