april 2025

In 1998, SLATER received materials from storage in Portsmouth, VA. Among the parts was steam kettles and the Hobart dough mixer for the galley. And with that restoration began.

Meals also began right away out of the galley. In May 1999, when the Michigan Chapter of DESA rolled into town for their work week, cook Bill Kramer served up three squares a day out of the galley and kept the crew happy. The ship seemed to come alive again with the smell of chow coming out of the galley vent. Nobody could resist walking by the galley door without stepping inside to see how Bill was doing. It was just like a real ship.

In February 2000, Gary Sheedy worked on getting all the original grills and the two original ovens fully functional with parts from the extra ovens that the Greeks added. In their place, refrigerator was installed. We also moved the potato peeler and cleared a lot of extraneous metalwork from the counter tops. The crew also installed new lights and receptacles. Doug Tanner worked on getting fresh hot and cold water up to the galley sink and worked on the drain. When finished, the galley was both more functional and more original. By the end of 2000, Gary Sheedy was working on pulling up the ceramic tile in the galley.

At the start of 2001, Gary Sheedy got all the tile up and Clark Farnsworth cut out all the old steel brackets and started to reweld the steam kettles or coppers and the potato peeler to the deck. In March, Clark and George Erwin finished reinstalling the three coppers, their splash plate, and the potato peeler. Gary Sheedy and Ken Kaskoun installed the condiment shelves. The whole place was still covered with a thick layer of dust from removing the tile. And the deck drains aren't open so we just couldn't give the whole place a good hose down. It took a lot of elbow grease, but Chief Floyd, Chris Soulia, Ed Sakacs, Chuck Marshall, Nancy Buxton and Julie Weidman brought the space back up to sanitary standards and made it shine.

In June of 2002, the gang ran into some trouble in the galley. Clark Farnsworth got involved in repairing the forward expansion joint. The galley was flooding every time it rained because the rubber on the portside was so badly torn. He worked with his old helpers, George Erwin and Bob Lawrence to cut off the flat bar covers. They affected a repair using insulation cloth and white mastic. Russ Ferrer machined new hinges for the covers, and Clark got the hinged covers welded back on.

In May 2004, the galley got an upgrade. Gordon Lattey was instrumental in obtaining a grant from Alan Goldberg and Claire Oesterreich to purchase two new Navy-style ranges for the galley. In October, Gordon received another $5,000 gift from George McNamee to go towards the restoration of the galley. The two new traditional looking standard Navy stoves arrived and were off-loaded and were stored by the Albany Water Department, thanks to Bob Cross. When season closed at the end of November, the plan was to bring them aboard and do a complete renovation of the Galley.

In January of 2005, Gene Jackey removed the last of the old ceramic tile that was under the old ranges and opened up the deck drains that were covered with tile. Doug Tanner and Tim Benner fabricated a new grease trap for the exhaust vent over the grills. They also worked on getting the ranges mounted permanently. Stan Murawski cleaned all the stainless steel behind the ranges and fridge. Clark Farnsworth fabricated a stand for the new refrigerator. He also modified an electrical switch panel to handle the increased electrical load we have in there with the reefer and the icemaker. Barry Witte fed a new power line from the Messdeck panel through B-1 so the space will have a dedicated circuit capable of handling the load. Bob Callender, Larry Williams, Don Shattuck, and Ken Kaskoun removed the old fluorescent lighting and installed the original incandescent fixtures.

The project continued in February but ran into differing opinions. Put Doug Tanner, Barry Witte, Gary Sheedy, Tim Benner, Chuck Teal, Ken Kaskoun, Bob Callender, Don Shattuck, Larry Williams, Stan Murawski, Gene Jackey, and Clark Farnsworth in the same compartment for a couple of months, and you may get some differing views on how things should be done. The plan would be to restore it as it was in 1945. But the galley has been one of the most interesting projects we have ever undertaken. Maybe Executive Director, Tim Rizzuto, should say "Interested." Everybody's interested in the galley. Tim had never seen a group of men debate so seriously such small details or give a job more attention. The original plan seemed simple enough. Just rip out the old ranges, install the new ranges, and put in incandescent lighting. That would be easy if they could just stick to the original blueprint, which was taped to the bulkhead for reference. But we had several serious "Culinary Specialists" aboard. They all had varying opinions about areas the galley is inadequate in. Take counter space. They all wanted more counter space. To make that correction, we extended the counter over the dough mixer, and installed the new cutting board there. Lighting had been a hot topic of discussion. The fixtures were changed twice, the location of lights a couple times, and a new light gas-tight fixture placed directly over the grills because "It's so dark, we can't see if the burgers are getting burnt." We installed a new electrical panel so we could split the load on all the new 120-volt equipment that wasn't there during the war, the refrigerator and the icemaker. Now the icemaker was going shore side to make more storage space under the counter. There was a big debate over whether the refrigerator should be mounted on lockable wheels that came with it, or a steel frame welded to the deck. Racks to hang the utensils were a big deal. Next, they will want hooks for the aprons and a shelf for the chef's hat. Even the clock got moved around twice. By March, things seemed to have calmed down. In the galley, the new ranges were all wired in and had been checked out. Stan Murawski did a great job of cleaning all the stainless steel and restoring the dough mixer.

