The Shubrick-Duncan Association was formed to provide reunions for the surviving members of the ship’s crews that sailed these two naval vessels during World War Two. Such reunions have been held at various times and in selected cities over the period of the past few years. Being a loosely-formed organization, there are no elected officials and no assigned permanent committee positions. Each year that a reunion is assembled, the attending members select a location for the following assembly, a date for that gathering and one member to provide for the organization of all details and events.

The current roster of 184 members, including the ship's remaining crew members, also includes the widows of shipmates who have passed on, other family survivors of those deceased and those descendants interested in perpetuating the memory of the accomplishments of these ships during World War Two. Its purpose is also to honor those shipmates who so gallantly gave the supreme sacrifice, during that war, in engagements with the enemy at “Iron Bottom Bay” in the Phillippines, Sicily and Okinawa, Japan. The final toll of casualties was 84 killed in action, 15 missing in action and 35 wounded.

There is a special bond that connects the crews of these two destroyers of the United States Navy from that war period. Neither vessel was active during the entire war from December 7, 1941 to the surrender of the Japanese in August of 1945. The USS Duncan (DD485) was commissioned in February of 1942 and lost at the Battle of Cape Esperance (First Savo Island) in October of that same year. The USS Shubrick (DD639) was commissioned in February of 1943, paticipated in the invasions of Sicily, Normandy and southern France and sailed to Okinawa, Japan to assist with engaging the enemy there in May of 1945, finally being hit by a kamikaze plane, which ended her participation in any subsequent engagements. The Shubrick finally sailed back to the United States under her own power, on one engine, and was decommissioned late in 1945 following the end of the war with the unconditional surrender of the Japanese.

Subsequent to the loss of the USS Duncan in October of 1942, her survivors were reassigned to other ships, a large contingent of which who were to become the nucleus of the crew of the newly commissioned USS Shubrick. Another group was assigned also to the Destroyer USS Bennett (DD473). Since the survivors of the USS Duncan do not have a reunion association for that ship's crew, these men have become a vital part of this association, just as they were a vital part of the make up of the Shubrick’s crew during the period of the Shubrick’s participation in fighting the enemy from the Mediterranean Sea to the Sea of Japan. Unfortunately, a number of the Duncan’s survivors were later to lose their lives, in engagements in Sicily and in Okinawa, while serving aboard the USS Shubrick.