When Betty Smith started working at the new maritime training facility in Piney Point, Md. in 1968, she knew almost nothing about the merchant marine and had only short-term plans to stay there.“I thought a Seafarer was like Captain Hook, and I was only going to spend a few months here,” Smith recalled last month at the Paul Hall Center for Maritime Training and Education. “You could say things didn’t happen that way.”
In fact, she became a fixture at the school—which opened in 1967—and a friend to countless Seafarers for the next 35 years. Before retiring in late June, Smith had tackled a number of jobs through the years, but spent most of her time from the mid-1970s on trainee administration and the port agent’s office.
“Betty genuinely cared about the trainees and the rest of the students, and it showed in her work,” noted Don Nolan, vice president of the Paul Hall Center. “With her, going ‘above and beyond’ was the norm. She did a great job and she absolutely will be missed.”
Born in nearby Valley Lee, Md., Smith said the school’s early days were challenging. In its infancy, the Paul Hall Center had only a few, modest facilities and a bare bones curriculum. For students and staff alike, rounding the campus into shape was a shared task. As the late SIU historian John Bunker once noted, the first groups of trainees “learned more about driving nails, driving trucks, shoveling dirt and laying sod than they did about tying knots and making splices.”
Smith didn’t hesitate to pitch in wherever needed. “You really didn’t have one job back then. It was a case of doing whatever needed to be done, and it often meant learning as you went along,” she said.
Today, she is proud of how far the school has progressed. Hailed as a model of labor-management cooperation, the Paul Hall Center features world-class facilities and training equipment, plus a thoroughly comprehensive vocational curriculum as well as academic support.
“It’s really amazing to see the way the school has expanded and improved,” she said. “As far as I’m concerned, it’s second to none.”
The students themselves are different, too, Smith noted. “I think the kids today are more computer-minded and more likely to question things. Back then, some of the apprentices started when they were 16 years old….”
Looking ahead, Smith plans to take it easy “for a couple of months,” then travel to visit family in Michigan and California.
Looking back, she has powerful, fond memories. “This was my life: the membership, the trainees,” she said. “The best part was seeing kids’ eyes light up when they got a job. And then, they’d come back to the school or even call from a ship – those kinds of things meant a lot.
“I’ll never regret all the small favors I did for them,” Smith continued. “I enjoy helping people, doing for people. Based on the reactions I’ve gotten from people when they find out I’m retiring, it leads me to believe I’ve done something right over the years.”
She concluded, “I want to say thanks to Don Nolan and the staff, and also to (SIU President) Mike Sacco, who’s been wonderful to me. And to the membership, I will thoroughly miss you call. God bless each and every one of you.”
Printer Friendly Page