Jump to December 2012, and the galley was a mess of restoration once again. First came removal of the stainless steel sheet metal that was covering the area adjacent to the expansion joint. The crew then ripped out all the sink drain lines to get access to the deck under the sinks. Earl Herchenroder, Gene Jackey and Don Miller spent a couple days using an electric grinder and a couple dozen cutting discs. To speed up the process, Doug Tanner decided to scarf out the flat bar that the Greeks installed to hold the concrete in place with a torch. He had quite an audience with Dave Mardon, Tim Benner, Chuck Teal and Gary Sheedy watching him. Gary remarked about their seeming inability to anticipate Doug’s needs as he lay under the sink and had to ask for every tool, much like a surgeon with an inattentive surgical nursing team. Then it was back to Miller, Herchenroder and Jackey who spent a couple days trying to chip out the concrete with our little pneumatic chisels. Sympathetic to their struggles, Gary Sheedy brought in a full-fledged electric jackhammer, and it still took two days to get the job done. Barry Witte had a hand in that, developing a creative method for using a jackhammer. All this gave us access to the steel bulkhead which is totally wasted away in several places. Above them, Ron Mazure, Chris Fedden, and Bill Wetterau have been scaling the exterior of the expansion joint and removing the 25 pounds of hardened roofing tar we had poured on top of the rubber over the past few years to try and stem the leaking water. Meantime, Tim Benner and Super Dave got tired of watching Doug, so they got a head start on removing the 800 or so nuts that hold the rubber and backing bars in place.

The project continued into the new year. On Saturdays in January 2013, Doug Tanner, Tim Benner, Super Dave Mardon and Chuck Teal all had a hand in grinding and cutting away wasted metal. Then on Mondays, Super Dave was back with Earl Herchenroder, Ron Mazure, and Gene Jackey to keep beating at it. Then Tuesdays and Fridays, Bill Wetterau and Bill Siebert took their turn. Doug got fed up working in the wind and constructed another one of his traditional winter “Man Caves”, a wooden lattice covered with a plastic tarp. They cut away an eight-inch section of the port galley bulkhead along the deck, so essentially the space was open to the weather. They cut more metal along the forward bulkhead under the sink and found a hole in the deck that is clean through to the engine room. Then it was just a matter of punching 400 holes in the new rubber gaskets, getting the spacing perfect for each one, and bolting in the new rubber. We were indebted to Ken McGuire Jr., whose father served in USS HAYTER DE-212, for donating all new hardware for the expansion joint job.

In February, the galley was coming back together. On 2 February, Doug Tanner, Tim Benner and Super Dave Mardon started fitting in the new steel plate on the port bulkhead. The following Monday, Gene Jackey ground out and fit a piece in the galley overhead where the deck had rotted out. That same day, Ron Mazure scaled under the sink and Super Dave continued welding on the plate Doug fitted Saturday. Clark Farnsworth fabricated two pieces of backing bar that Doug needed for the expansion joint and Smitty served chili dogs. Saturday the 16th was another productive day. The shipfitters made significant progress fitting the last pieces in the galley bulkhead and began the process of seal welding the new plate inside and out. The forward section was difficult to work because of the close proximity of the B-1 hatch. By the end of the month, Doug, Gene, Tim Benner and Super Dave pretty much had all the metal work done. After some experimentation by Doug and Gary, they figured out the best way to get the rubber gasket back in the expansion joint, and left Earl Herchenroder, Bill Wetterau and Bill Siebert with the task of punching 400 holes in the rubber and putting in the backing bars and the 400 nuts and bolts. Doug conned Bill into the project by telling Bill how great it was to work with somebody who didn’t whine about the cold, whine about sparks falling into his shoes, didn’t need to use the head every thirty minutes or take a coffee break every hour. Poor Bill fell for Doug’s smoke and put in several days of overtime with Bill and Earl to get the job done. Doug’s next big challenge was getting the sinks back together. All the drain plumbing needed to be replaced, so that project was in the works. Then it was rebuilding the shelving and putting the stainless steel sheathing back up and the galley would be back open for business.

March, however, Doug was having a lot of problems as the galley neared completion. The expansion joint leaked on the port side so all the bolts needed to be retightened. And the sink drains were giving him fits because they weren’t going back together the way he had planned because silver solder wasn’t taking to the alloy. In May 2014, the crew also took the galley vent apart for scaling and painting and put that back together. In October 2016, Doug Tanner started modifying a new watertight door for the galley.

In January 2017, Andy Sheffer & Tim Benner started replacing the galley sink drains. When that job was completed, everything in the galley had to be hauled out on deck, scrubbed down, hosed down, dried, and then put back in place. By March, they finished and by April the rest of the shipfitters, Doug Tanner, Super Dave Mardon, Gene Jackey and Earl Herchenroder, completed modifying the new watertight door for the galley. They also fabricated and replaced some wasted handrail on the portside ladder by the galley. When the weather cleared, they got the new galley watertight door camouflaged and the new ladder handrails primed.

Gary Sheedy sees things no one else sees. Like in the galley. In July 2021, he was looking up at the galley supply vent intakes, and decided they looked disgusting, and needed repainting. He started with the aft vent and with the help of Thomas Scian, they disassembled the vent. He had Thomas scale and repainted it, while he overhauled the closure crank mechanism. Then, they put the whole assembly back together.

In the summer of 2024, Danny Statile worked on improvements to the galley, in terms of a range guard and retainers for the shelves, finishing up in September. The range is now more authentic to 1945.

We thank all those who have cooked countless meals in the galley, from 1944 to the present day. As the saying goes, a well-fed crew is a happy crew!