Shea McLean and Janet Cobb

[00:05] SHEA MCLEAN: My name is Shea McLean. I am the curator of USS Alabama battleship Memorial Park. I am 59. Today's date is October 30, 2023, and we are in Mobile, Alabama. With me today is my boss, Major General Janet Cobb, and she is the executive director and my boss at Battleship park.

[00:34] JANET COBB: I'm Janet Cobb. I'm 57, and today's date is October 30, 2023. We are here in Mobile, Alabama. I'm here with our curator at USS Alabama Battleship Memorial Park, Shea McLean, and he's one of my great staff that works out there. Shea this is a unique opportunity. We're going to have a chance to talk about what we do, but first, it's always important to talk about who we are. And I want to know a little bit about your background before you came to USS Alabama Battleship Memorial park. You're a professional curator. You are a marine archaeologist. So tell me a little bit about that.

[01:13] SHEA MCLEAN: Well, yes. Thank you, Janet. I am originally from mobile. Very proud of that fact. Native mobilian. And working here, it's always nice to come home and work after spending many years elsewhere. Grew up in Mobile, and I'm a midtown kid. And as such, one of my earliest memories was this big battleship coming to Mobile Bay. I was a toddler when my father took me there for the first time, and that kind of thing, I think, imprinted on me. So I've known about where we work since I was a very young age. My father was a steamship agent, so there's a maritime history there from the family. And I grew up like a normal kid in Mobile, went to school here. When I was graduated, McGill, took tool in high school. And when I got out, like a lot of kids, I wasn't sure of a precise direction, but I felt that I might join the military. My father was in the army, and I was kind of encouraged to do that. So at the age of 17, enlisted in the army, which was really more for me, a way to get into college and pay for that college, and not really 100% sure where I wanted to go as a direction. I just knew that that might be a good start. And after enlisting in the army, I got my commission at the University of South Alabama. And after committing my obligation to my country for giving me that wonderful education, deploying to Europe, coming back, the one thing I realized is that I wanted to go back to school, and I wanted to study history more, and that was the route that I took. And maritime history, maritime archaeology had always been something that was fascinating to me, and the closest university that offered those courses was Florida state. So I went to school, went to Tallahassee, packed up everything I had, moved to Tallahassee and started my career there. Yes. Seminole. I'm a Seminole. North Florida state. I gotta put that plug in there. We're playing really well this year.

[03:47] JANET COBB: That's right. Maybe your year.

[03:49] SHEA MCLEAN: I have to put that plug in.

[03:51] JANET COBB: I want to. Before you go farther, I want to go jump back, because we're talking about your army service was during the cold war. You were in Germany. You were a military police officer.

[04:00] SHEA MCLEAN: Yes.

[04:00] JANET COBB: And I think you rode that famous night train.

[04:06] SHEA MCLEAN: I wasn't allowed to ride the night train. The train. Everybody's familiar with checkpoint Charlie on the east german border. Well, this was the late eighties, when that border was still in place, and I was attached to the 95th MP's out of Mannheim. And we, at the time, were patrolling the first checkpoint, which was checkpoint Alpha, which is in Helmstead, Germany. And checkpoint Bravo would have been, as you get into Berlin at the end of that corridor, and then checkpoint Charlie, everybody knows about which is east and West Berlin. We weren't allowed to ride that train because our security only allowed us our clearance, rather allowed us to work our checkpoint and our checkpoint only. But I was. I'd love to say I was one of the guys that stood on at the gate and raised the army and let everybody through. But we patrolled along the border itself. I see, which is so unlike what you see in the movies, you know, with the barbed wire and everything. It was much more spread out. Border. Sometimes East Germans didn't mark the border on the border. Sometimes they would mark it well within east Germany. But we patrolled that area between Helmstadt and Goslereghen, and that was kind of a neat thing to do and look back on. But those days are long gone, thankfully.

[05:36] JANET COBB: And we don't talk about the cold War much, but I thought I'd throw that in. You're not that old, but you are a cold War veteran, so you went to Florida state to pursue your dream, and you studied history there.

[05:48] SHEA MCLEAN: History and marine archaeology. One of those things I love to dive. And I simply married the two, history and diving, and got my master's degree at Florida State and set off on a career in maritime archaeology.

