DATE: Sunday, October 5, 1997               TAG: 9710050071

SECTION: FRONT                   PAGE: A8   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS 

DATELINE: BATH, MAINE                       LENGTH:   52 lines

NEW WARSHIP CARRIES NAME OF AN HONORED MARINE

A Canadian army officer once approached Marine Col. William Richard Higgins while both were pulling a dangerous tour of peacekeeping duty in Lebanon more than a decade ago.

As the story goes, the officer offered Higgins some adhesive patches of the Canadian flag to place over the U.S. banner on his uniform if he needed to escape from anti-American terrorists. But Higgins, friends say, turned him down, saying he was a U.S. Marine who would be captured or killed only under the U.S. flag.

Recalling Higgins' courage and patriotism, his wife joined a large group of guests Saturday in launching the Navy's newest destroyer in honor of her husband, who was heading a U.N. observer team in south Lebanon when he was kidnapped Feb. 17, 1988. He was 43 when he was abducted.

About a year later, his kidnappers released a videotape showing his body hanging from a makeshift gallows.

``In the world, semper fidelis, always faithful, I christen thee, Higgins,'' Robin Higgins said before smashing a bottle of champagne across the ship's gray hull and sending the mammoth vessel sliding down a long ramp into the Kennebunk River.

More than 1,000 people witnessed the launching, including about a dozen of Higgins' former college classmates and some veterans who served with him in Vietnam.

Like its namesake, the destroyer will venture into the world's hot spots ``with the same tenacity that Col. Higgins mustered in battle and captivity,'' said the keynote speaker, Sen. Charles S. Robb of Virginia, a former Marine officer and Vietnam veteran.

``The USS Higgins will put the world on notice; those who threaten America's interest or dare to terrorize its citizens will face Col. Rich Higgins and the 8,300 tons of pure American steel that now surrounds his spirit,'' Robb said.

A pro-Iranian group called the Organization of the Oppressed on Earth claims to have executed Higgins, of Danville, Ky., in retaliation for the Israeli abduction of a Muslim cleric in Lebanon.

But U.S. intelligence officials suspected that Higgins was slain in retaliation for the downing by an American warship of an Iranian airliner in the Persian Gulf, killing 260 people. ILLUSTRATION: Photo

ASSOCIATED PRESS

Robin Higgins christened the Navy's newest destroyer, in background,

at the Bath Iron Works in Maine on Saturday. The ship was named for

her husband, Marine Col. William Richard Higgins, who was killed by

terrorists.

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