The USS Nimitz (CVN-68), the oldest serving aircraft carrier in the United States Navy, will be retiring in the new year.
Known as one of the largest warships in the world, the Nimitz has been serving her country since 1975, calling Naval Air Station North Island home port for over a decade from 2001 to 2012.
The ship is just about 1,100 feet in length and weighs over 100,000 tons – and around 6,000 people call that home while on deployments.
The floating city holds 90 fixed wing aircrafts and helicopters.
The Nimitz was christened in 1972, and over its lifetime supported post-911 combat missions in Afghanistan and Iraq, including operations Desert Storm, Southern Watch, Iraqi Freedom and Enduring Freedom.
In 1996, the carrier started integrating women aboard its ranks for the first time and Maureen Sylvester, a Coronado resident, was among the first. She served two deployments on the carrier as an intelligence officer.
Integrating women onto the Nimitz
To celebrate the Nimitz’s memory, Sylvester, a retired U.S. Navy captain, reminisced to The Coronado News about CVN-68’s first ever mission with women. She joined the first deployment halfway into it.
“I wasn’t really too worried about it, and I don’t think anybody looked at me like I was any less because I was female,” Sylvester, 59, said. “Intelligence had already been pretty well integrated, so … my male counterparts were very accustomed to working with women.”
During that tour through the Taiwan Strait, Sylvester said, she was responsible for briefing and debriefing the airwing, standing watch for the admiral’s staff and caretaking intelligence systems.
Having women on board was a “far bigger change for older people that were not in the Navy anymore, or more senior in the Navy, than for people that were actually serving with one another,” Sylvester said.
There was all this trepidation that had been sown: You can’t say this, or you can’t curse … that is like the worst possible case scenario. Except for after it happened, all of that proved to be nonsense.
Maureen Sylvester
“There was all this trepidation that had been sown: You can’t say this, or you can’t curse … that is like the worst possible case scenario. Except for after it happened, all of that proved to be nonsense.”
Sylvester said she decided that she’d ignore what everyone else was saying: “My approach was, I’ll just be really, really good at what I do. And that was my focus. All the rest was just chaff.”
Stories aboard the Nimitz
Still, she recalled, there were times when she had to laugh at some small experiences on that first deployment – like the day she relieved a fellow sailor on watch duty.
“He goes to me, ‘Ma’am, you know, it’s very distracting if you wear perfume.’”
“And I said, ‘It’s called Dove soap, that’s what you’re smelling. Dove soap – you should try it sometime.’”
“We both started laughing,” Sylvester said with a big chuckle.
Another time, Sylvester recounted, a male sailor told her he was worried about the women wearing nice pajamas and being distracting.
“I was like, ‘I don’t think anybody on a ship is going to sleep in, like, a negligee,’” she laughed.
Just a sailor, like everybody else
The bottom line for Sylvester was that she didn’t want to be identified as a woman. She just wanted to be looked at as a sailor.
If they are the best person to do that, it doesn’t matter whether they’re man or woman. So, I think that pretty much was the experience by the end of the deployment.
Maureen Sylvester
“If they are the best person to do that, it doesn’t matter whether they’re man or woman. So, I think that pretty much was the experience by the end of the deployment,” Sylvester said.
Approaching the end of its half-century career, the Nimitz made one last visit to a familiar port, stopping in Coronado on Dec. 7 on its way up to Bremerton, Washington.
The carrier is concluding what will be its last operational cruise, one that spanned the Indo-Pacific and the Middle East before the final voyage into retirement.
The Nimitz will arrive at its new homeport at Norfolk Naval Station in Virginia by April 2026 where it will start a one-year offload process before defueling and deactivation.
