Dr. Ben Labaree, [applause, garbled speech]
started bringing students down to Mystic in
the middle of winter for January term, and
they were delving into maritime history, collections
that the Mystic Seaport Museum had.
TOM VAN WINKLE: As the story goes, they
were on their way back to
Williamstown for the next semester and they ended up stopping at a Dunkin Donuts.
Students were whining to Ben about wanting to continue and spend an entire semester
at Williams-Mystic.
His response was, "well you can’t just
study history
the entire semester", and so what the students did is they proposed to Ben that they have courses
and that they all should be focused on the sea.
And so, they wrote all those ideas down on
a napkin and that’s how Williams-Mystic began.
Since then, the program has evolved to the
point where we have 1,700 alumni
and we have an amazing alumni network.
And walk across the street to the Mystic Seaport Museum and there are a number of Williams-Mystic alumni
who were so impacted by their experience here that they have dedicated their entire
professional life to working with or on the
sea.
SUSAN FUNK: The head of the history department at Bates College had said that this program sounded so well suited to me
and that anything that Ben Labaree as the director did
was bound to be a really high quality, life changing, and remarkable experience
and I just barely got in under the wire to be able to be part of the first class in the fall of 1977,
and he was so right.
It is an incredible way to spend a semester.
TOM VAN WINKLE: Students end up studying our coasts and oceans
looking at similar topics and issues through multiple lenses:
science, literature, history, policy. And they’re realizing how complex
problems like climate change,
commerce,
and how species migrate around the world in the ocean
and the impacts that those kinds of things have on our globe.
SUSAN FUNK: For me, the most transformative element was that it taught us all to think expansively.
They taught us to work in such ways that we’ve applied these basic concepts of interdisciplinary and experiential learning to our professions.
TOM VAN WINKLE: Williams-Mystic is a seventeen-week semester.
They arrive and go through a short orientation,
then head off to sea
And the purpose of that is to experience life at sea as a sailor,
to learn what it means to be a member of a
crew.
The ships we use are our partner institution's.
SUSAN FUNK: It’s just a totally immersive experience
where you read about something that's happening in the news related to the oceans
and then you encounter it first hand on these incredible field trips.
And you don’t only encounter it, you also
have the faculty to guide you through this
exploration of contemporary issues as well
as looking at history and literature.
TOM VAN WINKLE: As the faculty and staff, we’re preparing them to compare the ecosystem here in Mystic and in this estuary
with the West Coast ecosystem. In California,
the Pacific Northwest, in Alaska,
Southern Louisiana.
And students then end up grappling with those heartfelt challenges that our coasts and oceans are presenting to those individuals as a result of climate change,
land loss, and other issues.
After that experience, they bring back what they’ve learned from their field seminars and they are applying what they've learned to their work back here in Mystic.
The Mystic Seaport Museum is an operating shipyard and museum space that is absolutely gorgeous.
SUSAN FUNK: If you can picture yourself
onboard the Charles W. Morgan, the last remaining whale ship, reading Moby-Dick,
that really is a very different kind of experience than sitting in a study hall and reading Moby-Dick.
TOM VAN WINKLE: And then on top of that, students will be focused on their primary research in science,
perhaps looking at microplastics in shore birds in the morning
and collecting data.
And then in the afternoon they’re banging
on hot metal in the shipsmith’s Driggs building.
And where else can you balance that cognitive experience with physical?
Williams-Mystic has a consortium of schools that send students to Williams-Mystic because they recognize the power and academic rigor of the program.
SUSAN FUNK: And now, for me, in a leadership role at Mystic Seaport, I realize how valuable this program is to the museum,
as well as to the students and to Williams College.
TOM VAN WINKLE: I think that the Walter
Cronkite Award that Williams-Mystic is receiving
is an acknowledgement of an amazing idea,
from an amazing educator, Ben Labaree, who had a vision for what a transformational experience could be.
SUSAN FUNK: When students are on campus you can just feel it.
Something that changes lives, that expands their vision, and creates friendships and relationships that are lifelong.
