March 11, 2008
OPENING
President Dick Short welcomed everyone and asked Al West to lead us in the Pledge of Allegiance. Bruce Johnson asked the blessing on our lunch and prayed for our members absent today, their families, our armed services personnel at home or overseas, first responders, our Great Country, its leaders and our defenders.
PROGRAMS IN THE WEEKS AHEAD!
March 18 Cassandra Phelps, consultant talking about rebuilding Eden Medical Center
THOUGHT FOR THE DAY
Bruce Johnson shared from Vernon Law: “Experience is a hard teacher because she gives the test first, the lesson afterward.”
SONG BY CETA
Ceta led us in (get this) “The Jeremiah Lays Across the Ocean.”
RECOGNITIONS
None
GUESTS
Visitors today included Linda from “Relay for Life” (scheduled for July 19)
RED BADGE FOR RAY WALLACE
Welcome to the Castro Valley Rotary Club! Ray is on staff at California State University, East Bay!
UPCOMING DATES AND OPPORTUNITIES
MAY 9 - CHILI COOKOFF 2008
The Castro Valley Rotary Club will host the 2008 Chili Cookoff at Rowell Ranch on Friday, May 9. More information to follow.
MAY 10 - ROWELL RANCH RODEO PARADE
Lots going on . . . Chair Kim Murdock invites everyone to get involved . . . email her your interest at CoolKim1962@aol.com . . .
PROGRAM
Dwight Perry introduced Richard Vannucci talking about the S.S. Jeremiah O'Brien. Richard spent 39 years in the US Navy, including two tours in Vietnam. He truly proved to be knowledgeable about every aspect of the planning, building and maintenance of the S.S. Jeremiah O’Brien.
SS Jeremiah O'Brien is a Liberty ship built during World War II and named for American Revolutionary War ship captain Jeremiah O'Brien (1744–1818). Now based in San Francisco, the O'Brien is the sole survivor of the 6,939-ship armada that stormed Normandy on D-Day, 1944, and one of only two currently operational WWII Liberty ships afloat of the 2,751 built during the war (the other being the SS John W. Brown based in Baltimore).
Built in just 57 days at the New England Shipbuilding Corporation in South Portland, Maine, and launched on June 19, 1943, this class EC2-S-CI ship not only made four perilous round trip wartime crossings of the Atlantic and served on D-Day, the vessel later saw sixteen months of service in both the South Pacific and the Indian Ocean calling at ports in Chile, Peru, New Guinea, the Philippines, India, China, and Australia.
The end of the war caused most of the Liberty ships to be removed from service in 1946 and many were subsequently sold to foreign and domestic buyers. Others were retained by the U.S. Maritime Commission for potential reactivation in the event of future military conflicts. The O'Brien was mothballed and spent 33 years in the National Defense Reserve Fleet in Suisun Bay. In the 1970's the idea of preserving an unaltered Liberty Ship began to be developed and under the sponsorship of Rear Admiral Thomas J. Patterson, USMS (then the Western Regional Director of the U.S. Maritime Administration) the ship was put aside for preservation instead of being sold for scrap. Possession of the ship was taken over in 1979 by the National Liberty Ship Memorial, an all volunteer group, to be restored. Amazingly, those who volunteered to resurrect the mothballed ship were able get the antiquated machinery plant operating while the vessel remained afloat in Suisun Bay, and after more than three decades of sitting in rusting idleness, on the 21st of May, 1980 the O'Brien's boilers were lit and the ship left the mothball fleet -- the only ship ever to do so under her own power -- for San Francisco Bay, drydocking, and thousands of more hours of restoration work. The ship then moved to to Fort Mason, located on the San Francisco waterfront just to the west of Fisherman's wharf. There she became a museum dedicated to the men and women who both built and sailed the ships of United States Merchant Marine in WWII. In addition to serving as a floating museum, the ship also makes several passenger-carrying daylight cruises in each year in the San Francisco Bay Area, as well as occasional voyages to more distant ports such as Seattle and San Diego.
In 1994 the O'Brien, in its eighth voyage, (the previous seven were during WWII) steamed through the Golden Gate, down the west coast, through the Panama Canal, and across the Atlantic to England and France, where the O'Brien and its crew (a volunteer crew of veteran WWII-era sailors and a few cadets from the California Maritime Academy), participated in the 50th Anniversary of Operation Overlord, the allied invasion at Normandy that turned the tide of WWII in Europe . . . the only large ship from the original Normandy flotilla to return for the 50th anniversary celebration.
The SS Jeremiah O'Brien was designated a National Historic Landmark, and is docked at Pier 45 at Fisherman's Wharf, San Francisco, California. It also hosts the amateur radio station K6JOB.
Thanks, Richard!
THE HUNT FOR THE CORRECT MARBLE
Chief Gilbert’s ticket was pulled and with $93 and 12 marbles in the sack, reached in and won . . . . $5.00 . . . Congratulations!
See you next week!
