Sharkey Theater

LowellAngell on March 5, 2010 at 11:10 pm

Here is some information from a recent article in a military-related magazine on the naming of Sharkey Theatre:

“Sharkey Theatre and Our Fallen Heros"
By Anna Marie General
From Liberty Call magazine, January-Fenruary, 2010

“For years people believed that Sharkey Theater was named after boxing legend Thomas Joseph Sharkey, who was a master at arms assigned to the USS Philadelphia, a Navy cruiser in the late 19th/early 20th century. It was generally accepted for years that it was named after him, but data recently was uncovered that there was a Lt. William Sharkey who was killed in a battery explosion aboard a submarine in 1918. There is speculation that Cmdr. (later Fleet Adm.) Chester W. Nimitz,the first commanding officer of Pearl Harbor Naval Submarine Base, named the theater in honor of his friend Lt. Sharkey.”

I think that the Navy would have been more likely to name a building on a base after a sailor who died in an explosion there than someone who gained fame after he left the Navy.