[cheering and applause]
HOST: Ok
[cheering and applause]
So
[cheering and applause]
So now I’ve got a voice recording of Steve White.
[laughing]
I’d like to introduce Thomas Crowley, Chairman and CEO of Crowley Maritime Corporation,
and a staunch supporter of the maritime industry with a fleet of more than 300 vessels.
Consider this, consisting of RoRo vessels, LoLo vessels,
tankers, articulated tug barges, American-built tugboats.
American-built tugboats, I like that.
Heavy lift flat-deck barges all utilizing
the best technology available.
He received the 2018 Silver Bell Humanitarian Award from the Seaman’s Church Institute,
and Tom, now you get to make the presentation.
[applause and cheering]
THOMAS CROWLEY: Well, I’ll be very quick, but I just want to say how proud.
Our company’s had a relationship with the
Williams-Mystic program for many years now,
and the story that our industry has is really tough to tell.
I think that it’s so important for us to have outreach programs like this to introduce our industry to young people so that they understand it.
We don’t see it every day, it’s not something
that’s in front of us or something that’s
easy to experience,
and when I was presented with the story of
the school and the Williams-Mystic Program,
I thought this would be a wonderful opportunity
for us to support students across the country
that have an interest in maritime, want to
spend the time and really delve into not just
the history, but the future.
And I’m really proud to be a part of that
and the alumni group is, as you can see here a moment ago
incredibly strong
and we’re just so proud to have helped in
any way we can to tell them the story and
show them the experience of what maritime means to this country and what opportunities
exist out there for each one of them to explore and find in their life ahead.
So, it’s been a real honor to experience
these kids firsthand and our company,
you saw our tugboat up there,
we give them a ride around San Francisco Bay or Puget Sound up there and we show them our
industry from the other side.
And we’re really proud to be a part of that
and it’s a real honor for me to present
this award tonight.
[applause and cheering]
I think Tom Van Winkle and Ben Labaree (Jr.) are going to come accept the award.
[applause]
[applause]
STEVE WHITE: Good evening everybody, I’m Steve White, President and CEO of the
Mystic Seaport Museum,
we’d like to present this Ships of Glass
of the Charles W. Morgan, our iconic symbol of the museum,
to Ben and to Williams-Mystic in honor of
all that your dad did for this remarkable program.
Thank you so much.
[applause]
DUKES LOVE: Just very briefly, because
this is a very tightly held schedule.
I’m Dukes Love, Provost and Professor of
Economics at Williams College.
I just wanted to say just how fundamentally
important this program has been both to our
students and all who participate.
It is an amazing distillation of a liberal
arts experience and incredibly has produced
even more devoted alums of the program than we may have even at Williams, so thank you
[cheering and applause]
STEVE WHITE: and to the 1,700 plus and
counting alumni who distinguish themselves
around this country as a result of this truly
interdisciplinary and remarkable program,
you are the leaders today and the leaders of tomorrow. Thanks to Williams-Mystic. Thanks to all of you.
Well done everybody.
[cheering and applause]
HOST (to Tom Van Winkle): You’re part of this?
You’re going to speak?
TOM VAN WINKLE: Yeah
HOST: Well come on up.
[laughing]
TOM VAN WINKLE: Jim and Rob, come on up.
On behalf of Williams-Mystic we are deeply
thankful to the National Maritime Historical Society.
Our gratitude extends to so many:
partners, friends, experts over the last 42 years.
To the Mystic Seaport Museum and Williams College for stepping in to an arena of collaboration few institutions dare to go.
To Walter Brown and the Doherty Foundation.
To alumni unlike any other.
To our partners, Tom Crowley and the Crowley Maritime Corporation,
Peg Brandon and the Sea Education Association,
to generations of Williams-Mystic faculty
and staff,
to Williams-Mystic Alumni Council members, maritime skills instructors, and field seminar experts.
A remarkable “it takes a village” effort.
Williams-Mystic was co-created by students and a visionary history professor, Dr. Benjamin Labaree.
On a Dunkin Donuts napkin as the video said.
