Navy week sails into western Nevada

The U.S. Navy sailed into western Nevada last week as part of its Navy Week outreach program.

The Reno-Carson City area swayed to the music of the Navy’s 32nd Street Brass Band and Prevailing Winds Quintet, capped by a Saturday performance at the McFadden Plaza in Carson City. The quintet also added a stop on its swing in the area, performing at St. Patrick’s Church at Incline Village on Friday.

The Reno area hosted events ranging from people meeting sailors assigned to the USS Nevada submarine and the USS Constitution, Navy divers and explosive ordnance disposal teams and Navy medicine personnel.

The U.S. Navy is visiting 14 cities across the country. Since 2005, the Navy Week program has served as the service’s flagship outreach effort into areas of the country without a significant Navy presence although Naval Air Station Fallon and the Naval Aviation Warfighting Development Center, the Navy’s premier training facility for pilots, is 70 miles east of both Reno and Carson City. Navy Week cities are chosen based on a variety of factors such as Gallup data on Navy knowledge and awareness, Navy recruiting data, demographic information namesake ties of ships and submarines and past outreach history in the market and geography.

“During a Navy Week, 75 to 100 outreach events are coordinated with corporate, civic, government, education, media, veterans, community service and diversity organizations in the city,” said Lt. Cmdr. Brett Dawson, NAVCO’s event planning department head. “We bring in as much of the Navy as we can to raise awareness of the Navy, its mission and its importance to the public.”

The Navy Week program, which showcased the Navy, its mission and its people, reached a combined audience of about 150 million Americans in 2017.