Archive for the ‘The Exhibit’ Category

More Exhibit things

Lost Subs, Memorial Ceremony, The Exhibit | Posted by Rebekah
Jul 21 2010

Well, one day closer to the memorial weekend, and if you need a hotel and haven’t gotten around to it yet, you might want to move.  In addition to the Holiday Inn, the museum also has some rooms at Shoreline Inn across the street. Depending on the room, both hotels have views of Muskegon Lake, and are within walking distance of the Frauenthal Theater, the Hackley and Hume Homes, Hackley Park, and LST-393 Museum (for another taste of WWII Naval History, this time, the European Theater!) plus a number of small independent stores and restaurants.   (Walking distance here being defined as within a mile)  My favorite food store in the whole world is only about a mile and a half away from those hotels too. Be careful if you visit, it’s ADDICTING.

I understand that the episode of Dive Detectives is beautiful and haunting,or at least, so I’m told.  The staff at the museum decided to run the movie completely through their system so they could get a replacement copy in time if there was a problem or glitch, and wouldn’t you know it, none of them seemed to have anything else to do while the test was running!  Some of you don’t know this, but I’m an independent contractor for the museum, and actually live about five hours away by car, so I haven’t seen it yet either!   AAArrghh!  But they said it was a beautiful film, very well done, so hopefully, we’ll all like it.

Here you see the scale depths of the five submarine wrecks discovered since 2005, as well as an overhead silhouette of a WWII-era submarine done to the same scale. (The triangles representing the wrecks are not to scale, but the depths are) All of these wrecks with the exception of the Grunion were explored using human divers.

One of the biggest problems they had in filming was the depth of the Flier herself.  Of the five submarines discovered since 2005, Flier is the deepest except for the Grunion.  She is, in fact, at the very edges to human endurance using SCUBA gear underwater.  For every dive aboard the Flier, which was three hours long, the divers were only able to take ten minutes on the Flier herself, so while they apparently did an amazing job filming, they were still limited to short takes and quick passes, since they had to document as quickly as they could.  If permission is granted later for a more thorough survey of the submarine, it would likely be done by ROV (Remotely Operated Vehicle) since they don’t have to take the precautions human divers do.

That being said, it is still, apparently, amazing.  If we weren’t down to one car now, I’d be half tempted to drive the 10-hour round trip to see it!

I’m finishing up the memorial booklet now.  I ended up doing the covers, Flier’s Story pages and the Flier’s crew page.  I finished everything except for the crew page, which is in the final stages right now.  (It’s really difficult to fit 79 men on two pages!) I hope everyone likes it, but you now know who to blame if you don’t!

As soon as this is done, I have to update some pages and work on the permanent exhibit layout.  Whew!  This is so going to be worth it!

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Just a quick update…

Memorial Ceremony, The Exhibit | Posted by Rebekah
Jun 19 2010

Snatching a few moments just now to update all of you Flier watchers out there…

After a meeting yesterday, we have some details about the Flier ceremony and the temporary exhibit which we’ll put up in time for the ceremony, and the future permanent exhibit.

If you are planning on coming to the festivities that weekend and you need a place to stay, the museum has reserved 70 rooms at the Holiday Inn downtown for Flier families.  Just mention that you are part of the group.  Don’t wait to reserve your spot, since Muskegon is a tourist town, AND that weekend is the Unity Christian Music Festival, and the hotels are telling us they are expecting to be full that weekend shortly.  If you find that place is full, give me or the museum folks a ring and we can see if we can help you locate another museum or bed and breakfast nearby.

While the memorial ceremony at 11 am on Friday August 13 is open to the public, if you are attending the entire weekend, you will need to register.  All those Flier family members should have received their packets by now.  If you haven’t, let us know and we’ll get them to you.

