Center for Seafarers Trying to Stay Afloat

For nearly two decades, it has offered almost everything a lonely seafarer could want: telephones, snacks, free rides to Kmart, and friendly faces with good directions and good advice.

Now, some fear Long Beach’s International Seafarers Center may have to close, a victim of neglect as well as changes in the shipping industry. The center, one homey link in a chain of such facilities in major ports worldwide, has enough funds to stay open two more months.

Losing the small, wood-framed gray building would leave thousands of sailors to fend for themselves in what can seem a strange and forbidding land.

And that would be heartbreaking for the center’s cadre of staff and volunteers who regard the seafarers not as clientele but as friends.

“We’re in a lousy, rotten situation,” grumbled Ann Fry, executive director of the region’s only nonprofit, nondenominational seamen’s center.

The trouble is, cargo ships these days are operated by as few as 14 crewmen instead of 50, and they can be unloaded in a day instead of a week, leaving little or no time for shore leave. Then, too, the advent of prepaid telephone cards, which allow sailors to call from any phone booth in the harbor, has reduced center traffic by 30%.

The changes are buffeting seafarer centers around the world. But elsewhere, these stations for harried sailors are typically funded by local governments and business groups, and by fees imposed on all arriving cargo ships.

In the Los Angeles-Long Beach port complex, however, many of the largest shipping lines have stopped paying a voluntary tariff of $35 per incoming vessel, which helps subsidize the center’s $125,000 budget. About 5,000 cargo ships call at the ports each year.

“If all the shipping lines paid their tariff, we’d be in fine shape,” Fry said. “I’m a New Yorker, so I have no problem smacking people in the head and saying, ‘Pay up!’ But what can we do if people just don’t seem to care?”

‘Helping People Who Are So Appreciative’

That question also has been nagging staffer Merry Joe Dickey. She joined the center in 1993 out of a sense of adventure, a curiosity about foreign cultures and the simple pleasure of “helping people who are so appreciative.”

Take the sailor who proudly spent $1,000 on clothes for his twin babies in the Philippines, then had his bags stolen while dining at a Long Beach restaurant. “He cried and cried, ‘Now, what can I do for my babies?’ ” she recalled.

Dickey and staffer Pat Pettit, whose grandfather was a ship’s captain, had an answer. They collected baby clothes from friends and their own grandchildren, then mailed a box of the hand-me-downs to the man’s home overseas.

A year and half later, Dickey said, “he strolled back into the center happy as could be, showing everyone pictures of his children wearing the clothing we’d sent.”

Then there was the sea captain who was rushed to a hospital one November after suffering two strokes and a heart attack. Dickey and Pettit visited him each day. When he was well enough to leave his ward, he enjoyed Thanksgiving dinner at Pettit’s home.

Later, “we found him a hotel and made sure he was comfortable, then arranged for him to be flown back to the Philippines,” Dickey said.

Among the center’s stalwart volunteers is port Chaplain Jack Goffigon, who “started working here in 1994, intending to help out for two months, that’s all. But it turned into seven years, seven days a week.”

Setting a stack of photographs on a card table as if they were a mound of precious gems, he said, “these are some of the hundreds of friends I’ve made.” He fanned the snapshots across the tabletop--dozens of beaming men and women of all ages, on their ships and in the center.

“I have eight binders of photos like these,” Goffigon said. “I make two copies--one for each of them, and one for me.”

A few feet away, a telephone was ringing loudly beneath a series of wall clocks showing the time in Long Beach, the United Kingdom, India and the Philippines.

Pettit took the call. Six Russian sailors had just stepped off a massive cargo ship laden with back-to-school supplies and holiday gifts. They needed a ride to a clothing store.

Pettit rushed to a nearby dock in one of the center’s pair of dusty vans. Within 10 minutes, the men were on their way, free of charge.

“I’ll have you back in an hour,” she told them over her shoulder.

“Most of these guys want assurances that they can eat, drink and shop in safety--then get picked up and returned to their ship,” Pettit said. “They deserve that, and they get it from us. So we can’t close. It wouldn’t be right.”

The center’s short-term solution is a fund-raiser Sept. 25 aboard the Queen Mary, featuring “fireboat displays” and what is being billed as “the first great tugboat race of Queensway Bay.”

Long Beach historian Elmar Baxter, a founding member of the center, said, “We have to raise about $75,000. Without that funding, we’ll have to close.”

In the meantime, the plumbing leaks in the center’s little kitchen, where the stove and dishwasher need work. A few electric fans could reduce the need for the air conditioner, which also needs work. A few computers would enable sailors to send e-mail messages to loved ones back home.

