News From Fort Schuyler

September 17, 1999 - Volume 3, No. 42

RECOMMENDED READING - Alumni Association president, TOM FOX, Class of 1962, has prepared a detailed review of the background and rationale for the proposals on the future of the college which were outlined in ADMIRAL DAVID C. BROWN'S recent briefing paper entitled "In Step with the Future." Both documents are now posted on the Alumni Association Web site at - http://www.fsmaa.org

THEN JOIN THE DISCUSSION - Alumni are invited to join DomeNet, the Alumni Association's electronic discussion list. DomeNet Moderator, JOE TARTAGLIA, Class of 1976, writes: "Due to the wonders of the internet, this may be the first time an issue like this can get a full airing before a significant number of Alumni. I believe we can use this medium to make a difference here ...if we approach this intelligently." He is seconded by AUSTIN DOOLEY, Class of 1968, Past National President of the Alumni Association, who wrote: "For those interested in following this most important and urgent discussion, I recommend visiting the Alumni homepage and registering to receive the DomeNet email correspondence."

SERENDIPITOUS QUESTION - In the summer of 1976 the Navy notified NROTC scholarship winner, JIM MALONEY, Class of 1980, that it was dropping the ROTC unit at Maritime. "I could, they told me, use the scholarship at any other school to which I could gain admission. But I had applied to one school and one school only--because that's where I wanted to go--and I decided then and there that I was going to go there no matter what." Although the unit was reinstated a year later, when Jim was a 3^rd classman, he remained on a non-ROTC track, having arranged the loans and financial aid needed to get him through. He observes: "...the serendipitous event of the ROTC unit's temporary discontinuation ...... resulted in my pursuing a whole different set of career paths than would otherwise have been the case. For the first seven years after graduating I made my living as a deck officer in the U.S. merchant marine, not as a commissioned officer in the U.S. Navy. And because deck officers on American merchant ships are the ones charged with rendering underway emergency medical care, I sought advanced training in that area, which soon led me to my second career as a paramedic in New York City from 1988 to 1995. During the last four years, doing that by day, I attended law school at night, graduating Fordham Law in 1995, and I'm now a maritime lawyer with something of a niche in the area of maritime personal injury, although that's not my only practice area."

Jim had prefaced his note with the observation that he noticed how often NFFS " ...has been used (successfully) as a communication forum through which to find answers to nagging questions about the history of the school." He concludes, "I often wonder what chain of events led to the loss of the ROTC unit in 1976, since that occurrence literally changed the course of my life?" Can anyone provide the answer?

MARINE ACCIDENTS ADOBIED - News from former SST Cadet Librarian and "Chief Book Coverer", CAPT. TIM FARLEY, Class of 1984.5. "I currently work for RADM ROBERT NORTH, Class of 1966, at the US Coast Guard Headquarters in the Office of Investigations and Analysis (G-MOA) [which] has recently completed placing approximately 280 marine casualty reports on line. These reports in Adobe PDF format date back to 1949. A wide range of interesting casualty information is presented. To access the site go to -

ACRONYM MANIA - E-mail from JOHN O'SULLIVAN, Class of 1984, explains that: "...other acronyms for the FAF part were 'Forfeit All Freedoms', 'Friday Afternoon Formation'. The keg party was 'Friday Alcohol Function'. .....I was the DJ for the Friday Alcohol Functions in 1983-1984 because I did not drink and would not scratch the records." Digging even deeper into acronyms from the past, PETER JENSEN, Class of 1978, asks: "Speaking of acronyms, how many remember - BOHICA and SNAFU? No need to translate."

HANDLE FOR EVERY OCCASION - "My AOL handle, NYMFAF@aol.com (which is for NY Maritime, First and Foremost)" writes JOHN O'SULLIVAN, "is the result of my NTN Trivia handle. I play NTN at a couple of bars and often rank highly - the game is played in 3,000 bars in US & Canada, at the end of each half hour game, the highest 20 scores in North America are displayed in all the locations. [See NFFS 3:18 for an explanation.] On occasion I get phone calls from other Domers at other bars who see me when I rank. Lately I have been playing as OBESE (even though I still run long distances, my Body Mass Index says that I am obese - the calculation does not take into account muscles) and as FBORHG, which indicates my dissatisfaction with some locations that use computers to get their trivia answers, the 'F' is for the 4-letter word and BORHG is supposed to represent the Borg from Star Trek, a race of half machine/half organic beings (one cannot enter the letters ORG for a handle.)"

NIMA NEWS - More graduates from Fort Schuyler have come aboard the National Imagery and Mapping Agency. According to ROY SOLURI, Class of 1962, Deputy Chief of the Marine Navigation Department, PATRICK DORR, Class of 1986 and KRISTOFER SCHNATZ, Class of 1999, are now colleagues at NIMA.

WATCH OUT HOW YOU ADDRESS ME - Please send all NFFS mail to: rcorson@worldnet.att.net This address change should end the duplicate mailings and downtime experienced in recent weeks.