Between time and financial constraints, the permanent Flier exhibit will not be ready in time, we’re so sorry.  Since it won’t be ready in time, we have opted to not start it during the summer, which is our busiest season.  We do, however, have a traveling exhibit area prepped and ready and will be putting together an exhibit there.  In a way, it’s better, since we’ll be posting more of the original work than we otherwise normally would.  Since these items will come down and go into storage later,  delicate objects that shouldn’t be out in the light for long CAN be put on display here for the temporary exhibit.

Weather permitting, the ceremony will take place on the deck of the Silversides, Flier’s sister, where we will read each man’s name and then ring the bell in their honor, while throwing a flower into the water.  When it’s done, Silversides is surrounded by a cloud of flowers, it’s really quite striking.  The Navy is sending someone to make the address, but who this person is has not been announced yet.  (According to an inside source, this person won’t be announced until about a month before the ceremony.)

For those who have been wanting to see the film about the finding of Flier’s wreck, a copy of it IS scheduled to come and debut during that day.   From what I’ve been told, the rights to the film in the USA are still in question because they are still working on signing with a distributer for the whole six-part series.  There WILL NOT be copies for sale (due to the above-mentioned reason), but it will be shown.  Since we’re expecting about 200 people for the ceremony and our theater only seats 72, we’ll be running it all day.

The future exhibit will be located on the second floor of museum and is currently planned to have a place to show the Dive Detectives documentary, as well as some interactive exhibits.  The location and size of the exhibit changed recently, which means I’m re-drawing what it will look like, so take the images on the “Exhibits” page with a grain of salt.

And finally, my book will also debut that weekend!  If you’ve been interested to read more of the Flier’s story, you’ll have the opportunity.

I’ll try to post later this afternoon about what Flier’s up to today, and some interesting information I discovered about the last time USS Crevalle crossed Balabac Straits.  Why does it matter?  Because the Navy gave the path Crevalle took through Balabac to the Flier to help them navigate safely through, but there were some interesting quirks about that path…

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The Map

Lost Subs, The Exhibit | Posted by Rebekah
Jun 14 2010

I am looking at the most extraordinary nautical chart today.

Over the weekend, I visited with the Jacobson family, and one of the items they allowed me to borrow was a chart of the Balabac Straits.  This, on its own,  would be interesting enough, but thanks to both Al Jacobson’s son, and Jim Liddell’s son, this chart is extraordinary.

From what I have been able to find out, after the Flier survivors reached the States, they went home to their families then on to their new assignments.  With the exception of Cmdr. Crowley and Lt. Liddell who were stationed together on USS Irex and remained close friends after the military, the survivors lost contact with one another.

But in 1994, with the help of Dr. Elaine Foster who located all eight Flier Survivors, they decided to meet together at Cmdr. Crowley’s home in Baltimore.  Only Crowley, Liddell, Jacobson, Miller and Russo were able to make it.

It was in a video recording of that meeting that I first saw this chart.  Lt. Liddell’s son came with his father, and recorded as the men pinned this chart up on the wall in Cmdr. Crowley’s living room and talked about where they had gone down and where they had swum.

In 1944, Cmdr. Crowley had to guess where the Flier went down, and he guessed “Comiran Island bearing 190 degrees T at 6700 yards”.  That bearing put the location of the sinking at 7 degrees, 58 minutes, 45 seconds North Latitude and 117 degrees, 13 minutes, 10 seconds East Longitude.  I marked that position below.

Now, the men also debated whether they swam in a straight line to the islands ans even which islands they landed on.  During WWII, Crowley decided that they must have landed on Mantangule, which you can see above, but Al, after studying the maps, was more inclined to believe that they landed on Byan, the tiny speck of green to the left of Mantangule.

They debated this for a while, and decided that the sinking position was correct, though they did land on Byan, not Mantangule, and probably either swam around the Roughton Reefs in the current, or swam between them.

It was a fascinating bit of video to watch.

