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The Record, North Jersey Online, www.northjersey.com

Thursday, February 28, 2008

The brains behind the use of salvaged World Trade Center steel in a new Navy warship is a Rutherford volunteer firefighter excited about seeing his vision christened this weekend as the USS New York.

NORTHROP GRUMMAN / SPECIAL TO THE RECORD

Rutherford native Scott Koen championed the use of steel from Ground Zero for the warship.

Her name is New York, but to Scott Koen, she is a phoenix.

The christening will take place Saturday at a Louisiana shipyard with a bottle of champagne smashed across her bow, which contains 24 tons of steel that once towered over Lower Manhattan.

Armed with air-defense missiles and two 30mm guns for close combat, the USS New York is designed for missions that include special operations against terrorists. It can carry a crew of 360 sailors and 700 combat-ready Marines who can reach shore by helicopter and assault craft.

“Eventually, the idea would have occurred to a lot of people,” Koen said. “I just happened to be at the right spot at the right time.”

FAST FACTS

• The ship’s motto is “Never Forget.”
• Commissioning will happen in New York City next year.
• Top speed is 22 knots.
• It’s two football fields long.

The right spot was the Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum in New York City, where Koen had worked as director of operations. And the right man was Bill White, the museum’s president.

“He had asked, ‘What do you think about taking steel from the World Trade Center and actually pouring it into the foundation of ships?’ ” said White, recalling a conversation with Koen from March 2002. “And I said, ‘Oh, my God. That would be unbelievable.’ ”

While enthusiastic about the concept, White said he had some reservations and wondered if the government wanted to keep the steel as evidence. But he fired off an e-mail anyway to Adm. Vern Clark, then-chief of naval operations in the Pentagon.

Several months later, the military tasked Koen with finding the World Trade Center steel.

Koen said he recalled an awkward and now-humorous conversation with a Newark recycler, who had a hard time understanding why a guy from Rutherford wanted WTC scrap. The recycler cooperated once Koen explained the military part.

Then-New York Gov. George Pataki also helped find World Trade Center steel, and asked the Navy to commemorate the terrorist attack by reviving the name New York for a ship whose role would include fighting terrorism.

The $700 million ship that would become USS New York was already on the drawing board on Sept. 11, 2001, but had not been assigned a name.

It’s the fifth in a class of amphibious transport dock ships, which are designed to bring troops into a war zone and then deploy them via helicopters and boats.

Future ships in the class will also carry names commemorating places struck by the Sept. 11 hijackers — USS Arlington, the location of the Pentagon; and USS Somerset, the Pennsylvania county where United Flight 93 crashed after its passengers fought off hijackers.

The last navy ship christened New York was a battleship whose construction began on Sept. 11, 1911 — 90 years to the day that terrorists struck the towers.

For USS New York, construction using the World Trade Center steel happened in September 2003, when steelworkers in Amite, La., poured molds for the bow stem, the first part of the ship to cut through the water.

Koen said the steel will lead the way for USS New York, which will cruise into waters around Manhattan for a commissioning sometime next year.

“To add the steel, it makes a phoenix out of it,” Koen said.

E-mail: clunn@northjersey.com

http://www.northjersey.com/news/newyorkmetro/WTC_steel_lives_on_in_naval_warship.html

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Associated Press – Monday, April 03, 2006

With a year to go before it even touches the water, the Navy’s amphibious assault ship USS New York has already made history — twice. It was built with 24 tons of scrap steel from the World Trade Center, and it survived Hurricane Katrina.

That combination of disasters gives the ship a unique standing among the 500 or so Avondale, La., shipyard workers building it, said Tony Quaglino, a crane superintendent who postponed retirement to have a hand in the New York’s construction.

“I think Katrina made us more aware of the tragedy in New York,” said the 66-year-old Quaglino. “One was manmade, one was natural, but they’re both a common bond.”

USS New York is about 45 percent complete and should be ready for launch in mid-2007. Katrina disrupted construction when it pounded the Gulf Coast last summer, but the 684-foot vessel escaped serious damage, and workers were back at the yard near New Orleans two weeks after the storm.

The ship was an impetus for many of the yard’s thousands of workers to return to the job, even though hundreds lost their homes, Quaglino and others said.

Northrop Grumman employed 6,500 at Avondale before Katrina. Today, roughly 5,500 are back on the job, working on the New York and three other vessels. More than 200 employees who lost their homes to Katrina are living at the shipyard, some on a Navy barge and others in bunk-style housing.

“Their dedication and devotion to duty has been, to say the least, epic,” Philip Teel, a vice president for Northrop Grumman Corp. and head of its ship systems division, told a Navy League dinner audience in New York on March 22.

“It sounds trite, but I saw it in their eyes,” Teel said in a separate interview. “These are very patriotic people, and the fact that the ship has steel from the trade center is a source of great pride. They view it as something incredibly special. They’re building it for the nation.”

USS New York is the fifth in a new class of warship — designed for missions that include special operations against terrorists. It will carry a crew of 360 sailors and 700 combat-ready Marines to be delivered ashore by helicopters and assault craft.

“It would be fitting if the first mission this ship would go on is to make sure that bin Laden is taken out, his terrorist organization is taken out,” said Glenn Clement, a paint foreman. “He came in through the back door and knocked our towers down and (the New York) is coming right through the front door, and we want them to know that.”

When terrorists crashed two jetliners into the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001, destroying the twin towers and killing nearly 2,800 people, the $700 million ship was already on the drawing board but had not been assigned a name.

Months later, New York Gov. George Pataki asked the Navy to commemorate the disaster by reviving the name New York for a ship whose role would include fighting terrorism. That required an exception to Navy policy of assigning state names only to nuclear submarines, as they had been to battleships in earlier era.

Then-Navy Secretary Gordon, in announcing the decision, said the New York would “project American power to the far corners of the Earth and support the cause of freedom well into the 21st century.” Its motto is “Never Forget,” a slogan among New Yorkers since Sept. 11.

Steel from the World Trade Center was melted down in a foundry in Amite, La., to cast the ship’s bow section. When it was poured into the molds on Sept. 9, 2003, “those big rough steelworkers treated it with total reverence,” recalled Navy Capt. Kevin Wensing, who was there. “It was a spiritual moment for everybody there.”

Junior Chavers, foundry operations manager, said that when the trade center steel first arrived, he touched it with his hand and the “hair on my neck stood up.”

“It had a big meaning to it for all of us,” he said. “They knocked us down. They can’t keep us down. We’re going to be back.”

Later ships in the class will include USS Arlington, the location of the Pentagon, also struck by a hijacked jetliner on Sept. 11, and USS Somerset, named for the Pennsylvania county where United Flight 93 crashed after its passengers fought off hijackers apparently planning to attack another Washington target.

The New York revives a name borne by at least seven previous ships — most recently the nuclear submarine SSN New York City, retired in 1997 after 18 years service.

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