Volunteer Mike Brown Provides Skill, Ingenuity, Derring-do To H. Lee White Maritime Museum

by Contributor | June 1, 2020 7:19 pm

OSWEGO – When Mike Brown disembarked a WWII troop transport ship onto the beach at Da Nang, Vietnam in early 1965, he could never have imagined that one day he would be in the Oswego Harbor hanging off the side of an historic WWII tug from the D-Day Invasion of Normandy.

A 1964 high school graduate from Northport, Long Island had enlisted with the Navy Seabees right out of high school at the beginning of the Vietnam War. He served two tours there before returning to the U.S. when his military commitment ended. As a heavy equipment operator, Mike’s duties with the Seabees included building hospitals, airbases and drilling wells.

Life then took him from Long Island to SUNY Oswego where he obtained his Bachelor of Science degree in Industrial Arts and from there to a job teaching at Cato-Meridian High School in Cato, New York. When budget cuts in the 1980s eliminated a middle-school industrial arts position, Mike went to work in the printing industry, running his own small shop and managing an in-plant printing shop in Liverpool, NY.

He then set up and ran a printing service for Cayuga-Onondaga BOCES in Auburn, New York. A call from a professor friend at SUNY Oswego alerted Mike to a position in the Oswego City School District. They were looking for someone to set up an inhouse print shop. This brought Mike to Oswego where he worked for 24 years, retiring in 2012.

Mike kept busy in retirement restoring the house he and his wife, Jeanne, purchased near the college but it wasn’t busy enough for Mike. Jeanne suggested he volunteer with the H. Lee White Maritime Museum and that suggestion resulted in a full-time commitment to the restoration of the historic LT-5 Tug, one of the most precious items in the Museum’s collection. And that leads back to the reason Mike was hanging off the side of that tug.

“It was in rough shape when I started,” said Mike, who has spent countless hours chipping, and painting the superstructure, decks and hull.

Because the LT-5 is tied-up next to the West Pier, the harbor side of the vessel was a tricky part to paint.

“I’ve hung over the sides of that boat many times in order to paint it,” said Mike, but then the City lent the Museum a floating dock for better access on the water side. “I set up a ladder on the floating dock,” Mike recounted, and tied it to the Tug.

It worked well at first but then the dock started floating away from the Tug and the ladder was in danger of falling into the water.

“I managed to hang onto the side of the Tug with one arm and caught the ladder with my foot and the other arm before it could fall into the water.”

All this time a Coast Guard boat was passing nearby watching the event unfold.

“I was able to hoist the ladder up into the Tug,” Mike explained, “and then I hoisted myself back up. When I turned around, the Coast Guardsmen gave me a thumbs up!”

He didn’t want to lose the ladder, Mike said, because he had purchased it himself especially for that painting job. He has refinished all the exterior wheelhouse and captain’s cabin wood doors and windows; as well as sewed a custom canvas (winter) stack cover. He built two replica Browning M2 50 cal. machine guns for the wheelhouse aft deck.

This is why people like Mike Brown are named volunteer of the year by an organization like the
H. Lee White Maritime Museum.

“Without people like Mike we would not be able to function
and accomplish all we do in the community,” says Museum Executive Director Mercedes Niess. “Not only does Mike us give countless hours of his time but he and his wife, Jeanne, support us in other ways as well, the painting exploits and the ladder being just one example.”

Due to his extraordinary efforts, Mike has been named Volunteer of the Year twice by the Museum, in 2015 and again in 2019.

Although the Museum is currently closed due to the corona virus crisis, Mike heads down to the
West Pier on a regular basis to check the lines holding this historic vessel particularly when the
weather is rough. On a recent inspection Mike discovered that one of the lines holding the LT-5
had broken and the Tug was hitting hard against the pier. Not only did he alert Niess, who then
alerted the Port of Oswego Authority, he returned to work with Port Authority staff to secure
the Tug. This could have been a disastrous situation.

“I kept telling Mercedes that we needed new lines to hold that Tug,” said Mike, “Those lines are decades old.”

Knowing the museum’s budget was tight and with winter weather approaching, Mike and Jeanne decided to take matters into their own hands.

“I talked to Jeannie and we decided we could afford to donate the money for some new lines for the Tug.”

They did just that and because of their generosity and commitment, the LT-5 had a few new lines holding it when one of the old ones broke during a particularly fierce windstorm in March.

In addition to his work on the LT-5, Mike puts his experience as an educator to work giving
tours. He also contributes carpentry skills to the curatorial end of the Museum helping to
construct exhibits, and he has shared his graphic design expertise for the production of some of
the Museum’s print materials. The LT-5 remains a special commitment, though, and Mike
would like to see others support this National Historic Landmark by contributing to its
preservation. The Browns have also decided to remember the Museum through a planned gift.

“The best thing that can happen (with the LT-5) would be to get it out of the water and on dry
land. Then we can work on it all year round,” says Mike. The perils of painting from a floating
dock would be eliminated with the LT-5 on shore as well!

“The Tug’s fenders need to be replaced. That’s another big expense,” noted Mike, but it’s one, he feels strongly, needs to happen because the LT-5 is one of the few tugboats remaining from the D-Day invasion.

Meantime, Mike continues work on the restoration. “The interior of the Tug still needs work,”
he says. With better weather on the horizon, expect to see him back on the West Pier, paint
and paint brush in hand, making certain that the treasure of the H. Lee White Maritime
Museum’s collection will be available to communicate the unique history of World War II’s
invasion of Normandy for years to come.

If you would like to join Mike as a volunteer, or if you would like to contribute to the
preservation of this important historic vessel or to the H. Lee White Maritime Museum contact the Museum’s Executive Director Mercedes Niess at 315.342.0480 for the variety of ways you can donate or leave a legacy gift to benefit generations to come. Find out more about the museum at www.hlwmm.org or visit www.facebook.com/hlwmm.

Source URL: https://oswegocountytoday.com/community/volunteer-mike-brown-provides-skill-ingenuity-derring-do-to-h-lee-white-maritime-museum/

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