In 1998, Al decided he wanted to go back to that area in the Philippines and see the places he didn’t mean to pass through in 1944. While there, he took this same chart along with him, and traced the route that he took in visiting his old haunts.  I can follow his 1998 boat coming down the eastern side of Palawan, passing within photo distance of Cape Baliluyan (where he met up with a guerilla outpost) snaking through the reefs until he made it to Comiran Island where they spotted the light that the lookouts on Flier saw moments before she went down, to the spot where she went down, back to Byan Island and Bugsuk Island, then back up the eastern coast of Palawan.  I also have the photos from this trip, which is helping me get a sense of what happened.  I’ll see if I can get permission to post them.

The most interesting thing to me is when Al got to the accepted coordinates of Flier’s sinking, he decided the surroundings didn’t match his memory from that night.  See, Al wasn’t watching the stern of Flier just before the mine hit, he was admiring the surrounding scenery.  It was, to his dying day, one of the most beautiful this he had ever seen.

So he asked the captain of his charter boat to keep moving until the scenery matched.  When it did, he marked it on the chart, but also recorded the GPS coordinates of it.  It was south(ish) of the accepted WWII estimate by more than a mile.

Al hoped someday that he could come back with professional gear and divers to look, but his health did not permit it.  When the Dive Detectives came calling after Al passed on, this chart was one of the things that they were given in the hope that the wreck could be found.

Al was always known for his thoroughness in his research and planning.  I wonder if he knew just how closely he had nailed the location.  From what I’ve been told,  when the Dive Detectives ship dropped the weighted sandbags down on the 1998 coordinates, they landed on the Flier herself.

Provided the Navy does not object to the display of this chart (they’re a little touchy about revealing the locations of their wrecks for security reasons) this map will hopefully make it into the exhibit.

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Book, Exhibit, and more

The Book, The Exhibit | Posted by Rebekah
Jun 02 2010

It’s been a long time since I’ve been able to update anyone about the book or exhibit or memorial service.

The memorial service will take place around the 13th, though I have yet to get a solid answer and when the public service will be.  I will be meeting with people next week who hopefully can answer those questions and I can get that stuff nailed down.  So to those of you who have contacted me recently asking for more details about the memorial service, I’m not ignoring you.  I just know about as much as you do.

The book is progressing nicely.  ISBN numbers and all that, so it will appear on Amazon when the time comes.  My editors will hopefully get back to me soon (I’m meeting with a couple in a few days  with one, and another one has been in contact with me.  Each is helping me with different aspects of the book) and I’ll start the final pass on the manuscript.  Still tinkering with the cover, but I’m at a point now that the book size has to be chosen before I can go much further.  Another thing that will be set in a week.  We’re still on track though.

I was recently loaned a copy of Flier’s Deck Log which starts on the day of her commissioning  to just two days short of her arrival in Fremantle after her first full War Patrol.  The deck log following this one likely went down with the Flier.  What’s  really interesting what is different between this and the War Patrol Report.  The Deck Log, when Flier is underway, lists everything that happens during a 4 hour time period every day.  0000-0400 hours (midnight to 4 am) 0400-0800 hours (4 am to 8 am) and so on.  On a boring day, the War Patrol report may list the noon Longitude an Latitude reading and nothing.  The Deck Log will start off with a statement of Underway as before on this course, at this speed, using this many engines, and then track any course change, battery charge, exercises or drills done that day, quick dives, surfaces, or personnel issue.

Conversley, the War Patrol Report, will be more detailed on days when there was an attack, though it’s obvious that the Deck Log provided some source material.  The Longitude/Latitude reports are found only in the War Patrol Report, which is where I’m getting the locations of the Flier, Redfin and Robalo, not the Deck Log.

One of the strange things about this particular Deck Log is the first six weeks are typewritten and very clearly copied.  But then, from December to April, the Deck Log is handwritten, and in places, the writing is either faint or fading, or else poorly copied.  I’m getting to know each person’s handwriting, and in fact, can identify the men from their hands.  Casey wrote lightly, and is often difficult to read, though his lettering is quite open and easy to read when it isn’t too faded.  Liddell has a strong hand, neatly legible and easily read.  Germershausen’s hand is very tight and dark, as though he pressed the page heavily.  I wonder if that was a reflection of his character (and if his name doesn’t sound familiar, that’s because he was transferred to the Sunfish on 21 March 1944, while Flier was in drydock.)

