Thank you for stopping by and checking out the USS Idaho website.

I was born in 1953, the year after my father, Mack L. Roye, graduated from East Texas Baptist College, and ever since I can remember, I have heard stories of the USS Idaho ... many times told from the pulpit of our church during one of his sermons.

Angered by the bombing of Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, my father, like many other young men, at age of 17, with the signature of my grandfather, enlisted into the US Navy to go and fight the Japanese in World War II. After boot camp, he was commissioned to the USS Idaho, Fox Division and served in the Aleutian Island campaign and earned 13 battle stars in the South Pacific, manning the 14" guns of the "Big Spud", until the Japanese surrender in Toyko Bay in 1945.

Literally overnight, his experiences on the USS Idaho turned a young farm boy from Central Texas into a grown man who was honored and proud to serve his country on such a great battleship.

My father passed away in 1985, and ever since, I have possessed his photo albums that he put together with some of his memoirs of his time spent on the Idaho. I have spent hours over the past 19 years looking at the pictures and reading the articles of his Navy days that meant so much to him.

In 1999, in my off-time while working on a business project in Michigan, I began searching on the Internet to find more information about the USS Idaho and the people that were in my father's pictures, and through my research, I met a couple of his ex-shipmates of the Idaho, Lew Davidson and Don 'Pops' Seger.

Lew and I started exchanging E-mail messages and I became compelled to do whatever I could think of to try and preserve my father's memoirs. I began scanning the pictures and in 2003, started posting them on my personal website, and in 2004 created www.ussidaho.com - the official tribute and memorial website to the USS Idaho and its crew.

Over the next few years, Lew Davidson and his wife, Sally, have become like adopted parents to me and my wife, and Don Seger has sent endless inspirational E-mail messages of encouragement, faith, and hope as he and his wife have battled health issues. It was because of my father, Lew, and Don that I became inspired and encouraged to create this website specifically in dedication to the men who served on the USS Idaho.

Over the past fifteen years, many of the sons, daughters, nieces, nephews, grandchildren, great-grandchildred, and wives of the USS Idaho crew have contacted me and have shared in my desire to preserve the memories of their loved ones that served on the Idaho - even as far back as those who served on the 1921 USS Idaho - another era I hope to be able to include in this website.

I just recently acquired a photo album of Cpt. Russell Moore that was discovered in an antique shop in Oklahoma and sent to me and have just added over 200 photos from the pre-WWII 1938-40 era of the USS Idaho. It is a great thing to be able to put names, faces, and places associated with the many men and years of service of the Idaho crew.

Thanks to all of you who contribute to this site and share in the pride that was born on the USS Idaho. If you have photos, articles, or any memorabilia in regard to the USS Idaho and would like to be added to this website, please contact me at 540.922.2362 or send me an E-mail at daveroye@hotmail.com

David Roye,
Son of a Sailor of the USS IDAHO