[06:07] JANET COBB: You've had some really neat locations where you have worked and worked in that field, and I know you may mention those, but the one that I'm familiar with is your work as a marine archaeologist with the team that discovered and brought up and curated the CSS Hunley, the confederate submarine that could not be located in Charleston harbor for so long. And you worked it, and you and I have since seen it since you left and came to work for the park. We were up there several years ago, and it is magnificent. Tell us a little bit about that. That's special.

[06:41] SHEA MCLEAN: Well, interestingly, it was built in mobile.

[06:44] JANET COBB: Yes.

[06:45] SHEA MCLEAN: And a lot of people who have heard of the Hunalee didn't know that it was built in Mobile. And I love to talk about the Hunley. It's such a fascinating story because it involves all of the things that make up a great story. It was during a time of great conflict within our own country, and it involved a wonderful piece of brand new technology. In this case, it was a submarine, the first true combat submarine. And all navies around the world can thank mobilians for inventing the first combat submarine. So it was a very unique opportunity for me. And it's something that we mobilians, I think, can be proud of, because that technology, which, you know, anybody who's ever been on a nuclear sub today, and no matter which Navy can thank these young sailors who created this 150 years ago, this is during the civil war, the american civil war. But the significance of that, and I often like to describe it like this. This submarine went off on a certain day in history. It attacked an enemy warship, and it was lost, and it disappeared, and it wasn't found for over 100 years. And people, that's an interesting story. But can you imagine if the Wright brothers, who flew at Kitty Hawk that historic day to be the first successful airplane, never returned? And that historic airplane was lost for a hundred years, never to be seen again? Except in the case of the Hunley. It was the first submarine, and we found it 100 years later and got to excavate it and learn some of these mysteries.

[08:44] JANET COBB: You certainly came upon the brave men, and you said that the Hundley, in an experimental phase, had lost several crews. We've talked about that. And you, of course, excavated it. You came upon human remains, and that kind of speaks for itself. But you had the opportunity to look at some remarkable items, and those particularly that belong to the commander George Dixon.

[09:13] SHEA MCLEAN: Yes. And one of the things about this particular submarine, I'd worked on a number of wrecks before this. I'd started off working colonial wrecks in Pensacola, Tristan deluna's 1559 wrecks in Pensacola, a number of treasure galleons in the south of Florida, everything NASA stages off of Cape Canaveral all the way up to New England. Some of the earliest steamboats but none of them were quite the time capsule that Hunley was. This was a vessel that had sunk in fairly shallow water, but it was lost for so long that it was quickly buried by sediments. And when we found it, we were shocked to see just how complete it was. In other words, most shipwrecks, especially if they're lost in saltwater, they deteriorate so quickly. And there are almost no human remains, for example, found on these shipwrecks. But here we had one that was sealed. We weren't sure exactly what we'd find inside. And we found all eight crewmen at their posts. Can you imagine? These guys are. The bodies are still there. They're wearing the uniforms. They're at their post, you know, not in pristine condition, because they were mostly skeletal remains, but they had all their possessions on them. They had things in their pockets, personal items, combs, pipes, coins, jewelry, pocket watches, pocket knives.

[10:56] JANET COBB: When you say it was sealed, when she went down, it, of course, breached and took on water, but it was away from tidal currents, it was away from the ebb and flow of water period, so. But the hatch was closed, or the hatch was open.

[11:10] SHEA MCLEAN: The hatches were in the closed position when we found them. And one of the things I really like about Hunley is it's a mystery I'm not sure ever will be solved. I'm not sure I would want it to be solved, because as long as there's a bit of mystery, people will talk about it.

[11:26] JANET COBB: Yes.

[11:26] SHEA MCLEAN: And it'll always be interesting. From here on out, there's no smoking gun. The hatchers were in a closed position. It was filled with sediment. None of the sailors appeared to have tried to escape. And yet there are some researchers who would argue that there was a breach in the hull that happened during the battle, whereas other scientists would say, no, no, based on what I'm looking at, this happened much later. This was happened during natural erosion and deterioration, and they can't seem to agree on it. I think that's kind of a cool thing. It keeps it alive.

