Applications open for 2022-23 USS Alabama Crewmates program

MOBILE, Ala. — Battleship Memorial Park is seeking the next group of USS Alabama Crewmates, with applications opening Monday, Jan. 24. The program, a long-running tradition at the waterfront park on Mobile Bay, invites young women from across the two-county area to serve as ambassadors for one of Alabama’s most visited historic attractions.

The contest is open to young women ages 19 to 21 who live in Mobile or Baldwin County during their term. Applications are due Friday, Feb. 18 at 4 p.m., and six women will be selected to serve together for the coming year. There is no entry fee and no sponsorship is required to apply, an arrangement that sets the program apart from many pageant-style competitions and keeps it open to any qualified applicant in the area.

The members of the new class will represent Battleship Memorial Park and the State of Alabama at events across the state, from parades and festivals to veterans’ gatherings and civic functions. Scholarships accompany the honor: the 2022-23 Miss USS Alabama will receive a $3,000 scholarship, Miss USS Drum will receive $2,500, and the remaining Crewmates will each receive $2,000. Uniforms and travel for official events are provided by the USS Alabama Battleship Commission, the state agency that operates the park.

The ship behind the program

The USS Alabama, the centerpiece of the park at the mouth of the Mobile River where it opens into Mobile Bay, is one of the most decorated battleships of the Second World War. Commissioned in 1942, the South Dakota-class battleship earned nine battle stars serving in both the Atlantic and the Pacific, protecting carrier task forces, shelling enemy positions, and surviving typhoons and enemy fire without losing a crew member to enemy action. Sailors who served aboard her gave the ship the affectionate nickname “the Lucky A,” a name that stuck through her decommissioning and beyond.

After the war, the Alabama was mothballed with much of the Navy’s reserve fleet, and by the early 1960s she was slated for the scrapyard. The response from Alabama schoolchildren became part of state lore: a statewide fundraising drive, built substantially around pennies and dollars collected in classrooms, raised the money to bring the battleship home. The ship was towed to Mobile in 1964 and dedicated in 1965 as the centerpiece of what is now Battleship Memorial Park, a memorial to all Alabamians who served in every branch of the armed forces.

Today the park ranks among the leading tourist attractions on the Gulf Coast, drawing visitors from across the country and around the world. Alongside the battleship, the park is home to the USS Drum, a World War II fleet submarine credited with sinking a heavy tally of Japanese shipping during the war and among the oldest American submarines on display anywhere. Aircraft pavilions, tanks, artillery pieces, and memorials fill the grounds, and the park’s role as an educational destination brings thousands of school groups through its gates each year.

What the Crewmates do

The Crewmates program puts a public face on all of that history. Over the course of their term, the six members appear at events across Alabama representing the park and the state, serving as goodwill ambassadors whose presence connects communities far from Mobile with the memorial on the bay. The role calls for poise and public speaking as much as it does for an interest in history, and Crewmates over the years have gone on to careers in broadcasting, education, public service, and the military itself.

The scholarships attached to the top titles carry the names of the park’s two great vessels. Miss USS Alabama, the lead title, represents the battleship; Miss USS Drum honors the submarine moored alongside her. The remaining four Crewmates round out the court, and the six together appear as a group at most official functions. The scholarship money — $3,000, $2,500, and $2,000 respectively — reflects the program’s purpose of supporting the education of young women from the area while building a corps of ambassadors for the memorial.

Eligibility is deliberately simple: applicants must be young women ages 19 to 21 who live in Mobile County or Baldwin County during their term of service. The requirement ties the program to the communities that surround the park, whose residents are among its most frequent visitors and strongest supporters. Organizers have long noted that the absence of entry fees and sponsorship requirements means contestants compete on their own merits without any financial barrier to taking part.

The commission that runs the park

The USS Alabama Battleship Commission, the body providing uniforms and travel for the Crewmates’ official events, is a state agency created to operate and preserve the park. The commission oversees the maintenance of the ships themselves — a never-ending job on vessels that are more than three-quarters of a century old — along with the park’s staffing, events, and long-range planning. Keeping a battleship and a submarine seaworthy in appearance if not in fact is an expensive, specialized undertaking, and the commission has carried that responsibility since the park’s founding era.

Funding for the park combines admission revenue, event income, and support from the state, and the park’s leadership has repeatedly stressed that the site receives no ongoing tax support sufficient to maintain the ships. Storms have tested that funding model over the years: hurricanes have damaged the vessels and grounds more than once, including serious damage to the USS Drum’s hull, and each repair campaign has depended on a mix of insurance, donations, and state appropriations. The Crewmates program, modest as it seems beside hull repair budgets, is part of the same ecosystem — building public attachment to the park that underwrites its survival.

The program’s ambassadors also serve a recruiting function of sorts. Attendance at the park rises when its representatives appear at events around the state, and every school assembly, festival booth, and parade appearance is an advertisement for the ship, the submarine, and the stories of the veterans the park commemorates. As the generation that fought World War II recedes further into history, that work of personal connection has taken on greater importance for the park’s mission.

A tradition with deep roots

Representation programs like the Crewmates have a long history at patriotic and commemorative sites around the country, and Mobile’s version has been part of the park’s public life for decades. The structure — a court of representatives led by namesake titleholders, selected from the surrounding counties, supported by scholarships rather than cash prizes — follows the pattern of civic pageantry that Alabama communities have embraced at county fairs, festivals, and heritage celebrations throughout the state.

What distinguishes the Crewmates is the institution they represent. Few ambassador programs in the country are tied to a National Historic Landmark battleship, and fewer still ask their members to speak for a memorial that honors veterans of every American war. Crewmates regularly interact with veterans visiting the park — men who served in Korea, Vietnam, and the Gulf conflicts, and, in dwindling numbers, the World War II generation itself — and those encounters are often described by participants as the most memorable part of the experience.

How to apply

For the 2022-23 class, applications opened Monday, Jan. 24, and were due by 4 p.m. Friday, Feb. 18. Prospective applicants were directed to the park for the application materials and details about the selection process. Six women will be chosen, and the new Crewmates will spend their term appearing at events across Alabama on behalf of Battleship Memorial Park and the State of Alabama.

The timing of the application window places the selections in late winter, with the new class stepping into its public duties as the park heads into its busiest stretch of the visitor season. Spring brings school field trips, Easter-week tourists, and the first wave of the summer travel season along the Gulf Coast, and the incoming Crewmates can expect a full calendar of appearances almost from the moment they are named. The turnover also gives the outgoing class a graceful conclusion to a year of service, with former Crewmates often remaining connected to the park as volunteers and supporters long after their terms end — a network of alumni that has quietly strengthened the institution across generations of participants.

For the young women selected, the year ahead includes scholarship support, official uniforms, and travel paid by the commission — and a role in the living history of a ship that Alabama schoolchildren saved from the scrapyard and that generations of visitors have walked the decks of ever since. Applications close Feb. 18, and the park will introduce its new ambassadors once the selections are made. Anyone interested in learning more about the park, its ships, or the programs that support them can find the memorial at its long-standing bayside site, open to visitors throughout the year.