Seated from left to right, Bob Wefald, Gov. Jack Dalrymple and Bill Butcher. Standing Kelvin Hullet, Andy Peterson and Dot Frank.

The USS North Dakota Committee is excited to announce that Friday, Dec. 11, 2013 is USS NORTH DAKOTA Day. Please join us in Memorial Hall at the State Capitol for a display of the submarine, merchandise and more. Commander Douglas Gordon, Commanding Officer of the USS NORTH DAKOTA will be speaking to the Senate at 12:30 p.m. and the House at 1 p.m. that day. Click here to read the Governor’s proclamation.

Chairman of the USS ND Committee Bob Wefald, Cmdr. Douglas Gordon and Susan Wefald.

Chairman of the USS North Dakota Committee Bob Wefald will begin blogging about the efforts to support and promote the Block 3 Virginia-Class Nuclear Submarine currently under construction in Quonset Point, Rhode Island and Groton Connecticut and soon to be named the USS North Dakota. This blog will journal the efforts of the committee as they promote the build and support the crew already assigned to the PCU.

Bob Wefald

Judge Bob Wefald retired after a forty year legal career including four years as attorney general from 1981 to 1984, with his last twelve years as a District Court Judge inBismarck.  He is the chairman of the USS North Dakota Committee which is promoting the second ship named after our state.  A nuclear powered submarine is currently under construction inGroton,Connecticut.  It will be commissioned as the USS NORTH DAKOTA (SSN-784) in 2014 and will serve in the Navy for 33 years without ever having to be refueled.

Judge Wefald grew up inMinot, and graduated from the University of North Dakota in 1964, after which he served three years on active duty as a Naval Officer, including six months as a gunnery officer on a guided missile destroyer off the coast ofVietnamin 1966.  He continued his service in the Naval Reserve retiring as a Captain in 1991.

In 1985 as a member of the Military Affairs Committee of theBismarck– Mandan Area Chamber of Commerce he started a campaign to get a second ship named after our great state ofNorth   Dakota.  After a campaign of twenty-three years, including annual letters to our congressional delegation and letters to presidents and secretaries of the Navy, his persistence finally paid off in 2008 when then Secretary of the Navy Donald Winter announced that a submarine about to be built was to be named USS NORTH DAKOTA (SSN-784).

He and his wife, retired Public Service Commissioner Susan Wefald, have three children and two grandchildren.