[12:07] JANET COBB: The condition of the metal. I think you found a coin that belonged to George Dixon, Lieutenant Dixon, and none of that deteriorated. It's fascinating.

[12:18] SHEA MCLEAN: No, because of the fine sediment. And, you know, this is what we have here at Battleship park. We're in the upper part of Mobile Bay, where we have a lot of very fine sediments. And you've heard this story about the battle ship, if I'm not getting too far off track, but there is this urban legend that the ship was sealed in concrete because of the condition that the hull is in. And it's the same thing with the Hunley. If you submerge something in very tight anaerobic sediments, there's no oxygen. It's no oxygen, no oxidation. So the same thing that's preserved the lowermost portions of our hull of the battleship did the exact same thing to another piece of steel, except much older, but it perfectly preserved it. And which helped when we lifted it, because one of the things we were very afraid of. What's going to happen when we all of a sudden bring this very heavy, old piece of steel that may have eaten through in many places out of the water for the first time. And we were pleasantly surprised when we got it into the lab. Then we opened it in a much more careful, methodical manner. We actually had to drill all of the rivets out to take off some of these plates, to get inside of it, and to find out that it was filled with this fine sediment and that the human remains were largely intact once we got in there.

[13:49] JANET COBB: And Shea it's the day before Thanksgiving. I'm rushing here. It's the day before Halloween. And to think about removing those plates and seeing the remains of those men, knowing they had died in combat during war, it probably just charged up everybody to figure out how to tell that story, tell their story.

[14:10] SHEA MCLEAN: And there are so many amazing stories. And that's what we stress at battleship Memorial park. It's not so much the technology. It's not so much the architecture, the naval architecture. It's the people. It's the people that make artifacts interesting. And all of these artifacts are based on human experiences and human stories. So whether it's one of these earlier shipwrecks to a world war two artifact where some of these heroes are still alive now, we don't have many of them, do we? I mean, you can probably talk much more about the people that we've met while and privileged to have met while working there.

[15:02] JANET COBB: There's only a handful of the USS Alabama crewmen who remained. Now, there were some. There were a lot of people that did not. Men did not join after World War two. My dad was one of them. While some men went home and joined the american legion or veterans of foreign wars, many of them did not. Several years ago, after I came to work here, my predecessor told me about a guy in Fairhope who came by one day and just indicated that he didn't have a long time to live. And he said, I just want to see my old ship one more time. And my predecessor Bill Tuttle said, sir, where have you traveled from? He said, fair hope. He had not even come to see her, the USS Alabama, after she arrived in the fall of 64. But he did, and he saw her one last time, so there aren't many of them left. You're right.

[15:50] SHEA MCLEAN: Now, speaking of that tradition and the heroes who served before us in the military, you have a very interesting story. Now, your father was in the coast guard.

[16:04] JANET COBB: He was. He was. I come probably like you, from a military family. I had two great uncles that fought in World War one. One killed in France in 1918 at Chateau Thierry with the Rainbow division, the 42nd Infantry Division, commanded by Brigadier General Douglas MacArthur at that time, killed in July of that year. And his brother, that was Hubert Dixon. His brother, Charles Dixon, was with the 6th Infantry Division. They called them the walking six. They walked all over Europe. And he fought in the Argonne forest. Horrific battle and was very loathe to talk about it the remainder of his life. Their nephew, my father, joined the navy in World War two. His brother joined the army during Korea. And my dad went into the coast guard in 1946 after he was discharged from the navy and served 20 years, retired as a chief petty officer. So my brother did not have any interest in going in the military. And I, like you as a child, was a history lover. My dad was stationed at Curtis Bay Coast Guard base. We lived in Saverna Park, Maryland, and we were always going into DC back then. I remember one time an aunt from Birmingham came and my mother, her sister in law, we went to Capitol Hill. We walked up the steps, ended through the great doors, whatever entrance into Senator Lester Hill's office, the senator from Alabama. And the receptionist said, would you like to see the senator? And they said, well, yes, we would have. And Senator Hill came out in his gracious southern manner, greeted them, talked to them for about five or six minutes. I remember it. And then we left. And I thought, could you imagine? Of course, after 911 and of course after, you know, all the recent events of January 6, that kind of security, those days are long gone. But I loved history. And being a kid in Washington, DC or near, it was a fascinating time for me. So I. My dad retired in 1966. He and my mother were both from Alabama. My brother born in Mobile and lives out an eight mile. When I got out of high school, I wanted to go to college. Didn't have any money for it. And the army reserve was recruiting young women to be clerk typists. And my mother would tease me and say, I know that you're never going to take home Ec because she was a master seamstress. She could sew anything and that wasn't my spiritual gift, she said, but if you learn to type, you'll always be able to get a job. This day, I think about her almost every day when I'm picking on the keyboard of the computer. So I joined the army reserve with four girls from a high school class. And now wait a minute.

