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POSTED: Monday, October 20, 2008

Dwayne Herd joined the Navy 12 years ago to see the world, and it worked out just as he'd planned. His first duty station was on the USS Germantown, homeported in Japan; he's also been to Singapore, Russia, Thailand, Hong Kong and many other countries.

               

     

 

 

Who: Dwayne Herd Title: Boatswain's Mate Second Class and pier supervisor         Job: Supervises the U.S. Navy's daily boat runs to the USS Arizona Memorial

Now he is stationed in Hawaii, working as one of two pier supervisors at Pearl Harbor where thousands of visitors are ferried each day by the Navy's Arizona Detachment out to the USS Arizona Memorial.

Herd was stationed in Japan when he applied for the post, and was pleased when he was accepted.

“;We have to go through a screening to be accepted for these orders, and it's pretty in depth, and once I was accepted and determined to be eligible, I said, 'Alright.' I was happy.”;

Herd said last week he also joined because it's become a family tradition—both his parents were in the Navy, his mother's father was in the Navy and his father's father was in the Army. Also, he said, “;I wanted to better myself as a man.”;

Born and raised in Chicago, he was 19 when he signed up—an age, he said, when growing up and raising a family is “;usually the last th ing on your mind.”;

“;But you want to be a good father and a good father figure,”; he added, “;and the military really helped mature me.”;

Herd now has a 21-month-old daughter with his wife, Lesley Ann, with whom he lives in Navy housing in Salt Lake.

Herd is a graduate of George Washington High School in Chicago. He also attended Wayne State College in Nebraska and South Suburban Community College in Chicago before joining the Navy.

Herd, 31, said he will be leaving Navy active duty late next year to return to Chicago, to be near his parents, but he intends to continue with the service as a reservist.

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Mark Coleman: What is your job title?

Dwayne Herd: I'm the pier supervisor for all the boat runs out to memorial, in the Navy's Arizona Detachment. We drive the white boats that go back and forth to the actual memorial.

Q: How far is that?

A: Oh, I'd say, maybe about a half a mile. It's not really far.

Q: When did you get assigned to this duty?

A: I've been here for a little over two years.

Q: How long have you been in the Navy overall?

A: Twelve years.

Q: How long have you been in Hawaii?

A: This command is how long I've been in Hawaii. I was in Japan before, for nine years.

Q: Had you been to the Arizona Memorial before you signed on for this?

A: No, I had never been to Hawaii before this. But when I looked into it, I thought it would be a neat job, to provide this service to all these visitors—and to the survivors (of the military attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941), as well as active military.

Q: Are there many survivors left?

A: There are still quite a few.

Q: Do you ever participate in ceremonies at the memorial?

A: Every Dec. 7, the day of the attack, we hold a big ceremony.

Q: And what's your part in it?

A: Well, as far as my job, I'm still getting people out there on the white boats. But there's a lot more involved, with speakers and such. The U.S. National Park Service, they coordinate all that.

Q: What exactly do you do each day for this duty?

A: I'm a pier supervisor. I'm right there on the pier where the people get on and off the boat, so I look out for their safety. I also answer questions. Anytime anybody has questions, they come to me.

Q: Do you go on the boats?

A: No.

Q: How many boats are there?

A: For the command, we have five boats, but just two for serving the visitors.

Q: How big are the boats?

A: They carry 150 passengers.

Q: How many runs a day do you do?

A: Twenty seven. You kind of have it where a boat will leave and another will be coming in. So it's a continuous run.

Q: Are the boats usually full?

A: Oh yes, although at the end of the day it slows down.

Q: How long are the visitors usually out at the memorial.

A: I'd say roughly 15 to 20 minutes.

Q: How many people you figure you're dealing with every day?

A: Well, it's 1.6 million a year, so 150 people a boat run, with 27 runs ...

Q: So several thousand a day.

A: Yeah.

Q: Who are these people?

A: Anyone and everyone—people on vacation; there are survivors that come. But mostly, for what we do on daily operations, it's visitors on vacation.

