 On 10 March 2001, she was commissioned during a ceremony at Town Point Park in Norfolk, Virginia.On 29 November 1995, on a visit to the United Kingdom, President Bill Clinton announced to Parliament that the new ship would be named after Sir Winston Churchill, the former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.She was the first destroyer and only the fourth United States Navy warship named after a British citizen, and the first since 1976 named after a non-U.S. citizen, though Churchill was an honorary U.S. citizen and his mother was American.