[18:42] SHEA MCLEAN: Now wait a minute. You retired a major general.

[18:44] JANET COBB: I did, I did.

[18:45] SHEA MCLEAN: But you're telling me you enlisted as an e one?

[18:48] JANET COBB: I did. A slick slave private. But, you know, being in the reserve and through, I did 42 years total, you know, a normal military career is 20, perhaps 30. But as time goes by, you know, your mandatory removal date extends when you're promoted. And I was a transportation officer, primarily loaded and unloaded ships went over to Saudi Arabia after Desert Storm. And then these wars, the most recent ones opened the port at a shoeba, and Kuwait was in Saudi Arabia.

[19:20] SHEA MCLEAN: First iraqi freedom.

[19:22] JANET COBB: It was, it was so, you know, it was my honor and pleasure to serve. And the time passed quickly. 42 years is a long time. And I retired in 2016, so it was wonderful. And actually, in that interim time, I was working for Kaiser Realty in Gulshors doing real estate development. And one of my mentors, who I've known since I was eleven, Judge Tim Russell from Baldwin County, a battleship commissioner, asked me if I would be interested in applying to be on the commission. And I did. I served two years and then my predecessor said he was going to retire. He thought I ought to apply for the job. So I was very fortunate to be hired. And it is really the best job in the world. I get to work with Shea McLean and all this great staff that we have. And Shea tell me a little bit about your department. You know, we have the. It's odd. We have. It's a business and I'm running a business. We have a normal, you know, HR director and we have accountant and a staff accountant, comptroller, you know, maintenance grounds, things like that. But your department is really entrusted with what our mission is.

[20:26] SHEA MCLEAN: I'm the head of the curatorial department. And next to your job, general, I think I have the best job in the park. I really do. And the reason being because I get to meet so many of these wonderful men and women who served our country and get to interview them. I know you get to meet them, but I get to sit down, ask them all these questions in a very similar format that we're doing right now, except we do it on videotape. We get to record these stories and then share these stories. We also get to play with all the best toys at battleship.

[21:01] JANET COBB: Yes, you do. Yes, you do.

[21:02] SHEA MCLEAN: Within my department, we are responsible for the safety and security and upkeep and display, exhibit, all these wonderful things. And our park. Well, everyone knows we have a very large, prominent World War Two battleship, the USS Alabama, which is our main exhibit. We also have another very significant vessel, the USS drum. And why are these both so significant? Because both are national historic landmarks. And what a great company. We have two of these within our park. What a privilege. And we are talking about historic vessels which are on a par, literally, as Mount Vernon, as Monticello, some of the great places around the country, they are on equal footing, and we are fortunate to have two. But not only that, we have a vast collection of 30 aircraft, about the same number of tanks and artillery, and we're blessed to be on a very large 155 acre park. And how many visitors do we get a year?

[22:25] JANET COBB: Last year, we had 340,800 come through. You know, our benchmark year was 2019. That was pre Covid. We were close six weeks. Shea you remember, because I know that you and your crew broke out the needle guns and the 1949 paint chisels, and we did so much deferred maintenance because our guests could not come aboard. They couldn't even come into the park because all the museums were closed. And we fell into that category. But we got a lot done, and that the park just looks so, so much better because of it. Financially, that was a big hit for us, for museums around the country, around the world, actually. So we've rebounded nicely. But we're fortunate. We're right on I ten. We're right on highway 90, which is the causeway. And location, location, location brings people to the door because we're easy to get to, because we're easy to see.

