MARINETTE, WI - On this busy shipyard, about an hour north of Green Bay, Wisconsin, they are building the new U-S-S Little Rock. The Little Rock will ultimately be commissioned right alongside its namesake in Buffalo's inner harbor.
It is a process that starts with raw steel sheets, and ends with a ship, ready for open water trails. It is a long, precise process; scrubbing the steel, sand-blasting, precision cutting, every piece marked with a bar code, they are then welded together like a big Lego project. They are made into modular pieces, painted and assembled. All of it with computer-accuracy, producing space-age sea crafts that represent the future of the Navy.
It is fitting that a ship with ties to Western New York is being built here, in a community so reminiscent of ours. A community built on blue collar pride.
"We're a multi-generation yard, this is our 75th year in the community" says Jan Allman, the President, General Manager and C.E.O. of Fincantieri Marinette Marine."Everybody either knows somebody who works here or has a relative who works here." Much like Lackawanna when the steel industry was booming.
More than 2,300 people come to work at Fincantieri Marinette every day. That doesn't even include contractors, consultants and the military. When you count in the direct and indirect jobs supported by the base throughout the mid-west, we are talking about more than 20,000 people working because of this facility, in a town of just shy of 12,000.