Friday, May 29, 2015

Lots of events and hours at the IOWA!

Supporters and Crew:

It has been a busy couple of weeks at the Battleship IOWA, as I am certain many of you are aware. Our crewmembers had been hard at work in strengthening our role as a community platform.

Through our efforts, today Battleship IOWA has become a focal point for public education, civic engagement, and veteran outreach. We are proud to host numerous public, family, and charitable events over the past couple of weeks including the Navy Seal Special Warfare Family Foundation fundraiser, Music Under the Guns concert, Movie Under the Guns showing, Memorial Day, and Casino Night festivals. All of these events reach out to the community in various ways to help raise awareness for veterans and local causes.


A special highlight was the Seal-NSW Family Foundation fundraiser.  You can see pictures and video on our Facebook page (http://www.facebook.com/pacificbattleship). The IOWA played a central role in the event with fireworks, a mock airplane attack, and the firing of turret 1. We also had celebrities Gene Simmons, Sarah Palin, and Jim Brown on board for the event. It was exciting and I hear the Seal-NSW Family Foundation raised some much needed funding to support the families of our American warriors.

Photo Credit: Johnny Wu
We also hosted our largest Memorial Day event thus far. A special thank you, to the entire crew, and KRLA870 for a job well done in the planning and execution of this major event! We had a festival atmosphere on the pier and held the ceremony on the ship. We honored the service of our veterans and the fallen with this event and we look forward to making it greater in the future.

May’s Movie Under the Guns, featured Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.  We had over 350 in attendance for this free community night. Often, we get stories of how families that can’t usually afford to go the movies have an opportunity to go to the movies on our ship. These showings on the fantail help to create special memories. We are proud of our ability to serve our community with events such as these.

Photo Credit: Ross H. Tipps
The operations team has been busy with line adjustment, painting, event setup, and numerous other activities. As always, they are focused and busy on the job at hand. We are always looking for more volunteers and donors for the maintenance of the ship. Consider assisting or volunteering if you have the time. We will help train you!

A shout out to the security team for a job well done on Memorial Day! They did an excellent job with crowd flow, as well as identifying a potential risk. It was a definitely a proud moment for the board members present and myself to see the job you performed.

The tour team must be exhausted with all of the busy school tours and days we have had lately. Thank you all for taking care of the Day of Discovery and maintaining your patience during the recent events and rope movements. You have done a commendable job!

On the Sales and Marketing side, Group Sales has been hard at work with last minute school bookings and tour operator follow-ups. I will guess that Craig Post could use some assistance for any crewmembers looking to get into sales. The dynamic duo of Todd Caleca and VJ (when not busy producing all of the events above) are hard at work selling space for private event rentals. We are having a great year thus far in Special Events and I look forward to the growth in this department.

The Education department led by Josh Stutz has been putting in some hours! He has been focused on the Day of Discovery program during the week and Camp Battleship on the weekend. Day of Discovery is becoming a popular program and we all know about the Camp Battleship program. One of our goals is to expand Day of Discovery and this will require searching for grant opportunities that would be interested. More on this topic soon!

Coming up in the near future, we will introduce a few new exhibits including the Iowa Veterans Association exhibit and the Stick-Art panels. We will welcome home the Iowa veterans in August during their annual reunion and we will also see visits by Third Fleet US Navy ships, which are arranged by the LA Navy Days.

Personally, my June work plan includes our upcoming Board of Directors and Trustees meetings. I am also working on some cooperative marketing with our LA Waterfront partners. June will have a large focus on Membership and Fundraising, with a particular focus on streamlining membership programs and renewals.

Until the next post, thank you for all that you do and have a wonderful start to summer 2015!
Photo Credit: Jim Gauderman Sr.

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