[23:15] SHEA MCLEAN: And we've been around for a few years. We've been open to the public for over half a century.

[23:20] JANET COBB: We opened in, we opened January 9, 1965. And that is a story in itself. You know, speaking of both, the drum, the Alabama came to us in the fall of 64. Drum we acquired in April of 69. But the Alabama story, you know, she had been mothballed since 1947. And then May, on May 1, 1962, one of the local mobile papers, back when we had daily papers, we actually had two then had an article, and it said that the South Dakota class of battleships would all be scrapped or taken apart. You want to talk a little bit about what a battleship class is. That was the Alabama, the Indiana, the Massachusetts, and the South Dakota herself.

[24:05] SHEA MCLEAN: Yes. Most warships, even modernization submarines in warship today are in classes. And normally when you develop a new style of warship, whether it's a surface vessel or a submarine, they take on the namesake of the very first vessel within that class. The first within our line was the South Dakota. So that. And the ship that came immediately thereafter were South Dakota class ships. Only four from the South Dakota class existed. And Alabama is the last of the South Dakota class ships. Immediately after Alabama, bb 61, we were bb 60. So bb 61 was the USS Iowa. So the next class of ships was the Iowa class ships. Now, the Iowa class battleships were the last of the battleships. After that, there were no other battleships. Four Iowa class battle wagons, which, unlike the Alabama, they served a much longer period of time. They served up through, off and on to the Gulf War, which, you know, is great. They had a much longer term of service. But when it comes to, I'm going to toot our own horn here just a little bit.

[25:28] JANET COBB: They look a lot different on the inside.

[25:30] SHEA MCLEAN: They look so much different on the inside because those ships were maintained as modern warships, which they had to be. They had to be periodically updated. Whereas our ship, the last of the predecessor class, is basically more of a time capsule.

[25:52] JANET COBB: It is indeed.

[25:53] SHEA MCLEAN: So when our ship came out of service, it never went back into service. So what you see when you visit our ship is like going back in time. It is. There's nothing past 1947 and most of it's wartime from World War two.

[26:08] JANET COBB: You know, Shea in 62, when that article came out, I think it was in the morning paper. By the end of that day, a committee, a statewide committee, had been formed by three men in Mobile, Jimmy Morris, Stevens Crooms and Henry Aldridge, who was an attorney for Alabama or international paper. And he ended up being the first chairman of the battleship commission. They worked with the legislature, and an act was passed to create the battleship commission. We are an agency of the state of Alabama. But it said that the commission had to raise all the money to bring the Alabama home and to build the berth where she was. No federal funds could be used for that. And they raised the money. The schoolchildren of Alabama raised about $100,000 with their lunch money. And they got a card signed by Governor George Wallace that said that they would be able to come aboard the ship, come and visit. And in June of 64, they began to ready her. And in September or shortly after that, they put her behind two ocean going tugs, and they brought her longest ton per mile tow in history. Is that right? 5600.

[27:16] SHEA MCLEAN: And that was no small feat. That's right.

[27:20] JANET COBB: They got down to the area of southern California, encountered a storm. One of the tugs was lost. The lives of two crewmen were lost. Next day, they had another tug back out, and they brought her on down through the Panama Canal with about, what? Four inches on each side, very narrow passes, and up into mobile. She came in September of 64. And then in the meantime, the dredging had been done to create our 155 acre park. And on January 9, 1965, she was dedicated in a huge ceremony. And since that time, almost 19 million people have visited that ship in all those years. And, you know, that deck has taken a lot of wear and tear. I was up recently visiting the USS Massachusetts, her sister ship and the only two survivors of the South Dakota class. Her deck looks a lot better, but I don't think Massachusetts has had 19 million visitors since she was decommissioned, so. And there's a big ten up on the deck. Should I talk a little bit about. Because, really, you know, your department is. Is overall restoration and renovation, and let's talk a little bit about what's under that tent, what's going on up there.

