Thanksgiving Wishes

The Battleship IOWA Board of Directors and Management wishes your family a safe and happy Thanksgiving.

We have a lot to be thankful for this year at the Battleship IOWA.  We would like to especially thank our crew and supporters that continue to make the experience enjoyable for our visitors.  In 2014, the ships crew has made numerous achievements from adding & improving the tour to our new Camp Battleship program.  All of this would  not be possible without the funding our loyal supporters provide and your efforts to spread the word of the programs we offer. 

As we enjoy the festivities of the day, let's remember our military and veterans.  Our troops continue to put themselves in harms way for us to enjoy our freedom at home.  We are thankful today for their sacrifices and we will keep them in our thoughts on this Thanksgiving.  We have a large number of veterans that are homeless and will spend Thanksgiving looking for a meal or warm shelter.  Let's remember the sacrifices these American's have made and do our best to make Thanksgiving (and the future) special for them.

Lastly, enjoy your Thanksgiving with your family.  Numerous crew members and supporters are going through difficult times currently.  Savor every moment you have with your friends & family and enjoy Thanksgiving to its fullest.

Thank you for your continued support and dedication!  Have a safe and wonderful Thanksgiving!

FDR, CHT, Holiday Boat Parade, and Thoughts

71 years ago President Franklin D. Rooselvelt and US military leadership was on board IOWA for the transit to the Teheran conference.  As many of our followers know, our curator was able to locate photos of this voyage last year during his visit to the National Archives.  We also were able to locate the butler record from the 1943 voyage to identify where his entourage stayed.  It is quite incredible to look in the staterooms where the likes of General George Marshall, Admiral William Leahy, Admiral Ernest King, and General Hap Arnold stayed.  To many of us, this is one of the most historic areas of the ship.

Today's crew of the IOWA continues to focus on bringing alive both the ship and stories of her service.  The stories are too numerous to mention, but are not possible without the dedication of our visitors and previous crew of USS Iowa.  Please continue to send in your stories and photos or post them on our Facebook page at www.facebook.com/pacificbattleship.

One such story that we will begin to focus on next year will be Victory the Dog.  Victory was the mascot on board from 1943 to 1949 and was a mischievous little dog.  Today, we highlight his voyage on board through the Victory the Dog scavenger hunt.  Next year, we are looking to introduce new education and tour programs for youth and families to enjoy the IOWA through Victory.  To learn more about Victory, please visit http://www.pacificbattleship.com/page/victory.

Stan Sato busy at work on the deck.
Photo by Ross Tipps

George Musulin getting
ready to enter CHT

This week began with a high level of excitement because we are very close to having heads on board. Potable water / CHT system testing and adjusting continued with the OPS team activating CHT pumps for the first time in 24 years.  I am proud to see the dedication by crew members that are focused on bringing alive our Camp Battleship program.  You can see George getting ready to enter a CHT tank to the right.  This is a process that requires confined entry training, constant monitoring, and two people at all time to prevent an unsafe condition.  Our operations team is dedicated to being safe and bringing alive the Battleship IOWA.  Not only was the team working on CHT but they have the water system live all of the way to the CHT tanks!  Way to go team!  They also continued there work on painting the berthing areas, maintaining the wood decks, fire alarms and sprinklers, and the daily tasks of operating the museum.  A big thank you to the entire OPS team for what they do.  I know we don't always mention everyone, but you are appreciated!

I want to complement the entire crew for maintaining the ship and keep it up to snuff.  This is very difficult to do on our tight budget, but everyone on the crew continues to pitch in.  This past Monday I took a tour of the ship from 011 level down to 4th deck.  A complete walk that takes quite a bit of time.  I have to commend the veterans that served on the ship for running around all day on this massive vessel.  What a work out!  She looks great and is under constant maintenance.

Not only does the crew perform the normal tasks of security, tours, administration, education, marketing, and operations - they also come together to help spread the word of our museum.  This is a difficult task in a populated area such as Los Angeles.  Thank you to the crew, our supporters, and members for handing out literature, telling their friends, and helping us spread the word to future visitors.


A few of the latest reviews on TripAdvisor highlights our commitment to a great experience.  We provide both a positive experience for veterans and families with reviews such as these:

"Had a great time visiting the USS IOWA! We took my father who is a Vietnam veteran and not only did they announce his arrival thanking him for his service over the PA system but they were nice enough to track down the key to one of the gun mounts so my dad could show us where he sat. It was very moving for him and ment a lot to us. Thank you for a beautiful moment!"  Tawnya Thurman

"Took my Grandkids here for the tour. They took a real good interest on the visit here and was amazed by the size of the ship and the history around it. They really enjoyed the video clip that was shown. I would recommend taking the family there and I would definitely go back as they open up other sections up."   jOrtega058

Reviews like this have made us #9 on TripAdvisor.  We have a long way to go to spread the word and increase our visitation, but every little bit helps.

