January 2025

While SLATER herself is one large exhibit, the Destroyer Escort Historical Museum is also home to many other artifacts: uniforms, photographs, books, ship equipment, sailor’s memorabilia, log books, and war diaries donated not only from USS SLATER, but all other Destroyer Escort as well. All of these priceless items need a home where they can be safe from the elements and seen by researchers and interested parties. In May of 2001 the USS SLATER crew felt there was a need to create a space within the ship for these artifacts. It was decided to designate berthing space C-203L as the Special Collections Space. The plan was to clean and repaint the compartment. Then, clean and repaint the bunk lockers and place a light fixture in each locker, install safety glass covers above the lockers. DE artifacts were then displayed inside the lockers. Every other respect, the compartment will remain unchanged. The bunks will be rigged, triced up, the decks cleaned and painted, and the original light fixtures re-installed.

Tim Rizzuto decided to locate the DE artifacts in C-203L for two reasons. First, it is larger than the other berthing compartments aft and gives close access to artifact storage areas in the laundry and chemical warfare lockers, as well as its close proximity to the supply office. The supply office will serve as the archives and library for historic documents and books. Second, and more important, it gets it out from under the aft head. This logic harks back to an experience Tim had on KIDD several years ago when a pipe broke in the aft head and flooded several lockers of artifacts. Besides that, the septic holding tanks are directly below C-201L. Wastewater coming from either direction could spell disaster for priceless collection of artifacts.

In May of 2001, Dick Breil led a crew that began lacing the canvases into the bunks and rigging them. At the same time, contractors from a local firm, Glass Doctor, were installing the safety glass tops on the lockers. The Michigan crew started cleaning out C203-L and taking up the tile that was installed by the Greek crew before SLATER came back to the States.

In October of 2001, Ed Whitbeck, Pat Cancilla, Bernard “Smitty” Smith, and Earl Gillette have just about finished chipping C-203L. In November, Dick Smith & Chris Fedden joined Ed, Pat, & Earl in chipping. Tom Moore has started repairing the insulation back there. The electrical gang is working on relocating the locker lights to C-203L.

By January 2002, the weekday electricians, Larry Williams, Bob Callendar, and Ken Kaskoun completed the locker lights in Collections. The next month, in February, the insulating and chipping continued, with help from, Dick Smith, Chris Fedden, Ed Whitbeck, Rafael Suarez, and Dennis Morrissey. Tom Moore and Gene Cellini are in the process of getting a coat of white primer on the overhead and painting out the bulkheads. Barry, Gary, and Mike Clark were working on completing rewiring several circuits in C-203L, running the new armored cable.

March 2002 was an “all hands on deck” situation. Doug Tanner, Tim Benner, Clark Farnsworth, and Chuck Teal installed a missing watertight door, repaired all the holes in the deck, added stanchions and safety chain around the hatches to the second deck storerooms. The electricians, Barry Witte, Mike Clark, Gary Sheedy, Larry Williams, Bob Callender, Ken Kaskoun, "Rocky" Rockwood, and Ray Lammers restored all the electrical boxes, removed the fluorescent lights, remounted navy standard incandescent fixtures, installed all the bunk locker lights and rewired many of the 120 volt electrical systems in the space. The RPI NROTC Cadets painted all the bunk lockers. Kevin Sage of Sage Brothers Painting sprayed out the topcoat and lockers. Erik Collin followed behind doing the trim and touch up painting and painted the deck. Some of the crew made a little trip to Virginia to get bunks and mattresses for the space. Bob Callender, Chris Fedden, and Bob Lawrence went to work hanging all the bunks. Trudy Fedden laundered the sixty mattress covers. And there are still a whole lot of people that didn't get mentioned.

In May 2002 Dick Briel, Steve Borovich, Jim Ray, John Stefaniak, and Gil Rivette helped Pat Perrella re-install the glass locker tops in the museum space. Pat worked to set up a display for each ship we had artifacts from. These displays were accessible to any DE sailors who visited the ship. These displays were maintained for many years and updated as we were given additional artifacts. Katie Kuhl and Heather Maron each worked for many years, updating the displays and maintaining the artifacts.

In January of 2015, SLATER hired a new Interpretations Coordinator, Dave Pitlyk, who continued taking inventory of our artifacts. He has taken to collections like a duck to water. His involvement with SLATER goes back to 2006, when he began working as an intern while studying history and education at SUNY Albany. He now had the challenge of reorganizing the artifacts in our Special Collections, following the disaster we made of the space during the shipyard overhaul in 2014.  Drydocking took its toll, as most items needed to be removed from the ship. By the next month, Dave continued to get the Special Collections Space back in good order, though his efforts were somewhat hampered by the continued work in aft steering, and the anticipated work to the overhead under gun three. Older artifacts were becoming more organized and recent accessions had been added. Some replacement glass panes were bought and installed.

Dave ultimately went on to Bennington Battlefield State Historic Site later in the year and the reigns were turned over to Shanna Hopson (Schuster). By the end of 2018, the Special Collections Compartment had undergone restoration and a complete inventory over the last couple of winters, and now it was time to set up the space and ready it for visitors. Shanna organized the artifacts, dusted and vacuumed out the footlockers, cleaned up the gratings for the bottom of the lockers, and started fitting them for each locker. Because the lockers are not uniform in size, this took longer than expected.

In the Winter and Spring of 2019, Shanna placed the gratings in all the footlockers, laid down the archival acid-free lining, and placed artifacts inside the footlockers. Interns Austin Snyder and Evan Sanders came in to assist Shanna in setting up the displays, and getting mattress covers on all the mattresses. Gary Sheedy lent his hand, and inserted plywood sheets into all the mattress covers, so the artifacts have a hard surface to sit upon, while still having the clean uniformed look of the mattress cover on all the racks. Gary also went through the chains holding the racks in place, and made sure they were all the correct length, sitting level, and uniform in style. With new lightbulbs installed inside the footlockers, we were so close to be ready to open to the public. Gary built a display case for one of our most interesting objects and was in the process of making display stands for photos and plaques.

In December of 2021, Sunday duty officer and intern, John Epp, joined the full-time team and assumed duties as Curator. John continues to grow and organize the collection space. As Tim typed in Signals in May 2002 “It may not be as slick and high tech as some of the museums that you've been in, but we're proud of the fact that it's a museum built with HEART on a REAL HULL”. You can see this space for yourself on a Collections tour of USS SLATER.