Handwriting being so personal and unique to each individual, this makes me feel closer to these men.  One thing is for sure though:  every one of these guys has better handwriting that most of us today!

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Exhibit and Book Update

The Book, The Exhibit, Where was Flier 66 years ago today? | Posted by Rebekah
Apr 19 2010

Well, I am on track to have the book through its fourth/fifth/sixth draft (depends what section you’re reading) by the end of the week.  Some information I’ve received lately helped me to flesh out some more people and add some touches here and there.  Then it’s off to my editors, a final re-write, and off to the publishers!  Yay!

Now if only those chapters could edit themselves, because I HATE editing.  Oh well.

The museum where the exhibit will go has finished doing all the crazy stuff that generally comes up this time of year in preparation for the tourist season.  While we are open all year, our busy season is, of course, Memorial Day to Labor Day.  The Sunday of Memorial Day weekend will be the Lost Boat Ceremony, where we remember all 52 boats lost during WWII with a ring of a sub bell and a flower in the water.  Silversides looks so beautiful with all those carnations floating around her.  Then of course, she fires her engines at the close of the ceremony, and you can’t see anything but the black smoke!

But since that stuff has been moved out of the way, we’re back to working full-time on the Flier exhibit, and hopefully, I’ll have some updates here in the next couple of weeks.

Dive Detectives has now aired the USS Flier episode in Canada and the UK, but there are no officially announced plans to air it in the United States as of yet.  I’m not sure why there’s a delay in the States, but I hope that not only the Flier episode but all six are shown.  Two of those episodes cover Great Lakes shipwrecks: the iconic Edmund Fitzgerald, and two 1812 shipwrecks.

One of the fascinating things about ships that sink in the Great Lakes is the freshwater preserves many of those ships in nearly perfect conditions (minus a few tons of zebra mussles).  Unlike the ocean, where ships, especially wooden ships, will eventually wear away (or are eaten away) to nothing, Great Lakes wrecks remain standing, sometimes their ropes and riggings still intact.  What Dive Detectives found out about the Fitzgerald was apparently enough to cause Gordon Lightfoot to change one of the lyric lines of his legendary “Ballad of the Edmund Fitzgerald“.

So where was Flier, Robalo and Redfin 66 years ago today? Flier is starting her trials off the coast of California, to catch and major, or even minor, problems while she’s still within easy reach of one of the biggest and best repair yards in the country.  She’s diving deep, surfacing quickly, doing everything she can to shake any potential problems loose, because the last thing you want to find out during a depth charge attack is that you should have tested her a little harder when you had the chance.

Redfin is closing out her second patrol.  She patrolled around the south-eastern portion of the Philippines and has had a lot of successes.  She took out four frieghters, and one destroyer, survived a depth charge attack and radioed Fremantle that she was coming home.  Her patrol isn’t quite finished yet, as she’ll soon learn, and what’s about to happen would have a big impact on the Flier survivors.

Robalo is crossing into enemy territory near Timor Island.  She’s about to earn a few stripes.

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BREAKING: Trailer released for Dive Detectives

The Book, The Exhibit | Posted by Rebekah
Mar 12 2010

I’ve noticed a lot of people have found this site looking for photos or images of the Flier wreck.  Those are all in the possession of the filmers, YAP Films and Mike and Warren Fletcher of Dive Detectives.  The search for the Flier will be featured in a future episode of “Dive Detectives” called “Submarine Graveyard” and they recently posted their trailer for this episode, and the first glimpses of the USS Flier at rest in Balabac Straits!

There’s no news yet on when this will air, but it will definitely be exciting when it does especially since it seems they are tracking not only the Flier, but her sister the Robalo, whose grave location is still unknown and the fate of the crew is still a mystery.

