Buffalo, N.Y. (WBEN) - The Buffalo and Erie County Military Park operates under its mission of honoring, educating, inspiring and preserving history along the Buffalo River in Downtown Buffalo.
As the Buffalo Naval Park honored those who fought, as well as those who perished 80 years ago in the D-Day invasion of Normandy on Thursday, they were also able to educate and inspire a number of others visiting the park over the course of the day.
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As the park moves forward, President and CEO Paul Marzello knows part of their mission is to preserve the artifacts they have entrusted to their care. This includes the long-term future of the USS Little Rock, USS The Sullivans and the USS Croaker.
"These are World War II and Cold War era vessels, they continue to rust every single day. So we have an uphill battle, and we're doing our best when we come in to our jobs," said Marzello in an interview with WBEN. "I think we have an incredible small, yet, very hard-working bunch of employees that take this mission very seriously. They're doing all they can to make sure that we're doing the best that we can to preserve these vessels."
Right around this time one year ago, a naval surveyor's report from Ocean Technical Services (OTS) was submitted to the Naval Park's board and the City of Buffalo as part of an effort to secure permanent repairs for the three ships docked at the park.
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Marzello says there's an incredible amount of people working on this to ensure the park gets the necessary funds to get the vessels the care they need, which likely comes from dry docking the USS The Sullivans, as well as the USS Croaker all at once.
"We cannot patch them any longer. The hull is just too thin. We need a new hull, and we're trying to get that replaced from the waterline down," Marzello detailed. "This team that's working right now is working very hard. I'm hoping that we have some good news before the end of the summer to release, but the plan is to get both the Sullivans and the Croaker into a dry dock by the fall of 2025."
Marzello says a lot has continued to take place since April of 2022, when the USS The Sullivans saw a breach of her hull that caused a number of small holes to form on the exterior of the ship. That resulted in the World War II era destroyer severely listing to her starboard side and the hull ending up at the bottom of the Buffalo River.
However, thanks to the work of former Congressman Brian Higgins in Washington, D.C., a grant for $500,000 was secured for the Buffalo Naval Park to fund a survivability plan for The Sullivans.
"With that money, we have spent an awful lot of time and effort doing everything we can to preserve it," Marzello said. "There's, what we call, the 'bulkheads', the vertical walls between the ships, making sure the integrity is there to preserve the ship. Even though if we had a compartment that was flooded, it would be contained in that compartment. That's a big difference than what we've had in the past. We have pumps in the lowest and most vulnerable areas of the ship, and we have a backup plan with a local contractor, who's under contract to be here within a very short amount of time to make sure that we have commercial pumps, generators, everything that we need to address an emergency, if it happens again."
With the Croaker and The Sullivans not too far apart in age, the ideal situation for Marzello would be to get them both out of the water at the same time.
"There'll be a significant cost savings if we can get the Croaker out with the Sullivans," Marzello noted. "Little Rock is in much better shape, she's made with a lot thicker steel. It'll be a considerable amount of time before we have to put that kind of concern into her hull, but for now, our focus is on the Sullivans and the Croaker."
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