This week in the Captain's Cabin, we had a few supporters of the IOWA join us for a special evening to help increase awareness among the donor community.  A few of our board members joined us in welcoming this group of people and soliciting feedback in our future programs.  It turned out to be a great brainstorming session that will lead to future relationships.  Thank you to our supporters for putting on this event.

On Wednesday, the San Pedro Chamber of Commerce voted to support our recent lease amendment for permanent shore power at the IOWA.  We have been working over a year with the Port of Los Angeles to get permanent power installed and bring us in compliance with SCAQMD.  Part of this process includes providing Business and Marketing Plans to the Port, which we did so this week.  These plans will help us stay focused and on track in the future.  We expect our lease amendment to go before the Harbor Commission the first half of December and we will need all of the support we can muster to show how important IOWA is to the Waterfront.

We continued our work on building relationship with potential education partners.  This week we worked with ITEP and LAUSD in assembling a guiding document for our future programs.  We are excited about these programs coming together next year.  Our program will have a focus on STEAM education and help expand our reach to youth.  We are still looking for donors to these programs and hope to have this solidified early 2015.

Please join us for our Holiday Boat Parade on December 6th.  We have started pushing hard for this event, as we light up the ship for all to see.  This will be an exciting event for all to participate in.  For more information, visit http://www.pacificbattleship.com/page/holiday.

In closing, I ask everyone to keep those crew members and supporters that are going through difficult health and family challenges during the holidays.  The past week has been especially challenging for numerous crew members and their health.  These folks are important to our crew family and I ask that we keep them in our thoughts.

Please enjoy the photos below by Ross Tipps this past week.

Photo by Ross Tipps

Photo by Ross Tipps

Tourism Cares, LAPD, Camp Battleship, and Veterans Day

This will be the start of what I hope will be either semi-monthly or weekly blog posts to keep our loyal supporters, crew, and followers updated on the progress of the Battleship IOWA and our contributions to the greater Southern California community.

Reflecting back on the past week and a half, we have a tremendously busy schedule.  As always, the crew steps up to the plate to deliver on time and with excellent results.  We were invited to present to the Orange County Concierge Association on Monday, November 3rd to discuss our different programs and services.  

LAPD Harbor Division

On Wednesday, November 5^th, we became the part of a set for a popular TV show on the fantail of the IOWA.  The operations and security team worked late hours to assist with the setup of the TV crew.   During this time, we welcomed the LAPD Harbor Division for inspection and photos at the pierside of the IOWA.  What a great group of officers!

The operations team hard at work on the fire line. Notice
the ship lighting in the back for a filming.

At the same time, the work of Camp Battleship continues with the installation of the fire main line in the parking lot going late into the evening last week.  As you can imagine, this is incredibly difficult to accomplish with active filming and the setup for Veterans Appreciation occurring.  The operations team went above and beyond to stay on schedule!  We also welcomed our new Camp Battleship Manger Josh Stutz onto the team on November 7^th from his previous position at the USS Missouri.  Josh has already provided some great leadership in setting up the Camp Battleship program and interviewing potential tour and education guides.

Jim Pobog busy at work on painting the weld marks

Our great tour guides giving Victory the Dog game to our
young visitor.

Our tour team has been working on tour improvements and one of the newest was the painting of the weld marks by Jim Pobog of where the 20mm and 40mm guns were placed near the foc’sle.  The tour guides continue to deliver a great product and are the primary reason for our #10 rating on TripAdvisor and the increase in family traffic.  We have seen an increase in Group Sales and Special Events inquiries the past month, we believe primarily due to word of mouth marketing spreading.   With our loyal supporters help, we will make one step at a time to become wildly successful in Southern California. 

We also executed our new lease amendment with the Port of Los Angeles that will help us move off of the diesel generator.  This lease amendment will go to the Harbor Commission for approval in mid-December and we will need the help of our loyal supporters to show how important the Battleship IOWA is to the LAWaterfront.  We will be paying the Port of Los Angeles back over 20 years for the infrastructure improvement necessary to provide permanent power infrastructure to the IOWA at Berth 87.  We appreciate the Port of Los Angeles staff for working with us to establish this power connection.

