Liberty Ships

Richard Stultz of Union Bridge served in the engine room of a Liberty Ship on numerous ocean crossings, and his love of ships continues today.Norman L. Waltz of Westminster, who said he joined the Navy when he turned 17 as a change of pace from his life in rural Carroll County, spent three of his nearly nine years in the Navy working aboard Liberty ships.They were joined by nearly 200 other Carroll residents aboard the SS John W. Brown -- one of a handful of remaining Liberty ships afloat out of a fleet of 2,700 -- at Dundalk Marine Terminal.

Theodore A. "Ted" Dietz, a retired shipyard electrician who earned the sobriquet of "40-Watt Dietz" from fellow volunteer crew members aboard the Liberty ship SS John W. Brown, died Feb. 3 of heart failure at his Severna Park home. He was 91. Born and raised in Brooklyn, N.Y., Mr. Dietz was a 1942 graduate of Franklin K. Lane High School. "He enlisted into the Navy before he formally graduated from high school and his mother received his diploma," said his wife of two years, the former Mary Bartlett.

Eva Pearl Miller, who helped build Liberty ships in Baltimore during World War II and later worked as an accounting department clerk, died of heart failure Wednesday at Frederick Villa Nursing Home in Catonsville. She was 91. Born Eva Pearl Ipock, she was raised in Cove City, N.C., where she graduated from high school. She moved to Baltimore in 1931 after her marriage to Joseph M. Trhlik, who operated the Pennington Avenue Ice and Coal Co. The marriage ended in divorce. During World War II, Mrs. Miller was a metal worker at the Bethlehem Steel Corp.

Frederick A. "Fritz" Glos, a retired machinist and World War II veteran who volunteered onboard the Liberty ship John W. Brown, died Friday of complications from leukemia at a stepdaughter's Perry Hall home. He was 89. Frederick Adam "Fritz" Glos was born in Baltimore and raised on North Port Street. He attended city public schools and then joined the merchant marine. He joined the Navy in 1942 at Bainbridge Naval Training Center in Cecil County and became a gunner's mate and later worked in aviation ordnance.

In 1941, President Franklin D. Roosevelt announced a $350 million emergency shipbuilding program that resulted in 2,750 Liberty ships being built in the nation's shipyards by the end of World War II. Because Bethlehem Steel Corp's Sparrows Point shipyard was jammed with work for the Navy, the company constructed a new yard on the site of an old Pullman Co. plant in the city's Fairfield section. The Bethlehem-Fairfield yard, which built and launched the first Liberty ship, the Patrick Henry, in 1941, hummed with activity around the clock during the war years.

When President Franklin D. Roosevelt announced a $350 million emergency shipbuilding program in January 1941, its goal was to construct in three years more than half of the existing pre-war merchant fleet. To meet this need, shipyards across the nation were expanded to meet Roosevelt's goals. In Baltimore, Bethlehem Steel Corp's Sparrows Point yard was jammed with work for the Navy, so the company looked to Fairfield, in the southeast section of the city, for expansion of its facilities.

World War II veterans and volunteers of the Baltimore Liberty ship S.S. John W. Brown will honor two national organizations for their service to veterans in war and peace at 10 a.m today, Veterans Day.The Brown's master, Paul Esbensen, will present the ship's first "Golden Rivet" Awards to Major Mike Reagan, general secretary and Baltimore area commander of the Salvation Army, and Donald Johns, senior vice president for Red Cross Chapter Services.The award recognizes their "outstanding services to the American merchant marine and armed forces."

It was enough to make grown men cry -- and cheer -- yesterday morning when the last World War II Liberty Ship on the East Coast steamed away from Canton's Pier One, traveling on her own power for the first time since 1946.The sight of the refurbished, 49-year-old SS John W. Brown created chatter from Baltimore to the Bay Bridge, said Bob Stine, a pilot from Black Dog Boat Works in Annapolis."The radios have been calling about a Liberty Ship all day," he said, recalling how the 441-foot-long cargo ship looked "gray and ominous, without a light on her" when she was towed to Baltimore in 1988 from New York, where she had served as a floating high school for 30 years.

Their passion is diving below the Atlantic to the wrecks of sunken Liberty ships.And their love for one another was consecrated in marriage yesterday on the deck of the John W. Brown, one of only two American Liberty ships remaining out of 2,710 that carried supplies overseas during World War II.In a light afternoon rain alongside Pier One on Clinton Street, longtime companions Karen Ellen Flynn and Douglas Wilson Newlon took their vows from the Rev. Ramon...

