Thanks for the memories: Bob Hope students get eyeful of vessel
Published 11:14 am Tuesday, October 16, 2018
By Ken Stickney
Students from Bob Hope Elementary and Bob Hope High School got an eyeful Monday of the Bob Hope itself, a massive transport vessel that delivered some 1,200 soldiers and 1,400 pieces of equipment to the Port of Port Arthur over the weekend.
The Bob Hope is a “large, medium-speed roll-on, roll-off” vessel — an LMSR, a transportation officer called it — based in Everett, Washington. Built near New Orleans, it’s about 20 years old and is captained by Bill Spooner, a civilian mariner who has visited the Port of Port Arthur previously on the vessel, The Golden State. He leads a crew of 29 civilians on the Bob Hope.
Spooner told the 79 students from Bob Hope School — 28 from the high school, 51 from the elementary school — that the vessel weighs some 39,000 tons, a fact that weighed heavily on students who gathered around the veteran officer. He also received from the port and from Bob Hope’s students, who presented it, a plaque marking the Bob Hope’s first stop at the port.
In response to student questions, Spooner said a massive vessel like the Bob Hope is maneuvered with some of the same equipment on smaller vessels: a global positioning system and radar, for example.
Port Director and CEO Larry Kelley said the port typically presents plaques to vessels docking at the port for the first time. Kelley and Anthony Theriot, director of Trade Development, helped guide students through the port.
The Bob Hope cruised for about six days from Washington State to Hawaii, where it picked up soldiers who were headed to Fort Polk near DeRidder, Louisiana, for two weeks of training and staged war scenarios. It sailed from Hawaii on Sept. 25 and arrived at the port Saturday night.
Among the equipment were 20 helicopters that would be assembled and flown to Louisiana. Students gathered around a couple of the helicopters in the cargo area.
Kent Jones, director of special programs at Bob Hope High School, said the school’s mission was to allow students to “experience a part of the community that most of them have never seen” — the interior of the port itself — as well as the chance to see the ship.
“It’s also an opportunity to see different jobs, occupations, and to see people in action at the port,” he said.
Bob Hope has three campuses — two in Port Arthur, one in Beaumont — and teaches some 1,450 students.
“I expected it to be big but it was bigger than I thought,” Valerie Pastrano, a 10th grader, said. She said she expected jobs on and around the ship to be grueling, given Port Arthur’s humidity.
The vessel’s size also caught the attention of 10th-grader Cassandra Valencia, who said the helicopters, too, were impressive.