Q: It's kind of like a visitor “;must do,”; yeah, to visit the Arizona Memorial?

A: Yeah, except every Monday, Tuesday and Friday we have a first, special boat that we take military personnel and their families out to the memorial to re-enlist.

Q: Navy guys?

A: Any active service—Air Force, Army, Marines—and that's how they re-enlist, to resign for another four years or however long they're re-enlisting for. That boat runs at 7:30 in the morning, and then regular visitors start running at 8:15. They have to watch a theater first, and that starts at 7:45.

Q: What's that about?

A: That's an actual-footage documentary about the attack on Pearl Harbor.

Q: Are you expected to know much about the background of the memorial?

A: I am, but when they go into history details, the park rangers are the ones that do that. But I answer what I can.

Q: Do you interact much with the visitors riding the boats?

A: Constantly. When they come out of the theater, they see me, and when they come off of the boat after seeing the memorial, they see me.

Q: Are you required to dress a certain way?

A: Yes. We are in summer whites, with ribbons.

Q: And your shoes are black and polished?

A: Yes, and a Dixie cup for a cover. “;Cover”; is a military term for a hat.

Q: And they call that a Dixie cup?

A: Yes. All enlisted wear Dixie cups.

Q: Do you polish your own shoes?

A: Well, we're able to cheat a little and we can wear a Corafram shoe; it's a patent leather shoe, which is naturally all-around shiny, and we can just wipe it off with a dry rag.

As far as the uniform itself, every morning we have to make sure it's in perfect condition, with creases, and shiny ribbons; the ribbons can't be faded at all.

Q: On the pier, are you under cover?

A: No, I'm out, exposed. But we have a dock lounge, where my boat crews can take a break, sit down and eat something.

Q: Are you like a supervisor?

A: Yes.

Q: How many people do you supervise?

A: Well, we have two sections. That way a section is on the water, and we have a section that's off the water. My section, I have seven people that I'm in charge of.

Q: And what do they do?

A: There's the coxswain, who drives the actual boat, and then a bowhook, and he will jump off the boat and put ramps on the boat, because we have ramps for the visitors to walk on and off the boat, for safety issues.

Q: Who are the other five?

A: Well, we're running two boats. There's a second crew that can relieve one of the crews for bathroom breaks, or to eat. So there's three crews in general. And these boats run seven days a week. That's why we have that off section. That way it's not the same people every day running those boats. We work a two-day-on, two-day-off schedule.

Q: What's your schedule?

A: Same thing, 'cause I'm in charge of my section, so I'm two days on and two days off.

Q: What's your shift during the day?

A: We get to our boat house at 6 o'clock in the morning. Then we do a boat check on the two boats that we'll take to the visitor center, and that consists of making sure everything works properly. We'll run the engine for 10 minutes, check the oils, the life jackets—we have 150 life jackets on board, and 22 children's life jackets.

Then from there, once the boats are ready to go, we'll change into our uniforms, which is that summer-whites uniform. Then we start our day. Like I said, the first boat run for us is 8:15, because that follows the 7:45 theater.

Q: And how late do you run?

A: The last program is at 1500—3 o'clock—so that gives us a 1530—or 3:30—boat run, which is our last boat run from the visitor center to the memorial.

Q: Is there like an office on the pier?

A: No. Our actual office is on Ford Island. And that's where we park the boats. After the 3:30 run, we drop the visitors off and we head back to our office, the boathouse, at Ford Island, where we store the boats overnight.

Q: What about when the weather's really rough?

A: Well, if our visibility becomes impaired, where we can't see, we stop the boat runs. It's very seldom that that happens. Last year it only happened twice. It was from heavy rain. But you know that cloud will pass, being on a tropical island, so it might affect only two or three runs, and then we'll resume when it clears.

Q: Do you have rain gear?

A: No.

Q: What about your summer whites?

A: They get wet. (Laughter) But we have a rain jacket we can put on. It's a military-issued jacket. After all, the Navy is a water service.