DAHLGREN HERITAGE FOUNDATION Spring 2014
Dahlgren Heritage Museum P. O. Box 816, Dahlgren, Virginia 22448 www.dahlgrenmuseum.org
Speaker Series Highlights Dahlgren Love Story By Andrew Revelos
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U.S. Navy photo by Andrew Revelos
tories of romance, idyllic childhoods and iconic leaders are all part of the Dahlgren story. They are the bits and pieces of the community forums that will continue to be a part of the Dahlgren Heritage Museum’s mission. One of those discussions, marking the 95th anniversary of Naval Support Facility Dahlgren last October, presented a child's eye view of the base as well as a remarkable story of reconnection and love that unfolded over the course of nearly four decades. Chris Agnew, son of a welltraveled Navy officer, befriended Elizabeth Lyddane Agnew, daughter of Dahlgren’s first technical director, while both were young teenagers at Dahlgren in the early 1960s. After going their separate ways when Chris’s father received a new assignment, the pair reconnected 37 years later, mar-
ried and returned to Dahlgren, where Elizabeth currently works as a scientist for the Naval Surface Warfare Center Dahlgren Division. The discussion was moderated by Ed Jones, who himself spent his young years onboard the installation. “One of the themes coming through in these discussions is the multigenerational connection to Dahlgren,” he said, opening the forum. Chris Agnew's parents met in 1931 along the Panama Canal; his father served on a U.S. battleship and his mother worked for the Ithsmanian Canal Commission. “They married and they raised their family the Navy way—in Hawaii, California, Mississippi, Virginia, Rhode Island, Newfoundland, Texas, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Washington state and Deleware,” he wrote. He would spend a little less than three years at Dahlgren. Elizabeth Lyddane Agnew spent all of her childhood at Dahlgren,
Chris and Elizabeth Lyddane Agnew share a laugh (left photo) as they reminisce about their early teen years at Dahlgren during a forum discussion Sept. 18. The pair went their separate ways when Chris’s family moved, but remained friends, pictured together (right photo) after Chris entered the Navy. They reconnected and married 37 years later.
where her father Russell Lyddane served for 23 years as a physicist, the head of the Armor and Projectile Laboratory and eventually as Dahlgren's first technical director. He helped usher in a new era at Dahlgren by leveraging the base’s ballistics computers for new and novel missions. The Agnews’ observations painted an endearing picture of Dahlgren in the late 1950s and early 1960s, the period when Dahlgren’s population was at its zenith. An on-base phone system meant that the operator, one Mrs. Dunning, played an intimate role in the lives of children at Dahlgren. “I'd come home from school, pick up the phone and say ‘Ms. Dunning, do you know where my mom is?’ She’d say ‘your mother has gone to Fredericksburg and she wants you to start dinner’,” said Elizabeth Agnew. “She knew everything. She knew eve-
Dahlgren Heritage Foundation Digest - Spring 2014
See LOVE STORY on page 4 1