An educator who gave up his tenured career and risked everything to create something beautiful.
And oh, how beautiful it is, and was,
and will be.
Break-the-mold educational genius is often deceptively simple.
Read Ben’s description of Williams-Mystic
on the page in the brochure, second page, top of it.
[note: see video description for Ben's words]
Hidden in those words is genius that was relevant in 1977 and cutting edge in 2019.
With your support, we will continue to transform world-views and inspire future leaders like you.
My fellow shipmates, I’ve asked two additional people to share this message.
And I now invite Dr. James T. Carlton,
Director Emeritus and internationally renowned marine ecologist to the podium, and also good friend.
[applause]
JAMES CARLTON: Thank you Tom, and thanks to the National Maritime Historical Society.
Since 1977 the Williams-Mystic program has successfully strived to fill one of the great gaps in American education:
the importance of the world’s oceans to
the past, present, and future of human history
and human endeavor.
Through a sophisticated interdisciplinary
curriculum that
has sought to seek the threads that bind across
the humanities and sciences,
our core mission has remained the same.
Even as we have grown, enhanced, and adapted,
we seek to create citizens who will be profound stewards of the oceans.
As educators, as scholars, as museum professionals, or simply as the best educated voters.
Walking with, and teaching their children
along ocean shores.
We live in an era of changing oceans.
Our seas are warming and the sea is rising.
And these changes impact billions of people who depend upon the oceans for their food
and their livelihood.
Changes in the sea, the sea that connects all things.
Touch all of humanity, as our nearly 2,000
students have learned
and, we hope, have learned well.
It is my great pleasure to introduce to you our Fall 1981 alumnus,
international business leader,
and my friend. Robert Leary.
applause]
ROBERT LEARY : Thank you, Jim.
It’s an honor to be here and be part of
accepting this award on behalf of the Williams-Mystic Program.
I was a student at Williams-Mystic in the
Fall of 1981 and the program changed my life.
In no small part that was because of Ben Labaree.
He brought out the best in me and he brought
out the best in others.
He was a visionary and a great leader,
not in a loud or a boastful way, but in a quiet and determined way.
He set high standards and he lived by them.
Great leaders have a vision, a strategy, and
a way to execute on it.
Ben conceived of the program, he was integral in constructing it,
in implementing it, and in operating it.
He turned his vision into reality.
Great leaders bring others along and bring out the best in them.
Ben brought others along and put the program in place.
He adapted it and he made it better.
He brought out the best in students and staff, all very different people that needed his attention and his guidance to fulfill their
potential.
Ben was a great teacher.
Great leaders execute and they get results.
Ben’s program has been a huge success, with now over 1,700 graduates scattered around the world.
His legacy deepened their love of American maritime history, literature, marine policy,
and the marine sciences.
Many graduates have gone on to take leadership
roles in maritime or marine science organizations.
But even for those who haven’t,
they have had an indelible mark left on them that connects them to the sea and to America’s maritime history.
Great leaders find great successors and leave their organizations in a better place.
Ben was no exception.
He found in Jim Carlton a great leader,
and despite the fact that Jim is not a marine historian or maritime historian, he’s a marine scientist.
Nonetheless, he still did a great job as that
next leader
[laughter]
and I admire him for his contributions to
the program.
Later in my life, I was honored to join the
Williams-Mystic Alumni Council,
the Mystic Seaport Museum Board, and we brought along several other Williams-Mystic alumni
into that family,
and became very involved and forged a great relationship with Williams College as well.
This has been a chance for me, and for all of us, to give back to all of those organizations
and I want to thank the Mystic Seaport Museum and Williams College in particular for their support.
I’m grateful to each and every one of you.
But, most of all I want to thank Ben.
I want to thank him for his vision, for his
leadership, for his belief in me and for all
of the people that have done the programs.
I’ve told close friends that I would walk
across the world on my hands and knees to help Ben.
So tonight, Ben, I know you’re watching.
I want to tell you I thank you, I love you,
and I want to let you know how grateful
I and many others are for all that you’ve
done.
Thank you.
[applause and standing ovation]
