DARE Takes Anti-Drug Theme to Sea

Eight-year-old Shawna Davis stood nervously at the Long Beach Naval Station pier, anxiously eyeing the imposing presence of the 10,000-ton guided missile cruiser.

The Hawthorne youngster, along with more than 40 other children and teen-agers from the Los Angeles area, had arrived for a daylong trip Saturday on board the Antietam.

But after stepping off her bus and into the line of waiting passengers, Shawna could only shrug her tiny shoulders when asked why she was there.

“I don’t know,” she said, staring at a ship that is nearly two football fields long. “I’m already seasick, and I’m not even on the ship yet.”

The reason Shawna and her friends were taking their queasy stomachs on board a Navy warship may have eluded her, but the answer could be found among the T-shirted adults who surrounded them.

As they escorted the children to the ship, Long Beach police officers and members of the city’s park and recreation staff wore distinctive black T-shirts promoting DARE, an anti-drug program.

Spawned by law enforcement, the program targets children to warn them of the perils of drugs and to show them there is an alternative to drug use. But spreading its anti-drug message with an ocean cruise and the taste of a seafaring life was an unusual way to appeal to youngsters more familiar with turf than surf.

It was the brainstorm of Capt. Lawrence E. Eddingfield, commander of the Antietam who said he was impressed by a DARE event he had attended last June. He suggested the cruise as a way to recruit his own 400-member crew for the anti-drug effort.

“We’re very much concerned about drugs in the area and the overlap in our own community,” Eddingfield said, “and we talked about how we could get involved.”

Once-a-Year Cruise

A pair of Long Beach-area day camps were invited to join family members and about 600 other guests of the crew for the ship’s yearly “dependent’s cruise.”

And if there was some initial reluctance on the part of the youngsters, that seemed dispelled during the 100-mile round-trip voyage from Long Beach to the waters off Santa Catalina Island.

“This is great,” said 10-year-old Damon Pinchen of Whittier as he stood buffeted by the sea breeze. “You get to relax and forget all about gangs and all that junk. It’s so peaceful here.”

Donald Stallworth, 13, of Compton, tugged at his Los Angeles Raiders cap and said he was in no hurry to leave an environment that was smog-free and quiet except for the roar of the F-14 Tomcat and A-7 Corsair jets that flew overhead. The planes were responding to a fly-by request by the Antietam.

“This sure takes you away from the drugs and stuff back home,” he said. “My neighborhood is OK, but a couple of blocks away, it’s bad.”

Donald, who sat beneath the turret of a 5-inch gun, stretched the word to “baaad” for emphasis, and his friends nodded, pitching in with their own graphic descriptions of the sometimes tumultuous neighborhoods back home.

But soon, the talk of drugs and gangs gave way to wonderment over what they had just seen--the ship’s darkened combat control center, the sophisticated radar system, the array of missile holds and other weaponry and the helicopter which had just touched down on the flight deck.

Dolphins Sighted

The youths also marveled at their sighting of dolphins, the ship’s store, the tiny weight room and exercise gym, and even the food.

“It’s like a little city,” said 11-year-old Dante Tucker of Long Beach. “I could live here all the time.”

For the crew of the Antietam, the cruiser has been home during extended tours to Korea, Japan, the Philippines and the Middle East. Executive Officer Michael Ward, the ship’s second-in-command, said participation in the local DARE program also is designed to help his own crew of young sailors resist the temptations of drugs. He estimated that drug use on ships like the Antietam affects less than 10% of the crew.

“All the time you spend working with some of these programs is time you don’t spend in a bar, time you don’t spend in a nightclub or time spent in idleness, which all can lead to trouble,” he said.

As for Shawna Davis, the trouble she most feared Saturday never materialized. Walking down the pier at the end of the day she was all smiles. She said she had a good time.

“I almost threw up,” she whispered. “But I didn’t.”