On another note, I was able to meet with someone today who was able to give me wonderful insights into my main character, Al, and will require quite a bit of work, but I think will really improve the book.  I’ll have to re-write a couple of scenes, that’s for sure!

And as for the exhibit, we’re still looking for funding, but hopefully, as more stuff about the Flier comes out, we may find sponsors or get interest from foundations.  I’ll keep everyone posted.

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Calling all Flier Families

The Exhibit | Posted by Rebekah
Mar 09 2010

Well, this has finally been announced officially, so I can put it up here:

The Great Lakes Naval Memorial and Museum will be hosting the National Flier Memorial Service on the 66th anniversary of her sinking, Friday, August 13, 2010.

We are looking for the family members of all Flier crewmembers.  The USS Bowfin museum is helping to find them with the assistance of a team of volunteers.

The crew page on ussflier.com, with the names and information and photos of the crewmembers can be found here:

If any of these men look familiar, please contact me or Charles Hinman of On Eternal Patrol’s website.

I’ll post more details as they become available.

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Another Chapter, enjoy!

The Book, The Exhibit | Posted by Rebekah
Mar 02 2010

I’m starting  to realize why there are not many blogs about the development of museum exhibits.  I know  a whole lot more than I am allowed to say at this time.  As soon as I can, I will pass things on here, but some days it’s like “Can’t talk about this, can’t say that, that’s still in development…”

I’ve got a few meetings in a couple of weeks that I hope will solidify some things so I can get started on real graphics and things.

In the meantime, I’m posting the first chapter of my book which takes place in Fremantle and Darwin.  I hope you all enjoy:

Chapter 1: Fremantle Australia, August 2, 1944

Tomorrow I believe we watch the Robalo join the fleet at Freo, and remember a lost submarine.

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New Look!

The Exhibit | Posted by Rebekah
Feb 22 2010

Well, after a weekend of my husband and I learning the rudimentary ropes of website design and updating, we have a new look as you can see.  This is part of the branding of the Flier I spoke about yesterday.   I’ve also designed covers for potential programs, letterhead, and promotional materials to see if the motifs can work back and forth across the various medias needed, and part of how it will look is seen above.

It’s not perfect.  Partially because for some reason, while the header and sides were originally designed in .jpg format, which allowed me to play as much as I wanted, the footer was a .gif.

Don’t ask me what the difference is, I don’t know myself.  What I DO know, is that apparently, .gifs can only do greyish colors and no gradients or anything fun.  So the color palette had to be overhauled so that the sides would match the bottom.  Oh well.  It’s not worth worrying that much over.

So you can start to see what I’m thinking of doing here.  The image of the submarine is actually the Flier herself, taken on the 20 of April on training runs off the coast of California.  I love this image (and its twin, the stern shot) because many of the men are standing on the deck, reminding me that its not a machine of steel and brass that I’m working on memorializing, but the men who went with her and didn’t come back home.  It’s easy to talk about remembering the Flier, memorializing the Flier, building an exhibit about the Flier, but this image reminds me that when I say “Flier”, I mean her 84 crewmen, especially the 76 who never came back home and left their families behind.

The Bow-on shot with the Flier's men standing on the deck

Some of my family members are amused by my resistance to reading sad books or watching sad movies, yet my near-obsession with this project and the fact that I have a huge file full of photographs of these men, reminding me of WHO these guys were.  I guess in a way, as an artist (since that is what I have my college degree in, truth be told) I feel like I’m bringing their characters to life in the best way I can with the skill that I have.   It’s a sad tale, true, since so few survived, but they sacrificed themselves willingly.

The Stern of the Flier taken the same day, with more men on the deck. All too soon, this behavior would be forbidden, since in an emergency, the fewer men on the surface to get inside the quicker a sub could submerge. Some men would go months before they saw the sun again.