[28:32] SHEA MCLEAN: Well, because of that national historic landmark designation, we have to. We are required to make sure that this ship maintains the standard of that designation and that it is historically accurate. You know, if you had Mount Vernon, if you were managing Mount Vernon, you couldn't just pick what color shutters you want and the type of shutters, you know, it had to be historically accurate. And so we're under the same restrictions. And one of the things that suffers a lot of wear and tear. Obviously, a steel ship in saltwater is not a good thing. Things are going to corrode almost overnight. But the next worst part of that would be wood, a wooden deck on the steel ship in saltwater. So we've been very fortunate over the decades. We've, you know. You know, they're saying they don't build them like they used to. Well, we currently have an 80 year old teak deck that has served us well over eight decades, but it. It's worn out beyond being able to repair it. It has to be replaced. What a lot of people forget is that it is the deck for many. But for we in the curatorial department, it is our ceiling, it is our roof. So the vast majority of artifacts that we have on display down below and keep in storage down below. If there's water coming in through that teak deck flooring, that is also our roof. And we have to make sure it is a priority for us to repair that. It is a, I believe, eight and a half million. Is that right, general? You're more in tune with the figures on the eight and a half million.

[30:18] JANET COBB: Exactly right. A three year project. And, you know, in about six months, we'll be through. We're going to finish about three, maybe four months ahead of schedule. It's gone very, very well. So we're very pleased about that. You know, Shea our park, you're the father of three young girls, and you know what a joy it is when they get out there and they tear around and have fun. Battleship park is, I think it's stop number 29 on the Alabama birding trail. We have a nature observatory. We have a fishing pier, a picnic area. People come out. I know next spring the city of Mobile will bring the kite festival back. We have rugby coming up soon.

[30:57] SHEA MCLEAN: Car shows.

[30:58] JANET COBB: Car shows. Battleship rugby has been with us over 40 years.

[31:01] SHEA MCLEAN: Military retirement.

[31:03] JANET COBB: Military retirement, kids playing soccer. And, you know, we, our funding is such that we are not in the Alabama general fund. We pay to keep the park open and maintain, through the old saying would be the turnstiles. So our admission fees, our parking fees. We were fortunate to get some money from the Alabama legislature, the mobile county and the city of Mobile to go toward the teak deck. But that's only been recently. Otherwise, the, you know, the commission has raised the money and done that. But to talk about those other events that occur there, most of those pay for space on the field, in the aircraft pavilion or up in the wardroom to have a kid's birthday party, a ship reunion. And that money helps us defray those costs.

[31:48] SHEA MCLEAN: And we do the vast majority of our restorations in house.

[31:53] JANET COBB: That's right.

[31:53] SHEA MCLEAN: With our money, with our technicians, our aircraft in particular, we have a small team of just crackerjack technicians that help restore those historic airplanes.

[32:06] JANET COBB: And, you know, sometime we need to probably put out even more photographs of what it looked like after the trauma of $7 million worth of damage to the park after Hurricane Katrina, because I think at that time, almost all the aircraft were pristinely restored. They were just like a matchbox, just jumbled up, sticking into each other. And I know that Mike Thompson and Rob Palmer even now, are continuing to work on those. We're closer to the end than we were, but they're great. And talking about the aircraft pavilion, several years ago, the Jimmy Buffett organization contacted us and we got the battleship foundation involved. And long story short, his father had been a I think a flight engineer flew the hump in the China Burma India theater. And Jimmy, of course, was a well known. The late Jimmy Buffett, now well known pilot, loved it. Long story short, he decided to donate two aircraft to the battleship foundation. One of them is a 1943 Stearman, a Boeing steerman, that if you've ever seen that video where he and Martina McBride sing trip around the sun, he flies that aircraft. And the other one is special because I want you to talk about how your department brought her back. It's that 1939 Grumman G 21 amphibian boat, and it's a flying boat. But you know what? You did some investigation of her tail number, and she's painted differently, and she looks different. And Jimmy was thrilled when he found out you were going to do that.

