30 Days of Giving 2016, Day 13 – Maritime Cadets Help Intrepid Musuem

Students from SUNY Maritime College spent a Saturday in October helping to preserve and promote The Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum this month.

The Intrepid is a decommissioned aircraft carrier that holds space shuttle artifacts, a fleet of authentically restored aircrafts, an out of service submarine among other exhibits relating to the maritime industry.

Forty students took public transportation into New York City to join the staff at the world-famous museum.

“There was a great turnout, and everyone was ready to do anything that would be asked of them. It’s the only museum of its kind and I think everyone knows how important it is,” said Matthew Crowley who helped organize the event. “We came in nice clothes but we brought our boiler suits because we were prepared to do whatever was needed.”

Groups of students worked either with the public or behind the scenes.

“My group was assigned with washing down and waxing the jets and aircrafts on deck. There was also another group that helped perform visitor surveys and another that helped the education department prepare for elementary school trips,” mentioned Crowley.

The students completed a month’s worth of work in less than a day.

Crowley said the museum staff seemed to appreciate how enthusiastic every cadet was and said that they would love to have more volunteers from Maritime College in the future.

Crowley is the section 6 chief indoctrination officer for SUNY Maritime’s regiment of cadets, a disciplined lifestyle program designed to help students earn a license to work on marine vessels. Chief indoctrination officers are responsible for maintaining discipline in their sections, helping the new cadets and organizing a section-wide service project.

At the end of the day, the students got to visit the full museum, the USS Growler and the space shuttle Enterprise.

“Everyone in the section was adamant about coming back again,” Crowley said. “You see our college’s motto ‘Loyalty and Valor’ all the time, and on this day that definitely rang true.”