News From Fort Schuyler

January 25, 2010 - Volume 10, No. 3

ALUMNI ASSOCIATION OFFICERS FOR 2010 - President JOHN BRADLEY '83 - 1st VP JOHN ALBINO '56 - 2nd VP CHARLES MUNSCH '73 - Secretary EARL BAIM '80 - Treasurer KEVIN COMERFORD '83 and Asst. Treasurer TED MASON '57. Congratulations to all. (More at www.fsmaa.org)

EARLY RISER - Word of the recent promotion of JUSTIN MILLER '08 to the post of commercial coordinator for the West Coast Industrial Express (WCIE) joint service operated by Industrial Maritime Carriers and Associated Transport Line, was announced on January 21 in Heavy Lift and Project Forward International News. Since graduation Justin has worked in operational and technical assignments within the Intermarine Americas services, serving as Port Captain in Houston. According to his new boss: "Justin's solid operational experience, technical skills and enthusiasm make him, a perfect fit for our WCIE service." (http://www.heavyliftpfi.com/content/NewsItem.aspx?id=1111)

BRAVO ZULU - The New York Container Terminal's four-year full scholarship to attend SUNY Maritime College was awarded this past December to DARA KOVARSKY 4/C. Cadet Kovarsky, a resident of Stony Brook, is a member of the Maritime College Sailing Team. She arrived at the college sporting a 97% high school average. According to a posting on the Maritime College website, this is the fifth year that such an award has been made by the New York Container Terminal, which is located in Staten Island. (For more go to www.sunymaritime.edu and to www.nycterminal.com)

FOOD FOR THOUGHT - There is a series of muckraking reports on the contribution of cruise ships to ocean pollution in the newsletter of the DC Bureau, an organization staffed by investigative reporters who write on overlooked news stories of significance. A recent report, David Rosenfeld's "Dirty Waters: Cashing in on Ocean Pollution" note that there has not been much government oversight of the industry for the past decade. In the late 1990's 3 cruise ship lines were fined $52 million for dumping and entered into an agreement to maintain environmental officers with a direct line to management for a probationary period. "The probationary period has since expired and the federal government now had no authority to determine in the environmental officers are qualified and monitoring cruise line compliance with environmental laws."

Rosenfeld continues: "One of the environmental officers hired as a result of the probation was WALTER NADOLNY '78, who worked on board Carnival Cruises and Norwegian Cruise Lines. He is now assistant professor at the State University of New York Maritime College. Nadolny says it's the pure volume of materials discharged into the ocean that concerned him most. Aside from sewage, Nadolny says that food waste - which isn't regulated at all - strikes him as a greater concern. The average cruise ship serves between 10,000 and 12,000 meals per day. On a ship of 5,000 [with] people eating four to five meals a day, the total is closer to 25,000 meals. Food waste is then ground up, put into a holding tank and discharged as food slurry'. 'This massive amount of food starts self digesting and becomes this extremely acidic mess, probably worse than raw sewage,' Nadolny said'.'It's not such much feeding the fish as it is dumping an acidic mass into the water that can harm coral reefs.'" (For this article and others in the series go to www.dcbureau.org)

EBB TIDE - A graduate from the war years, CAPT JERE C. AUSTIN '40, died September 18, 2009 at the age of 88. He was a resident of Salisbury, NC. During the course of World War II he sailed to Europe, Africa and the Pacific. In an interview about his war experiences for the University of North Carolina oral history project "To Honor a Generation", he recounted his time aboard the then state-of-the-art ship, USS ALCYONE AK-24 (ex-M/S MORMACGULL), from 1941 to 1944. "I was assigned to her as Assistant Engineer Officer by the Navy in October 1941, two months before Pearl Harbor. I was not yet 21, too young to vote and not old enough to register for the draft. But I had three plus years of maritime and naval reserve training and held a full-time job as Third Engineer on steam-powered, merchant ships with both Moore-McCormack and the Atlantic, Gulf & West Indies lines. When the Navy requisitioned that ship, I was unemployed for a few days until the Navy requisitioned me. They needed an engineer for ALCYONE, which was diesel-powered, and I had a diesel 'ticket' that authorized me to operated any sized motor ship afloat." For the next year or so the ALCYONE operated as a military cargo ship outbound/sugar carrier inbound. She was then converted into an Attack Cargo ship (AKA-7) for service in the Pacific "She began her new assignment by carrying US Marines to the beaches of the Solomon Islands, in the South Pacific, where they took the first territory back from Japan, and she carried on until V-J Day marked the end for the Axis Powers." Jere, who retired from the U.S. Naval Reserve as a Captain after 20 years, is survived by his second wife, Mary, two children, three grandchildren and nine great-grandchildren. ("To Honor a Generation" can be found at www.unctv.org/WWII/veterans/navy/jaustin.html)

RONALD JAMES PECK '59 died at the age of 71 in Baltimore, MD on September 21, 2009. He is survived by his four children and three grandchildren. According to an obituary published in TheLehigh Valley Express Times on October 10, he grew up on a farm in Pennsylvania. "He was the first in his family to attend college, winning a full scholarship from NROTC and graduating from SUNY Maritime College with a Bachelor of Engineering in 1959. Ron served in the Navy. During his Navy and engineering careers he was fortunate to enjoy a lifetime of travel to exotic and unique countries. Through his travels and experiences he has maintained his family roots, his home, in the Lehigh Valley. (The full obituary is found at http://obits.lehighvalleylive.com/obituaries/etpa/obituary.aspx?n=ronald-james-peck&pid=134216604)

GERARD ZINK Oct. '44 died in January 2009. According to the alumni roster he was a resident of Lynbrook, NY.