Just visible from the airport viaduct portion of H-1, just after you slide by Radford High School, is the butt end of a giant bee. Get closer, and you'll discover that the bee is heavily armed with a machine gun and various tools. SeaBee stands guard
over Navy’s buildersIt's no killer bee. It's a SeaBee.
Although Navy information specialists aren't clear about the exact age of the statue that stands guard over the entrance to the PACDIV naval organization, it dates to the 1960s.
The symbol is the logo of the Naval Construction Battalion, created in the early days of World War II as a kind of forward-thrust engineering combat group that could also defend itself.
The CB or "Seabee" was designed by Navy plan-file clerk Frank Iafrete at Naval Air Station Quonset Point, Rhode Island, in 1942. The cartoon character was deliberately Disney-like. The Seabee motto is "We Build, We Fight."
More than 325,000 men served in the Seabees during the war, building, among other things, 111 major airstrips and housing for a million and a half men.
Today, as the Navy's hands-on goodwill ambassadors, they're responsible for new roads, public utilities and hospitals all over the world. Busy bees!
Burl Burlingame, Star-Bulletin
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