USS Higgins (DDG-76)

USS Higgins (DDG-76)

USS Higgins (DDG-76) is a Flight I Arleigh Burke-class destroyer in the United States Navy. She was commissioned in 1999 and named after William R. Higgins (1945–1990), a United States Marine Corps Colonel who was captured and held hostage in February 1988 by a pro-Iranian group allied with Hezbollah while serving on a United Nations peacekeeping mission (United Nations Truce Supervision Organization, UNTSO) in Lebanon. He was killed in captivity by July 1990.

President George Bush awarded Colonel Higgins the Presidential Citizen’s Award two years after the colonel died. Then, another two years later (17 February 1994), the president named the ship (that was about to be built) after Colonel Higgins.