Our Seattle Base Founding Member, Ric Hedman went on eternal patrol Saturday, January 31^st, 2025.

His passing is a great loss to our base, and to the USSVI. Ric married his sweetheart Patty on Friday January 23^rd as one of his final requests.

Our Seattle base began with Ric and Cliff Nutter, over coffee in 1999. Together they found several other interested people and chartered our Seattle Base into the national organization shortly thereafter.

Ric is also a founder of the website Pigboats.com. He told us last week that the website is in good hands with his partner David Johnson and encouraged us to visit and use this site for our historic enjoyment.

Patty has not decided on when services will be held or where. We will announce that information on this newsfeed.

Sailor, rest your oars.

It is with the heaviest of hearts that I must inform you of the passing of Richard C. "Ric" Hedman, the founder of PigBoats.COM and the driving force of its success for over 25 years. Ric fought a pitched battle with cancer and did so with the utmost bravery and tenacity, but yesterday his earthly watch ended and he went on eternal patrol.

Ric, who Qualified in Submarines on the USS Flasher (SSN-613) in 1965, founded the website, originally called "Through the Looking Glass", out of a deep respect for his fellow submariners after gathering a handful of old submarine photographs. Wanting to somehow display them for all to see and learn from, Ric dived into the then (1999) rather arcane art of hosting an informational site on the World Wide Web/Internet. He decided to concentrate on the early days of the Submarine Force, an era under-served by most historians.

In 2001 his efforts to preserve our shared heritage had grown exponentially. One day in July of that year I took the liberty of emailing him to give him some additional information on a photo that he had posted. Ric willingly accepted my inputs and that one email kicked off a 25 year friendship. Ric became one of my closest friends, as he was one of the few people that I could completely geek out with about the submarine history that we both loved.

Strangely, Ric lived in Seattle and I in various places as I worked through my career in the Navy, finally settling in Norfolk, Virginia. We literally lived on opposite sides of the country, so our friendship consisted mostly of phone calls, video chats, and emails, sometimes several per week. We have only met in person four times, with each of those visits becoming treasured memories.

In 2023 Ric asked me to take over the site, and we kicked off an effort to modernize it and bring it into a format that will endure in the future. The result is what you see today. PigBoats.COM is his living legacy; his personality is irretrievably infused throughout our many pages. I am honored to keep his memory alive for many years to come.

Ric was a founding member of the Seattle Base of

United States Submarine Veterans, and a 2023 recipient of the Ben Bastura Historical Achievement Award.

Please take a moment today to remember this elder statesman of submarine history. Mourn him, but celebrate what he did to preserve our heritage.