Jarvis T. Hughes began his career in a select Baltimore labor force of 46,000 men and women working around the clock.He just didn't fully realize he was helping win World War II.He built Liberty ships at Bethlehem Steel's Fairfield Yard where 384 of the cargo and troop-carrying merchant marine vessels were turned out, more than anywhere else.It was 1942 and he was on his stepfather's gang as an erector putting up steel in the graveyard shift from 11 p.m. to 7 a.m."I was 18 and to me it was just a job and they were just big ships," he said.

The last time Donald Halverson was on a Liberty ship, he was heading across the Atlantic Ocean, a fresh-faced draftee who would spend the next 21/2 years fighting his way across Germany, France, Italy and North Africa during World War II. A more recent trip, a leisurely six-hour sail down the Chesapeake Bay on the refurbished Liberty ship John W. Brown, a floating museum that has been plying the waters around Baltimore since 1991, proved a lot...

William E. Wentworth, a retired W.R. Grace project engineer who survived the sinking of a Liberty Ship in a World War II kamikaze attack, died of cancer Jan. 22 at his Timonium home. He was 87. Born in Detroit, he moved with his parents to Carroll County and was a 1940 graduate of Hampstead High School. He later resided on Belleville Avenue and became an apprentice machinist with the old Bartlett-Hayward Co. in Southwest Baltimore before World War II. In an autobiographical sketch, Mr. Wentworth wrote that he joined the Navy as a machinist.

Thomas R. Gibson, a retired rapid-transit project manager and World War II maritime radio operator who returned to sea as a radioman during the Persian Gulf War, died July 30 of cancer at the Charlestown retirement community. The former Joppa resident was 86. Mr. Gibson, the son of a Northern Pacific railroader and a homemaker, was born and raised in Minneapolis, where he graduated from high school. Mr. Gibson's interest in ham radio began during his high school days and continued when he worked at a radio station in Green Bay, Wis. By 1941, he had earned his radio license from the Federal Communications Commission.

Joseph John Carbo, a retired merchant ship engineer who sailed around the world 14 times and later put his engine room expertise to work as a longtime volunteer aboard the Liberty ship John W. Brown, died Sunday at Gilchrist Hospice Care. The longtime West Towson resident was 82. Mr. Carbo, who was born and raised in South Philadelphia within sight of the Delaware River and the ships steaming in and out of port, was the son of a shipbuilder and a homemaker. During World War I, his father worked at American International Shipbuilding's Hog Island shipyard, and after the war at the Philadelphia Navy Yard.

Louis J. Jerbi, a retired Social Security Administration adviser who parlayed his love of the sea and ships into being an active volunteer aboard the Liberty ship John W. Brown, died Saturday of an aneurysm at Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center. The longtime Phoenix, Baltimore County, resident was 60. Mr. Jerbi was stricken early Saturday morning while onboard the John W. Brown, which is docked at Pier 1, Clinton Street, in Canton, and died en route to the hospital, family members said.

Harriet Lanier, a retired medical secretary and enthusiastic sports fan who joined the effort to construct Liberty ships during World War II, died of cancer Dec. 16 at Howard County General Hospital. The Ellicott City resident was 85. Born Frances Harriet Allen at her parents' Riverside Avenue home in South Baltimore, she attended St. Mary's Star of the Sea Parochial School. She was the granddaughter of William Allen Sr., a state senator who was later a U.S. marshal. Family members said she grew up in a home full of friends and political constituents.

Harriet Lanier, a retired medical secretary and enthusiastic sports fan who joined the effort to construct Liberty ships during World War II, died of cancer Dec. 16 at Howard County General Hospital. The Ellicott City resident was 85. Born Frances Harriet Allen at her parents' Riverside Avenue home in South Baltimore, she attended St. Mary's Star of the Sea Parochial School. She was the granddaughter of William Allen Sr., a state senator who was later a U.S. marshal. Family members said she grew up in a home full of friends and political constituents.

Many of the Liberty and Victory ships from World War II were scuttled years ago, but thanks to William Harlan, pieces of the historic vessels keep turning up in living rooms across America.The president of Annapolis-based Sub-Sea Artifacts Inc. has spent 20 years turning wooden hatch covers and pulley blocks from the ships into tables, benches and lamps.So far, he has converted 3,000 of the pine hatch covers into furniture. He has 2,000 in storage -- enough to last until retirement.Mr. Harlan, 52, grew up in Indiana, but a scuba-diving expedition in the Great Lakes after college hooked him on the water.