10 Service to the Fleet, July 2014

Shipyard Spotlight: Marcus Robbins

Command Facilities Program Manager

Service to the Fleet, July 2014 11

Marcus Robbins is the only person alive who has performed welding on CSS Virginia. It’s appropriate—maybe even fateful—he’d be the one who welded on this iconic ironclad of the Civil War, given this Code 1100 Command Facilities Program Manager started at Norfolk Naval Shipyard (NNSY) as a welder in 1977 and finishes as its historian in 2014. Robbins’s job duties provide an ideal marriage between person and position. To put it mildly, the man loves his shipyard history. His office looks more like a museum--computer, phone, and air conditioner juxtaposed with an engraved commemorative plate of Dry Docks 6 and 7; a collection of bricks from historic shipyard buildings; a mammoth 60x80 painting of the battle between Virginia and USS Monitor; a slab of wood, charred and dense, believed to be salvaged from a shipyard fire during the Civil War. Robbins doesn’t just stumble across shipyard memorabilia; he searches for it. He weaves his discoveries into the fabric of the shipyard’s history, sharing with others so its heritage is not lost to time. In his research, Robbins is like a criminal investigator. Finding one piece of evidence leads him to corroborate against other existing evidence, often leading him to a new, never-known conclusion about the shipyard. The long held theory that NNSY’s historic Trophy Park dates back to “circa” 1870? Convinced it dates at

least three decades further back, Robbins has a sycamore tree trunk recovered several years ago from the park he plans to cut open and count the rings. Others see refuse; he sees research. What others would scrap, he studies. Others have called it “crap;” he calls them keepsakes. “You see all these things tell a story,” he said. Fresh out of Norview High school in 1977, lanky and hair to the shoulders, Robbins first worked at Newport News Shipbuilding for nine weeks to earn “a little summertime hustle money,” eating three baloney sandwiches every day his mom packed him in a black lunchbox. He then joined NNSY that October as an apprentice welder for the now defunct Shop 07, the Public Works Maintenance Shop. During his apprentice panel interview in Building 400, he recalls, “I turned and looked out the window, and I pointed with my left hand and said, ‘I want to work in the shop that would work on that steam pipe.’ That steam pipe is, still to this day, hanging on the brick wall on the north end behind Building 60. That was my Babe Ruth, pointing to the fence, homerun type-thing,” he added. After graduating the apprenticeship in 1981, Robbins became a high pressure pipe welder for three years. It’s rare for him to laugh heartily, but he does just that recounting the extraordinary opportunity to work on Virginia. “Pre-1984, I would weld on anything they would bring to my bench. I was brought

the two bars of the Virginia from the Trophy Park display. The prior display rack had rotted, and we made up a new rack. I would bet my life on it, you can do a metal analysis on the weld beads, it’s 7018 welding rod. We welded that up, made that little frame, and they took it back up and bolted it back to the ground.” Beginning in 1984, he spent the next several years as Public Works Structural Planner and Estimator before being promoted to Facilities Support Contracts. “I came along during the [President Ronald] Reagan 600-ship Navy,” said Robbins. “We had a NAVSEA presence of over 13,000 people at the shipyard. I’ve seen the times when we’ve had three carriers in here at once.” Ironically for the shipyard historian, he’s been at the forefront in modernizing NNSY, literally from one end of the shipyard to the other. He was involved in tearing down the World War II-era barracks at the south end; he was involved in the renovation to accommodate the berthing of 11 destroyers at the north end. Over the last 30 years, Robbins has overhauled the shipyard roadways, parking areas and the industrial area fences and gates in between. Enamored as he is with the shipyard’s history, he is surprisingly pragmatic about the necessity of its modernization. “You’ve got to tear down to modernize and repurpose,” he said.

Marcus RobbinsBy Michael Brayshaw, Code 1160 Lead Public Affairs Specialist

See Robbins, page 12

12 Service to the Fleet, July 2014

As Code 1100’s Command Facilities Program Manager during the last five years, he’s coordinated numerous command ribbon-cutting events, oversaw the shipyard’s Transportation Incentive Program for 800-plus individuals, inaugurated the industrial area’s shuttle van service and participated with the shipyard’s USS Alabama (BB-60) float at educational and community events. He provides history lectures throughout the community and in the shipyard, including new employee orientations for over 150 NNSY Engineering and Planning (Code 200) personnel since 2011. “They walk away with a sense of what their connection is to the mission of the shipyard and how they are part of NNSY’s history. The employee feedback on Marcus’s tour has been excellent,” said Jim Duke, Code 228 Organization and Employee Development. “Marcus’s passion for NNSY history is evident when he is teaching through his vast knowledge and the display of shipyard and personal artifacts. When we lose this valuable resource I know of no person who can replace his knowledge and expertise as the shipyard historian.” When Robbins considered a shipyard job in 1977, this Norfolk native recalls, “My mother said to me, ‘go across that river, go to that Navy yard.’ 95 years old, she still says that to me today. I’ve been fortunate; I want my quote to be, ‘the Navy yard has been good to me!’” “My legacy—what I have really enjoyed—is when I was offered the ability to write my History Matters column in 2011,” he added. It’s a column he plans to sustain after leaving the shipyard. He’ll keep on with his community talks about the yard’s history. To be sure, he has no shortage of artifacts to sift through. Come Friday, August 1, Robbins may be heading into retirement, but his future will continue to be firmly welded to the shipyard’s past.

Robbins, Cont’d from page 11

(Top) Small stone ballast discarded from 19th century sailing ships, found near Dry Dock 1. (Center) Original granite from the head of Dry Dock 3, built in 1907. (Above) A 60x80 paint-ing of the famous March 9, 1862 battle between CSS Virginia and USS Monitor, painted in 1950 by Harry Harris (Photos by Shayne Hensley, NNSY Photographer).