Susan Rainey, left, Treasurer, and Richard “Ski” Jarenski, on the right, Commander, of the USS Sterlet Association, both from Marana, are spending their summer preparing a special display of submarine patches for permanent display at “Veteran’s City,” in Branson, Mo., later this year. Some of the display can be seen in the background.

MARANA — Richard “Ski” Jarenski, Commander, and Susan Rainey, Treasurer, of the USS Sterlet (SS392) Association, both from Marana, are spending their summer preparing in a special way for a reunion set to take place Oct. 3, in Branson, Mo.

It was during an August 2008 Reunion Planners Conference in Branson, known as the “Veteran’s City,” that Jarenski noticed that there was no tribute to the Submarines of World War II. He and Susan conceived of a display of patches from vets of submarines and their crews that served during World War II.

The Vietnam Veterans Museum in Branson gave the go ahead to house the project and Jarenski went to work with a passion.

“I put a memo out to all my submarine blogs in the United States that I wanted to do a patch display on World War II submarines,” said Jarenski. “I didn’t include nuclear boats because they don’t have the significance that this display does. And we’re losing so many World War II vets every day. They need to be remembered.

“There’s nothing like this is the United States. There’s no display of this magnitude,” added Jarenski.

He credits Rainey, his spousal equivalent, with doing all the display work, but the raw materials had to come from somewhere and that job fell to Jarenski.

“I put a letter out to veterans and by the end of January this year veterans from all over the United States donated over 350 patches,” Jarenski said. “They either bought them from a patch company or took them out of their scrapbooks.

“Many of these guys wrote tear jerking letters because they’d never through about it, especially the World War II people had rooted it out of their minds,” added Jarenski.

The display also includes a special collection of patches honoring the lost submarines and approximately 374 officers and 3,131 enlisted men still on “Eternal Patrol” lost at sea during their service.

According to the materials with the patches, from America’s entry into World War II after Pearl Harbor in December 1941 until the Japanese Surrender in September 1945 U.S. submarines were responsible for sinking more than half of all Japanese tonnage, destroying most of the Japanese Merchant Fleet, isolating Pacific Islands, crippling Japanese industry and preventing resupply and reinforcement of island garrisons.

These numbers are more startling considering that submarine forces comprised less then two percent of the Navy.

The patches represent the diesel boats that sailed from World War II through action in Vietnam. That’s where Jarenski served aboard the Sterlet. The boat is named for a Russian fish that loves in the black sea and produces his quality caviar.

All boats from this era are named for fish and they are technically known as boats not ships.

Before the trip to Branson the patches will be displayed for all in the area at the Wheeler Taft Abbett Library in Marana. Details of that event are being worked out.

Jarenski hopes to have members of World War II submarine crews from the Tucson area attend that event. He plans to invite Arizona State and Federal Lawmakers to the display. He especially wants to invite Senator John McCain whos father captained a submarine.

As far as the trip to Missouri, Jarenski got a break on an Enterprise rent-a-truck. Turns out that the owner and founder of the company flew fighter plans off the USS Enterprise aircraft carrier during World War II. The Navy man was eager to help and cut the cost to a real affordable level.

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