Contact: Sasha Steinberg

STARKVILLE, Miss.—Lt. Lennie R. Day, a 2004 Mississippi State mathematics graduate and former Bulldog football player, recently commissioned a new ship for the U.S. Coast Guard as the vessel’s first commanding officer.

Day, a native of Mobile, Alabama, was a four-year letterwinner on the defensive line for Mississippi State football from 2000-03.

The Coast Guard Cutter Benjamin Bottoms, a 154-foot multi-mission ship, is the last of four Fast Response Cutters to be homeported at Base Los Angeles-Long Beach. The ship is based in San Pedro, California, but will operate throughout the 11th Coast Guard District, which includes all of California and international waters off Mexico and Central America.

Featuring advanced command, control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance equipment, FRCs are named for Coast Guard enlisted leaders, trailblazers and heroes.

The Benjamin Bottoms ship honors a Georgia native who was part of a Coast Guard aircrew that rescued an Army aircrew from a downed B-17 off the west coast of Greenland in 1942. Bottoms was posthumously awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross for his role in the rescue.

For more, visit https://coastguard.dodlive.mil/2015/02/coast-guard-heroes-benjamin-a-bottoms.

MSU is Mississippi’s leading university, available online at www.msstate.edu.