Sitting in the center’s almost antiseptically clean game room, Fry said: “We’re scrounging for clothes, books, videos and magazines--seafarers just love National Geographic. We’d also like to be able to continue making Christmas gifts for our seafarers out of shoe boxes stuffed with pencils, paper, soap, shaving razors, toothpaste and candy.”

Just listening to her made world travelers Harold Warfield and his wife, Gerry, shake their heads in dismay. The Warfields, who arrived in Long Beach on a German freighter while on a 50th wedding anniversary vacation, have made a point of visiting seafarers centers in every port they visit.

“Hong Kong, Singapore, Hamburg, Amsterdam, Malaysia and Savannah, Ga., all have great seafarers centers,” said Warfield, a retired Florida power plant operator. “The one in Puson, South Korea, has computers and a big restaurant that serves Southern fried chicken, beer and wine.

“All these places provide a wonderful service to seafarers who often don’t make much money and don’t have a lot of time to spend on shore,” he said. “Closing this one down would mean Los Angeles and Long Beach don’t care about their seamen.”

“And I think it would be a disgrace to the community,” added his wife.

The center’s doors open each day at 3 p.m. with the welcoming aroma of Dickey and Pettit’s freshly baked peanut butter cookies wafting a block down the street.

Inside the building between the Hyundai terminal and a ramp onto Ocean Boulevard, sailors wire cash home, play pool and pingpong, and arrange for rides to stores, even Disneyland. In a series of soundproof booths, they sit hunched over telephones, taking in news from distant shores.

Some just slump into wicker chairs on the shady front stoop and watch container trucks rumble past.

Those Not Paying Fee ‘Should Be Ashamed’

To Capt. Karsten Lemke, a vice president of the ZIM-American Israeli Shipping Co., the center is an indispensable part of the local landscape. Even with attendance down, the center, founded in 1983, serves about 15,000 men and women each year.

“We’ll do whatever we have to to keep it open, even if that means personal financial support,” Lemke said. “The companies that are not paying the voluntary tariff should be ashamed.”

Rudy Vanderhider, a ship inspector for the International Transport Federation union, which donated the center’s vans and $30,000 for capital improvements, agreed.

“The very paltry sum of $35 for a ship visit is paid by only a small handful of carriers,” Vanderhider said. “Yet, everybody is enjoying a huge surplus in cargo and revenues at the ports. Why won’t the money-makers give a little and save the day?”

Among the companies that have ignored the fee lately are Cosco Agencies, whose mostly Chinese crews are frequent visitors at the center; and Maersk Sealand, which paid for only a few ships last March, according to center records.

In interviews, representatives for both companies attributed the problem to accounting oversights. They promised to resume paying the fee soon.

Just last week, a representative from Maersk Sealand hand-delivered a belated check to the center.

As it stands, only the Port of Long Beach, which donated the center’s building, asks ships to pay the tariff. The adjacent Port of Los Angeles has chosen not to ask ships for the fee.

“We asked our clients if they wanted to be part of the voluntary contribution and they said no,” said Port of Los Angeles spokeswoman Sheila Gonzales.

“But the United States has always been a generous, humanitarian country, beckoning visitors, even undocumented aliens,” argued Capt. Manny Aschmeyer, executive director of the Marine Exchange, which monitors vessel traffic in both ports. “Why are we turning our backs on seafarers who have a hard, arduous life?”

He could have been talking about Armando Apostal, chief mate of the Corona Challenge, who said he had not stepped off his ship in months. “I stay on board because I have to. Only my men get off,” said Apostal, whose vessel was taking on 30,000 tons of petroleum coke, a pitch-black, sooty substance used in steel production.

As he spoke, Pettit was leading six of his Filipino crewmen down the gangplank and into a van parked on the dock.

“Where are we going, fellas?” asked Pettit.

“I need Levis,” one man said. “Sears,” suggested the man next to him. “Kmart,” barked another. “Goodwill,” ventured a man in the back seat.

“We have to decide, men,” Pettit said. “Which one will it be?”

“Goodwill!” they shouted in unison.

“No problem,” she said, easing onto the highway. “I’ll have you back in an hour.”

About an hour later, Egyptian sailor Abdul Wahab was browsing the center store, casually scanning the prices of toothpaste, cartons of Snickers and baseball caps.

His voyage began in Thailand on a German vessel loaded with cement bound for San Diego. Now, as his ship was taking on tons of scrap metal destined for Taiwan, Wahab was using a bit of free time to grab some necessities.

“You need a ride somewhere?” asked Pettit.

“Target store,” he said.

“Well, come on then,” she said. “I’ll have you back in an hour.”