On the weekend of November 8^th & 9^th, we hosted our third annual Veterans Appreciation Festival and first Battleship 5k.  It began on Saturday, November 8^th with a special ceremony with guest speakers Congresswoman Janice Hahn, Assemblymember Isadore Hall, Councilman Joe Buscaino, and USMC Veteran & LA Mayors representative Robert Borders.  The ceremony was very touching and as always Doug “Gunny” Williams did an excellent job as chaplain.  Thank you to the operations and special events team for quickly transitioning out of the filming to the weekend event setup.    It should also be noted that Crafted hosted an excellent Brewfest over the same weekend and I heard it was a fun event.

Battleship 5k

We attended the Ontario Reign military appreciation event on November 8^th to honor the service of our military members.  As part of the event, they agreed to hand out our BOGO cards to guests as they exited and contributed $300 towards veterans charities.

Going into the week of November 10^th, we had a focus on the Veterans Day ceremony on the 11^th.  We had a great turnout of both media and veterans to participate in the morning ceremony and daytime activities.  It was interesting to see that the attendance was better on November 11^th, than the weekend.

Presentation of the Wreath

The Operations team continued its work on Camp Battleship and preparing for the big TourismCares volunteer event late in the week.  Wood deck work continued with our focused volunteer carpenter Stan Sato.  An enormous achievement this week was having water on board the ship!  That’s right, we have water!  We are very close to activating heads on board the ship for the first time in 24 years.

We continued to deal with our technology infrastructure challenges that include a permanent connection to pierside wiring and fiber optics.  Our technology team was able to secure a couple of ISDN lines and a possible install of a fiber optic line to give us a stable connection.  This will help our organization tremendously in long-term progress and growth.  In addition to stabilizing our internet and telephone connection, our IT team activated our mobile website at http://mobile.pacificbattleship.com and tested potential camera systems.  Our IT department is a hidden department on the ship, but is necessary in the overall operation of the museum.

Personally, I was able to begin a transition out of some of the planning tasks I have been working on such as the Business Plan, Marketing Plan, and projections to focus more on the strategic future and fundraising of the organization.  On Wednesday, November 12, I attended the LA City Council Committee on Tourism & Trade to represent our desire for a redeveloped LA Waterfront.  During public session, I commented on how important the Battleship IOWA is to the community as we are consistently rated in the top 20 of attractions throughout LA. 

We started working on our future education program with a collaborative partnership being established with LAUSD Beyond the Bell program.  Our initial focus will include elements of STEM learning on board the vessel and a possible ROV element.  We hope to see this program operational by the spring of 2015.  Board Member Craig Johnson provided an introduction to the leaders of Synergy school in South Los Angeles.  This is a charter school that is doing a great job changing lives of kids that didn’t necessary have a positive future.  We spoke to some of the students and it was very touching to see the difference this great program has made on their lives.   We also were the recipient of the HCBF grant to help provide the IOWA experience to harbor area youth over the next 6 to 8 months.

A couple of our California Board Members joined me in meeting with a fundraising consultant on developing our trustees board to become a fundraising board.  This will be critical to our long term growth and success.  Part of this strategy includes special events to welcome potential supporters including one this coming week.

The finance & accounting team were hard at work finishing the 2013 tax returns due on November 15^th.  Our 990’s should be available to view on our website by the beginning of December 2014.

TourismCares Volunteers

The week closed with both a filming and the TourismCares volunteer event.  The filming was a Chinese / American film that was staging its closing scene with us as a backdrop.  Every night provided an exciting event with the flipping of cars and car chases.  

TourismCares started on Thursday, November 13^th with a learning session and kick-off event on the fantail.  Numerous tourism professionals came to the LA Waterfront to experience the destination and help restore our historic sites such as the Battleship IOWA, Lane Victory, White Point, and Catalina Island.  The Port of Los Angeles and LA Tourism Convention Board also participated in the event to help promote the waterfront as a destination.  This was exciting to see the level of involvement and interest by tourism professionals.  

On Friday, November 14^th, they broke into teams and helped restore part of the IOWA.  Much of their work was focused on 2^nd deck clean up and painting.  All I can say is WOW!  This team did great refurbishment work on board the ship and we look forward to a long relationship with them.  Thank you to Sue Schmidt and the rest of the IOWA team for focusing on creating a positive event to help promote us one step at a time.

Please visit us at http://www.pacificbattleship.com or http://www.facebook.com/pacificbattleship