By Andy Brack, editor and publisher  |  When Franklin Delano Roosevelt served as assistant secretary of the Navy from 1913 to 1920, he made several trips to Charleston to help “to build up, to some degree at least, this splendid Navy Yard in Charleston,” he recalled years later as president. 

These days, the shuttered Navy Yard is a beehive of private and government activity as the North Charleston industrial area continues to redevelop.  And the Navy’s presence continues to loom large with thousands of highly-trained specialists working at SPAWAR and in other facilities.

Back in 1935, Roosevelt landed in Charleston aboard the USS Houston after a fishing vacation in the Pacific and Caribbean.