Plankowner's Plaques

I found this article about the parents of two Sailors from my last boat, USS Jimmy Carter (SSN 23) and it got me thinking. Here's what the article says:

Diane Grieves and John and Maureen Zabatta became good friends after their sons, currently serving aboard the USS Jimmy Carter (SSN 23), made the connection that their parents are Villages residents.
“It’s a small world,” John Zabatta said. His son, Daniel Zabatta, machinist mate 1, is second in command under Keith Grieves, machinist mate chief and the son of Diane Grieves. Both sailors are serving in the torpedo division of the fast-attack submarine stationed in Bremerton, Wash...
...“One of the things that is interesting is, both of our sons are plank owners, which means that they get their names posted in the boat forever,” John added.

It's nice of the shipyards to make up the plaques that have the names of all the plankowners -- I think they did three for the Connecticut, one for officers, another for Chiefs, and the main one with the whole commissioning crew. Still, it's a little too much to expect that the follow-on crews will be really excited about having a plaque taking up prime bulkhead space honoring guys that no one has even heard of.

In what I think it a common practice nowadays, in the boats that I've been on, the last person named on the plaque who remains onboard gets to take it with them when they leave. This usually means that some junior guy who reported about a week before commissioning, and didn't really know the initial manning crew at all, gets the plaque. Still, that's probably better than having it sit in the boats storage room at squadron for 30 years.

I got on Topeka about a year after she was commissioned, so there were still a couple of plankowners aboard when I left -- they were angling to stay on board as long as possible to get the plaque. On Connecticut, I was the last of the initial manning officers to get relieved, but there were still 3 or 4 "late arriving" guys whose names were on the plaque that prevented me from making off with the wardroom plaque. Hopefully whoever did take it treats it with respect.