Thirty years ago, bringing the USS Intrepid to Manhattan’s West Side wasn’t the most popular idea. Some questioned the wisdom of turning a retiring Essex-class aircraft carrier into a museum anchored at West 46th Street.
But Zachary Fisher, the museum’s founder, believed deeply in our military, calling those who serve “our nation’s greatest treasure.” He knew that Intrepid could serve as a vehicle to educate our city and our country about their service and their sacrifice.
Three decades later — and with the addition of more than 30 aircraft, the Growler submarine, the Concorde and, most recently, the space shuttle Enterprise — the Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum has powered the resurgence of the Hudson River Waterfront as a destination for tourists and locals.
The Intrepid has also become a living classroom for education in science, technology, engineering and math, with thousands of school children from around the world learning from a curriculum that challenges them to expand their minds and dream big.
And Intrepid serves as a stage to tell the story that Zachary Fisher envisioned: that of our service members’ heroism and the human value of their work on our behalf.
This month, we mark Intrepid’s third decade as a landmark on the Hudson, with nearly a million visitors a year.
Intrepid’s service career was born of America’s effort to win World War II. Plying the waters of the Pacific Theater, she was instrumental in such decisive battles as Marshall Islands,Truk,Leyte Gulf andOkinawa. Struck five times by kamikaze pilots, she survived and was kept afloat by her gallant crew. Her refusal to be defeated earned her the nickname “the Ghost Ship” from her Japanese opponents.
She went on to serve in Korea and the Cold War. Transformed into a ship of scientific exploration and good will, she plucked astronauts Scott Carpenter, John Young and Gus Grissom from the ocean after heroic splashdowns.
Always, it was the men who served aboard her that gave her voice.
Today, former Intrepid crew members serve as tour guides throughout the museum. Walking proudly along the decks and in the hangars and crew cabins where they spent years of their young lives in service to their country, they’re only too happy to recount to visitors their tales of far-flung deployments, recalling the friends they made and the reason they stepped forward to serve their nation.
Intrepid’s mission has always been to educate visitors on the “humanity behind the hardware” and to explain the role of our armed services in the world, then and now.
Our military isn’t comprised of tanks and guns, planes and smart bombs. It’s made up of people — hundreds of thousands of uniformed personnel who volunteer to leave their families, in many cases traveling far from home for extended periods.
Some don’t return. Others don’t return the same way they left. Many go back to war all too soon, and too often.
We are the beneficiaries of their service and sacrifice. As we commute to work, they strap on body armor. As we sip our morning coffee, they stand post at a checkpoint. As we sit down to dinner with our families, they re-read an e-mail from home that gives them the determination and the strength of will to finish the job they came to do.
Intrepid pays homage to the men and women of our military and their service throughout the years. It educates our past to inform our future.
We remain faithful stewards of her legacy and of Zachary’s vision, and look forward to her next 30 years of service.
Kenneth Fisher & Bruce Mosler are co-chairmen of the Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum. Fisher is the nephew of Zachary Fisher.