President Bush will address grads of the Merchant Marine Academy

The Merchant Marine's maritime role often goes unacknowledged.
KINGS POINT, N.Y. (AP) -- It is a U.S. service academy situated just outside New York City. Its graduates have fought and died in all corners of the world, and since Sept. 11 have played a key role in bolstering homeland security.
Not West Point -- Kings Point. Not the Army or Marines -- the Merchant Marine.
Even though some midshipmen acknowledge their school is "the redheaded stepchild of the service academies," they are hoping that begins to change today when George W. Bush becomes the first American president to address a graduating class of the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy.
"I think it's huge that the president is coming here," said Rear Adm. Christopher McMahon, deputy superintendent of the academy, located on an 82-acre campus 20 miles east of Manhattan.
"Anything that raises the level of awareness in this country on what the maritime industry is all about is a good thing," McMahon said. "Because so many people don't understand it is a critical component of our economy."
Kings Point graduates work as deck officers aboard container ships, oil tankers, passenger cruise ships and other vessels. Others remain on land and have become engineers in shipbuilding companies and work in a variety of port operations, including security, while some opt for military careers.
How it began
The Merchant Marine Academy was created after a 1934 fire in which 134 people died aboard the passenger ship Morro Castle. Congress acknowledged the need for maritime-training standards and passed the Merchant Marine Act, which created the academy in 1936. President Franklin D. Roosevelt dedicated the school in 1943 in Kings Point.
Nearly 60 years later, midshipmen watched in horror along the campus shoreline as terrorists flew jetliners into the World Trade Center towers Sept. 11, 2001. Since then, the academy has played a leading role in developing international training standards for maritime security.
"Shortly after 9/11 we recognized the need to enhance and emphasize the security focus in undergraduate education here," said Capt. Jon Helmick, head of the academy's Logistics and Intermodal Transportation program. "Our sense is that you can have all kinds of gee-whiz technology, but if you don't have people appropriately trained to interpret images, to operate the equipment and to appropriately target all these technologies, that you still have huge vulnerabilities."
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