[33:39] SHEA MCLEAN: Yes. Aka the goose, the Grumman goose. This is a seaplane in Jimmy, also a native mobilian and lover of history, like the two of us, had these two very wonderful vintage aircraft, which he flew and enjoyed. And one of those two, the Grumman goose, which is a seaplane. It's the kind of airplane you can see Jimmy Buffett in. You know, it's something you can land in the keys, pull up to the local watering hole and have a cheeseburger and a margarita in paradise. Right? If you've heard any of his songs, you know what he was about. But you can see him just cruising up in this plane. And he enjoyed it. And he had it painted up in a very nice blue and gold motif. But when we received it, it was in the middle of restoration, and a lot of that paint had been stripped off of it. So what we had, in effect, was a blank canvas, and we just assumed that we would probably put it back in these similar colors. But we started to do a little research on it, which is kind of what we do here in the curatorial apartment department. And lo and behold, we found out that by checking the tail numbers, that this plane actually served in the Royal Air Force in Canada and served out of Bremerton, in the Bremerton area. And the best part of this is that it flew reconnaissance missions at the exact same time as the USS Alabama was going in and out of Bremerton for its refit.

[35:19] JANET COBB: Oh, cool.

[35:19] SHEA MCLEAN: So they had a crossover history. They actually served together, and we thought that was just the greatest thing. And talk about divine Providence. And when we told Jimmy that, he was so excited and happy, and when we suggested that maybe we should put it back in its canadian camouflage, I think his response was, well, of course, what else would you do with it?

[35:46] JANET COBB: And you found a terrific mannequin. Went online into an auction and found a royal canadian air force pilots, dress greens and a cap. And, you know, he's inspecting the underside of it, and it's just, it is a tremendous exhibit, as is the steerman. The terms of the agreement with Jimmy Buffet's organization was that he wanted to keep the donation a secret until a time of his choosing. We thought earlier this year, we, as you know, I put you on a rush, rush schedule to get it ready by March. And then we thought he was coming in June. Of course, then we learned after his death about his illness. But the morning of his death, his organization texted me and said, we know you've heard. Please put this statement out now to let the public, because people would be coming in. We put a. Well, Shea we put a bright hawaiian shirt hanging from one of them. We put flowers out there, and we put the statement out that his organization wanted to know. And it was something simple like, Jimmy Buffett loved to fly. And he donated these two aircraft, aircraft to this park. And so we're so honored to have them. And they're, they're absolutely wonderful aircraft. So the battleship commission, my bosses own about 30 of those. The foundation owns the two Buffett aircraft. The rest we lease from Pensacola, the National Naval Aviation Museum, and from Wright Patterson Air Force base in Ohio. So we pay to insure them, so we take care of them. But it's, you know, it's our honor and pleasure to be able to do that. So, Shea, we work with a lot of good folks, don't we?

[37:23] SHEA MCLEAN: We do. We're really blessed in that respect. We have just a magnificent team on staff. We work with a lot of similar organizations. We are very interactive with our sister ships and the Hinsa fleet, which is the historic Naval Ships association. And if you're not near us, and you should at least go and see a Hincea fleet member, because you will find something for everybody there, and you will certainly learn something by the time you leave.

[37:55] JANET COBB: That's right. Some of the folks that might listen to this may have children that have stayed overnight on the USS Alabama or one of the many historic naval ships association fleet members. It's a great revenue stream for us. We now have grandchildren. We now have granddaughters. We have Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, Cub Scouts, church youth groups, Jrotc, Sea cadets. Just a lot of groups like that that come and, you know, the chaperones are very weary when they get off, but they always have a big smile on their face. Kids of course have not slept at all. They've had a big time. And that's what it's all about to get the younger generation aboard, to let them know about history, let them make their own judgments. The world is a very complicated place right now. We are living in a very complicated time. I think what all wars teach us is that we perhaps listen more, give each other more time, more space, more respect. I think that works in everyday life too. And because we want these ships that submarine the drum in the Alabama to be memorials of things past. And hopefully, and I know you as a father, you want to have a peaceful world for your daughters to grow up in. And those men that fought in world War two, your dad that served my dad, the guys on the drum, all veterans served to make this a free country. So it's been a pleasure talking to you today. We're glad to be part of storycourse program today.

[39:28] SHEA MCLEAN: Thank you Mister general. Always a pleasure, ma'am.

[39:30] JANET COBB: All right, wonderful. We're just going to do the 10 seconds of silence, then I'll stop the recording. It's a.