Dedicated to Service: Jeff Monroe (Dec. 26, 2008)
By Nate Jones
Staff Writer
After graduating from Maine Maritime Academy more than 30 years ago, Cape Elizabeth resident Capt. Jeffrey Monroe was awarded the Meritorious Public Service Award by the U.S. Coast Guard Commandant “in recognition of notable services that have assisted greatly in furthering the aims and functions of the Coast Guard” earlier this month. Monroe said the lessons he learned at Maine Maritime have proven to be crucial throughout his career.
“It’s not about learning how to navigate, it’s about learning to deal with life,” he said. “You come out trained as a ship’s officer but ready for anything in life. You never know where your career will end up.”
Directly following his graduation from Maine Maritime in 1976, while serving as a relief master and chief mate for a tugboat company based in Texas, Monroe met his future wife during a brief stay in Florida with his parents. Although she was an Ohio native and Monroe was from New Jersey, he said they both decided to settle in Maine.
“This was the family vacation spot,” he said of Cape Elizabeth. “We wanted to get back to New England.”
While his wife settled into their home near the shoreline, Monroe found himself working for the Getty Fleet Corporation as a deck officer, or a “tanker stiff.” While he was quickly gaining experience as a merchant mariner sailing all over the world, Monroe said he joined the Getty Fleet toward the end of an era.
“They were discovering that they could actually charter ships cheaper than operating them by themselves,” he said. “Texaco bought out the whole thing. They had their own fleet, so they sold all the old ships. Since I had been there so long, I got to be the last man to step off the last Getty Fleet ship.”
In 1989, Monroe found himself supervising marine operations for a research and salvage company based in New York. One of the company’s primary goals was to locate oil and gas pockets beneath the ocean floor, but Monroe said some jobs were more interesting than others.
“We got to chart some wrecks in the Bahamas and there was a pirate ship they were trying to locate off the coast of Cape Cod that supposedly had a load of silver when she went down,” he said. “Those were my pirate days.”
Monroe turned from a modern day treasure hunter to an educator when he began teaching at the SUNY Maritime College in New York in 1984. Seven years later he took a similar position at the Massachusetts Maritime Academy, where his work caught the eye of local politicians. In 1994, Monroe said Massachusetts Gov. William Weld asked him to be the executive director of a commission on commonwealth port development.
“He basically wanted to look at all of the ports in Boston to determine what they needed,” Monroe said. “[Weld] wanted somebody who understood the maritime business integrated into the realm of the department.”
Monroe accepted the charge, and was simultaneously appointed the deputy port director for the Massachusetts Port Authority. In assessing the many piers, docks and wharfs in Massachusetts, Monroe said he began to notice a trend that is still present in many ports in Maine and Canada today.
“Most ports have a great deal of potential, but people make two common mistakes,” he said. “They don’t dedicate resources to the management and they don’t realize the value and potential of the port itself. What happens is you get housewives and schoolteachers trying to make the decisions, that’s why you don’t get anywhere.”
While working for the Massachusetts Port Authority, Monroe said he initiated the first “harbor maintenance tax” in the nation to help fund the future of the state’s ports, a tax that has become standard in at most marine terminals since.
“It’s a tax that is paid on containers to help pay for dredging and other costs,” he said.
After four years working in Massachusetts, Monroe became the director of ports and transportation for the city of Portland. The job was not only close to home, but Monroe said it was “quite engaging” to manage a port as diverse as Portland Harbor along with the Portland International Jetport.
“Most airports are profitable at a certain point, Portland is blessed with that,” he said. “The harbor is lucky to have cruise ships, container ships and tugs as well. Many ports have wonderful infrastructure, just lack the knowledge how to incorporate all of those things.”
Perhaps the toughest day on the job for Monroe was Sept. 11, 2001. Monroe said both the airport and the seaport were immediately shut down, even though there were still planes in the air and cruise ships inbound from Canada. While he struggled to figure out how to manage the situation and deal with the media at the same time, Monroe said he was surprised by a visit from the Federal Bureau of Investigations.
“The FBI was here really quickly, like in a few hours, and we got the impression they knew what they were looking for,” he said.
Monroe managed to unload incoming cruise ship and airplane passengers while the FBI agents reviewed security tapes of the airport, he said. It wasn’t until that night that Monroe figured out why the agents had such an interest in Portland International Jetport.
“I got a call from a reporter who said the Boston Globe was going to run a story in the morning that said two of the hijackers came through Portland,” he said. “I got another call saying the state police had identified their car and began to put enough pieces together.”
Monroe suddenly found himself in front of the national media, members of which he said “sarcastically” suggested the terrorists had been aided by Portland International Jetport employees. Monroe denied the accusation and said he diverted further criticism by pointing out that no other airport had the terrorists on camera, even though they had checked in and out of security again when they arrived in Boston.
“The minute I said that, they all started running,” he said. “They just descended on Boston.”
Monroe said it is still difficult for him to see images of the terrorists walking through Portland International Jetport.
“It didn’t really hit me until I was in church that Sunday,” he said fighting back tears. “I just broke down.”
In the wake of the terrorist attacks, Monroe said he collaborated with Senators Olympia Snow and Susan Collins to ensure security not only of Maine’s airports, but marine terminals as well.
“We needed to broaden security to be more than just our airports, and [the senators] really picked up on that,” he said. “All of a sudden it wasn’t just about aviation.”
Although the city of Portland eliminated his position in May, Monroe said he’s still working to improve waterways and airports from New England to Canada as the vice president of transportation services for the MacDonnell Consulting Group, a Canadian based company with an office in Portland.
“Ships and airplanes are pretty much the same, you have cargo freighters and airliners, they just use their props differently,” he laughed.
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