My husband was in the Marine Reserves when we met, and he drove me home every month during his training weekend to visit my family.  We got to know each other well on those trips.  In the dead of winter once, I asked him how his training weekend went, and he told me how they went far north in Michigan and camped in the drifts of snow, and marched through deep drifts covered in ice crusts that exhausted them having to punch through, and how hard it was to keep up at times.  He was stating this matter-of-factly, but I started to feel sorry for him and say so.  After the third time or so of me saying, “Oh I’m sorry,” he turned to me and said, “Why do you keep saying that?  You asked me how my weekend was, and that is how it was, but I don’t feel sorry for myself or the other Marines in my platoon and I don’t like you feeling sorry for me either.  I signed up to do this to protect my family and friends, and country and I do so willingly, even it is hard or cold or if we get called up to go somewhere for months at a time.  It’s an honor to serve, and if necessary, it’s an honor to die so my family and friends and even you can live in freedom.  So stop feeling sorry for me.”

It was a hard lesson to learn, but since then, I’ve heard it echoed in many other active duty and veteran’s voices:  It’s an honor to serve and protect my country, I don’t want your pity for my tough life.  Just do your best, and remember those who gave everything.

So here I sit, a civilian married to a former Marine  (Medical Discharge, long story), with members of my family coming from the Army, Air Force, Marines, and perhaps soon another Sailor, doing my best.  I hope it’s enough.

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Exhibit Update

The Exhibit | Posted by Rebekah
Feb 20 2010

We’re at that spot right now where the exhibit continues, but my portion of it is stalled.  It’s in the hands of others, so here I sit, not really able to move forward, but still laying the groundwork for the exhibit when it finally gets off the ground.

I’m working on developing the Flier brand for this exhibit, which isn’t as commercial as that sounds.  All a brand is really, is a standard of presentation.  Most companies, universities, schools, professional organizations, use brands which include a color palette, certain fonts to use, official insignias, letterhead, and anything else desired.  The idea is that everything associated with that “brand” is all tied together and looks uniform and well designed.  This is especially important in  organizations like museums or universities where more than one department might independently develop brochures or websites for their areas separately from the “official” advertising department.

When you see the same thing over and over, you start to recognize it.  When people see a big gold block “M” on a dark blue background, you automatically recognize the University of Michigan.  A green squarish “S” with on a white background is Michigan State University.  No need for thinking, no need for trying to remember where you last saw that.  It’s been presented over and over again until you recognize these two organizations with a glance.  That is good branding.  And I’ll guarantee, that both these universities have standards that say precisely WHICH shades of blue, gold, green and white (yes, there are multiple different “shades” of white just as there are black) that those are, and which fonts to use in a brochure, how those symbols are to be presented and how they are not.

They don’t, unfortunately, tell you how to have a peaceable home during the Michigan/Michigan State game.

You know you're from Michigan if....half of your family won't talk to the other half during the U of M vs. MSU game.

So I’m working on developing the overall look and color palette for the Flier materials, which will be used in letterhead, promotional materials, the exhibit itself, ect.  I did a large one for the exhibit hall, so this has to be related, but distinct.  It’s not hard, but it is tricky.  It has to look “naval”, all the colors have to work with all the others so any of them can be used with any of the others, the fonts have to be interesting, clear, and able to work well at 6 points tall as well as six inches (or six feet).  I think I played with some 60 shades of gray for the last palette before choosing two.

Just a simple chore, but if I do it now, it’s set for later when I can start.  I am playing with a palette that’s primarily dark blue, blue-black and silver gray as the base, so we’ll see.  It’s a little dark, so I have to pick some lighter colors to offset that, or everyone will need Prozac before leaving the exhibit!

In partnership with the Bowfin, we’re also working on tracking down the surviving family members of the Flier and the Flier Survivors.  If you are one and happen to read this, please contact me at ussflierproject.com  or Charles Hinman at info.ussflier.com.  We’re working on a rather large project I hope to announce soon.

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