NEWPORT NEWS — The bell tolled one-by-one Sunday for the names of the more than 99 sailors who were lost aboard the USS Scorpion 57 years ago.

In May 1968, the Norfolk-based nuclear submarine imploded and sank to 10,000 feet in the Atlantic Ocean, some 400 miles off the coast of the Azores.

The reasons for the sinking are still unknown.

Each year, the Knights of Columbus council in Newport News honors the 99, with each of their names and ranks read out loud — with two tolls for each man.

“All 99 brave and courageous sailors on the Scorpion were killed while faithfully serving their country,” said Steve Taylor, the “faithful navigator” of the Knights’ 2430 assembly, at the Council 5480 Hall on Nettles Drive.

MaryEtta Nolan, 65, of upstate New York, was 8 when the Scorpion sank. Her father was “chief of boat” Walter “Wally” Bishop — the top enlisted sailor on the submarine — and she recalls awaiting his return to Naval Station Norfolk.

“The family waited for a happy homecoming after a three-month deployment,” Nolan said during Sunday’s event. “It was Memorial Day. That morning, we didn’t realize our future holidays would be attending Memorial Services instead of picnics.”

After the ceremony, Nolan recalled that the sailors’ wives were calling her house asking her mother for news.

“So every time the phone rang, we’d run up to the phone, cross our fingers, but it was never the Navy,” she said. “It was just another wife asking if she heard anything.”

Then, Nolan said, “we heard on the news that the Scorpion was declared overdue.”

That’s when her mother recalled that when another submarine, the USS Thresher, had sunk, her father told her: “A submarine is never overdue. If they’re overdue, they’re lost.”

Aside from the USS Scorpion, Sunday’s event also honored four chaplains — a Catholic priest, a Jewish rabbi and two Protestant ministers — who gave up their life jackets when the Army troop ship Dorchester was torpedoed by a German submarine in February 1945.

The boat sank quickly in the North Atlantic, said Rick Gausmann of the Knights of Columbus assembly 2184 in York County.

Of the 902 sailors, only 230 men survived.

But the four chaplains — Protestant Ministers George L. Fox and Clark Polling, Jewish Rabbi Alexander Goode and Catholic priest Father Clark Polling — “calmly guided men to their lifeboat stations,” then gave them their own life jackets.

“The chaplains gathered together in brotherhood and bowed their heads in prayer, as they sank beneath the waves,” Gausmann said.

Sunday’s service also included the sound of a toll for each of the more than 60 submarines that were sunk during World War II, with more than 3,500 sailors lost.

The Knights of Columbus chapter in Newport News has been involved for more than 27 years in honoring the sailors lost on the Scorpion.

In 1988, Nolan and her mother worked with the Navy to host a ceremony in honor of the Scorpion once every five years at Naval Station Norfolk.

But 10 years later, in 1998, her husband approached the Knights of Columbus in Newport News about doing a service for the four years in between each of the larger Navy services, to ensure the Scorpion “would never be forgotten.”

The Navy and the Nolans stopped doing the big Navy service in 2018 — 50 years after the Scorpion’s sinking.

But the Knights annual remembrance continues.

“It’s still very emotional,” Nolan said after Sunday’s service. “I think of everybody that I’ve met through the years. And when they’re reading the names, I don’t remember the men except for a couple of them that my dad was good friends with … But it’s mostly the people that I met after that.”

There were some 14 Scorpion family members in attendance at Sunday’s event.

That included Laura Petersen, of North Carolina, whose father-in-law, chief electrician’s mate Daniel Christopher Petersen, died aboard the sub in 1968.

Her husband, Shannon Petersen, was born three months after the Scorpion sank.

But now the Petersen’s son, Daniel Christopher Petersen II, is named after his grandfather, and Nolan and the Petersens have become friends.

Joan Cowan, 84, of Virginia Beach, lost her husband, Machinist Mate Robert Cowan, aboard the Scorpion. At the time, they were in their 20s and had an 11-month old daughter.

Cowan said she and Nolan’s mother got to know each other after the submarine’s sinking. “I didn’t know her that well until it went down, and then we became best friends,” she said.

Nolan and others at the event also honored James P. Healy, the former Newport News Shipbuilding construction supervisor who tolled the bell for the Knights’ USS Scorpion ceremonies for decades before he died in November 2023.

“He was a big guy — God help you if you tried to take the bell tolling away from him,” quipped John Edwards, one of his brother Knights, after the event.

The event included wreath presentations, Scouts from Troops 27 and 242 in Newport News leading the Pledge of Allegiance, and taps by Knights bugler Dave Young.

It ended with renditions of God Bless America and Amazing Grace, played by Ryan Houdashelt of the Newport News Police Pipes & Drums, and a benediction by Father Bob Bruno.

“May their souls, the souls of all the faithfully parted, through the mercy of God, rest in peace. Amen,” Bruno said.

“For all here, may the Lord bless you and keep you. May He let his face shine upon you and show you his mercy. May He turn his countenance toward you and give you His peace.”