Air Force names vessel after David Lyon

(Editor’s note: Capt. David Lyon, a logistics officer from Peterson Air Force Base, Colo., was killed in Afghanistan, Dec. 27, 2013. Air Force officials honored Lyon by naming the service’s newest pre-positioning vessel after him. Secretary of the Air Force Deborah Lee James and Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus conducted the official naming ceremony of Motor Vessel Capt. David I. Lyon Jan. 14, at the Pentagon. The following article recounts the christening of the vessel Aug. 11, 2014, in Southport, N.C.)

SOUTHPORT, N.C. — A single-lane road snakes its way through the knot of North Carolina pines that guards the shoreline at the Military Ocean Terminal Sunny Point.

It runs parallel to a bundle of railroad tracks whose tributaries occasionally splice across the road and curve out of view. Lined along the tracks are dozens of cars laden with containers marked as property of the U.S. government and destined for faraway places. Past the waiting cars, the road arcs gently to the right as the closeness of the trees recedes and gives way to the wide-open expanse of the Cape Fear River surrounding the central pier. A large container ship looms suddenly ahead, riding high and still on the water for lack of cargo and displaying a freshly-painted name on her bow.

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