From: Corinne Hunt

I am a freelance writer, now retired, living near Sloan Lake. I had long noticed the memorial in Sloan Lake Park, Denver, Colorado, but could find no information on it. I asked a columnist friend at the Denver Post to put a bit into his column about my wanting information. I was put in touch with a man who had graded the site, and that led to other contacts. It enabled me to write a short article for a weekly newspaper I was writing for at the time.

The man who gave me the most information was scheduled to return to the GRAYLING after shore leave and was bumped by a man who'd been ashore longer. That man Is "still on patrol" with the GRAYLING somehwere in the South Pacific.

Denver's memorial was built through the efforts of a small group of men calling themselves the Mile Hi Diggers Chapter of the U.S. Submarine Veterans of World War II.

In planning for the Denver monument, the veterans thought that it should be located near water, and John Green persuaded the Parks Department to designate the site near Sloan Lake. He solicited donations from his contractor friends to dig the footings and pour concrete. Another member, having some influence with the Navy, was successful in obtaining the disarmed torpedo which sits atop the sand-colored concrete block. Watson's Truck Line brought the torpedo and a rusty anchor chain to Denver at no charge, and Woody's Welding sandblasted the chain to llike-new perfection to surround the memorial.

The GRAYLING was built in 1940, and the last to be built to peacetime specifications. Described by one writer as being "probably the ultimate in refinement and habitability," the GRAYLING was commissioned March 31, 1942, at Portsmouth, New Hampshire.

It was on its eighth patrol when it left Fremantle, Australia on July 30, to patrol near Manila. It was scheduled to return to Pearl Harbor for refit at the end of that run.

The last report from GRAYLING was August 19th.

It was presumed lost on September 30th, 1943.

It was selected as Colorado's Memorial Submarine because Colorado men had served on her. Ed Unrein, one of only two of the men who had helped raise money for the memorial was still alive at the time I wrote this in 1997. He had been scheduled to to be aboard when she left Fremantle but was replaced at the last minute by another man who had been ashore longer.

The words of Admiral C. W. Nimitz are inscribed on a plaque entitled "Still on patrol."

"We shall never forget that it was our submarines that held the lines against the enemy, while our fleets replaced losses and repaired wounds."

Further, on the plaque,

"A total of 374 officers and 3,131 men are on board these 52 U.S. submarines, still on patrol."

Corinne Hunt