A Navy chaplain is retiring today at an amazing milestone: It has been 50 years since he first enlisted.

Lt. Cmdr. William Dorwart is serving as a Roman Catholic priest aboard the aircraft carrier Theodore Roosevelt in Coronado. At 68, he is one of the oldest of the Navy’s roughly 800 chaplains.

“The bones tell you it’s time,” Dorwart said in an interview Thursday, “when you are at sea all the time, and up and down ladders.”

He started out in the Navy in 1967 as aviation electronics technician, enlisting from his home in the Nebraska farmlands.


Over the course of several deployments, the sailor who came from a devout Catholic home felt a calling for something higher.

His enlistment fulfilled, the young man used his GI Bill to enroll in the University of Notre Dame. Next came a master’s of divinity degree. Dorwart was ordained as a Roman Catholic priest in 1980.

He had followed his calling, but the sea called him back.


In 1985, he accepted a commission as a naval officer and a military chaplain.

Friend Tim Chelling said “Father Bill” epitomizes the life of service.

“His Navy career alone, I think, should be the stuff of legend, not only for its longevity but for service to country,” Chelling said. “There’s a lot of talk, and a lot’s been written about a life of service, but Bill Dorwart has walked the talk.”

Dorwart saw himself as bringing hope to sailors when life at sea can feel lonely. Part of his service was payback for the spiritual guidance he got as a young sailor.


“I was 18, 19 years old, going through all the growing pains of any person in transition,” Dorwart recalled. “You leave home, in unfamiliar territory, trying to sort out ‘Who am I, why am I, where am I going with my life? What am I doing on this crazy ship?’”

For him, there was one chaplain who listened.

“I think that planted the seed for where I went from there,” he said.

Over six years, he served with the Marines in Okinawa, with the Navy in Subic Bay and aboard the carrier Midway, including deploying to the first Gulf War.


Then, in 1991, he got a literal call of faith.

“The way it works with the church is, a priest is on loan to the military,” Dorwart said. “They said, ‘Don’t get a new assignment, we have one for you.’”

The Catholic Congregation of Holy Cross issued an order for his return to full-time duty with the church, teaching at its Notre Dame seminary and later serving as the group’s provincial leader.

Dorwart left active duty as a lieutenant commander and later had to resign his commission altogether because his church commitment didn’t allow time for reservist duties.


But the priest’s love affair with the sea didn’t end there.

In 2008, in the middle of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, Dorwart returned to uniform to fill a need for Catholic chaplains in the Navy.

He was inspired by the news of the coming troop surge in Afghanistan. The number given at the time was around 4,000.

Dorwart was working at the Catholic Church’s University of Portland, in Oregon. The student body was about that size.


“I said to myself and my colleagues, ‘It’s like if you just uprooted this whole campus and sent it halfway around the world into battle,” he said Thursday. “It’s the same age group, 18 to 25.”

His fellow clergy members agreed. “They said, ‘Go for it.’ See if they’ll take an old man back.”

The Navy did. At 57, Dorwart returned to uniform and was immediately sent to the remote outpost of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean. He had to take a pay cut: His rank was knocked down a grade to lieutenant.

Then in 2013, the chaplain was promoted, for a second time, to lieutenant commander.


Along the way, he needed an age waiver at 62 to continue serving on active duty. The Navy agreed, if he was willing to deploy aboard the amphibious assault ship Makin Island.

“It was the great need for Catholic priests. There are only 45 of us in the whole Navy, Marines and Coast Guard,” Dorwart said, recalling his inspiration for staying.

Rev. Mike Murphy, the pastor at Coronado’s Sacred Heart church, said the Navy chaplain’s gentle manner seems to go over well with his charges — some of whom are 50 years his junior.

“They find him a very gentle, nonjudgmental person who they can pour their hearts out to,” Murphy said. “He’ll oftentimes use our office space on Sunday to meet with a military couple to prepare them for marriage, or just do counseling. He’s very authentic, and young people like authenticity.”


Dorwart is a tall, lanky officer with a shock of now-white hair. He has performed Mass aboard ship with the sleeves of his blue “camouflage” uniform peeping out from beneath his priest’s robe.

Now the robe will again be paired with a priestly civilian clothes.

Dorwart plans to return to his congregation in Notre Dame, for a new assignment.

“You retire from the Navy,” the priest noted, “but you don’t retire from the ministry.”


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