Intrepid Museum President Susan Marenoff-Zausner Talks History of the USS Intrepid

**SPEAKER_1** (0:02)
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**David Gura** (0:07)
We are on a former Essex class aircraft carrier, one of just over 2,600 national historical sites here in the great city of New York City, in the United States, I should say. And this was a ship before it became a museum just a few decades ago.

**Christina Ruffini** (0:20)
That's right, served in three separate wars. It became a museum in 1982 And here to talk with us about it is Susan Marenoff-Zausner. She is the president of the Intrepid Sea, Air, and Space Museum. Okay, this carrier was an operation from 1943 into 1970s. It served in World War II, the Cold War, Vietnam. And my favorite anecdote from reading up last night is it even served as a temporary command center for the FBI during 9-11 and September 11 attacks.
For you, what are some of the highlights of this vessel?

**Susan Marenoff-Zausner** (0:51)
I mean, in addition to that, too, it was a NASA space recovery vessel for both the Mercury and the Gemini capsules and their astronauts. So it really served that literal sea, air and space.
There are just so many amazing parts about what we do. And I always say, look, we get over a million visitors a year, and that's amazing. But it's what's on the inside of our steel walls. That's the heartbeat of who we are.

**Christina Ruffini** (1:12)
What's on the inside that counts?

**Susan Marenoff-Zausner** (1:14)
It's what's on the inside that counts, exactly. And so, I mean, we bring in over 100,000 kids a year. We teach them STEM education. We utilize our artifacts. We utilize the histories of people who served. I mean, 50,000 men served on this ship, and it was only men at the time. And we teach them about what the innovations were, what the technology was. And we relate that to today, and we relate it to what we think is going to be tomorrow, so we can inspire that next generation of scientists, of engineers. We advocate for women in STEM, because it's known that women drop out of STEM much earlier than men, than boys do. And so, there's so much that we do here. We have access programs where we do sensory-sensitive programings on Saturday mornings for those with disabilities, those with cognitive disabilities. And of course, we honor our veterans. And seeing our veterans walk around, we have our own former crew members that still volunteer here.
That's amazing. Oh, it's amazing. That is a heartbeat, if I talk about a heartbeat.
And they talk to our visitors, and our visitors get that real sense of what service was like then and what you can do with the innovation, the technology and service today.

**David Gura** (2:18)
You drive down the West Side Highway, maybe you see a Norwegian cruise ship, you see all of these piers. How did this ship come to be here on this pier? You've got a long-term lease with the city of New York. We owe it to the Fisher family principally, but how did they get this vessel? How did they make it into a museum?

**Susan Marenoff-Zausner** (2:34)
A hundred percent. I mean, in 1974, it was decommissioned. In 1982, it was brought over because the Fisher family, Zachary Fisher, salvaged the museum. He couldn't serve himself, and so he figured out this was his way to serve.

**Christina Ruffini** (2:46)
And it was going to be scrapped, right?

**Susan Marenoff-Zausner** (2:47)
It was going to be scrapped, and who knows? Could have been all the razor blades that we're still using today. But yes.
And so they salvaged it, and then they gifted this to New York City, and ending up being really the world. We have visitors from all over the world. As you'll see today, the ships are coming in from all over the world, an appropriate moment for all of us.
And really, the mantra was to make this a place where kids can learn about civics, about service, about something that's bigger than themselves. And what we were able to do was take these amazing aircraft, take all the collections and say there's also innovation and technology in those generations. Think about what was done with no internet, no anything of that kind of engineering source. And let's figure out how we relate that to today, keep that inspiration going, perpetuate all of these lessons. You know, there's still something so important about tactile, tangible, that I don't think everybody gets the way that they used to get. I mean, so that's, that's in large part our, we feel our responsibility.

**Christina Ruffini** (3:47)
I wanted to ask you about a couple of things that I thought were neat. Is it true that the deck was made of wood during World War II, and one of the reasons is so it could be more easily repaired if it took kids, they could find scrap and kind of put it back together?