When James F. (Jimmy) Mann received a $5,000 award from the union’s scholarship program in 1978 for two years of study, it helped him on the road to attaining his educational goals. Twenty-six years later, Mann has contributed a check in that same amount to the scholarship fund in the “sincere hope and expectation that it will help another young person realize a part of their dreams, as it once did for me in my younger years.”
He initially planned to use his scholarship money to attend the Berklee College of Music in Boston Mass. and did, in fact, study jazz piano there. He transferred to Newbury Junior College, also in Boston, where he received an associate degree in hotel and restaurant management and then completed his studies at the hotel school at Cornell University, receiving a bachelor’s degree in business administration.
Mann came out of the trainee program at Piney Point in 1973 and returned the next year to upgrade to second cook and baker. Between classes and colleges over a 13-year period, he continued to go to sea and upgrade his skills, working his way up the ranks to become chief steward in 1983.
The deep sea member then took the position of fleet commissary manager with Sea-Land Service Inc., which involved managing a 42-ship feeding and steward department operation.
At the same time, he shared his food service management skills with the steward upgraders at the Paul Hall Center several times a year. A memorable moment for Mann came when in 1989, SIU President Michael Sacco awarded him with an honorary steward recertification certificate for all his work with the school.
Mann now has his own company, Mari-Serve Network Inc.—a steward department management and consulting firm in San Leandro, Calif.—and also works full time as supervisor of vessel operations with Matson Navigation Co., an SIU-contracted operator, where he has been for 11 years.
The former Seafarer continues to view his association with the SIU as “nothing short of a wonderful experience in life. That experience has included many great memories, a college scholarship, education and training opportunities and enduring friendships that have lasted to this day,” he wrote in a note accompanying the check.
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