Page 83: of Maritime Reporter Magazine (June 1993)

Newport News Apprentice School Set

To Celebrate Its 75th Anniversary

Just inside the 37th Street gate at Newport News Shipbuilding (NNS) in Virginia is a three-story, red brick building housing the yard's

Apprentice School, which was es- tablished in 1919.

The school, set to celebrate its 75th anniversary next year, opened with 126 students and since then has never had less, and during

World War II the student body bal- looned to more than 1,000.

Today, when the first shift whistle blows at 7 a.m., 600 young men and women equipped with hard hats, steel toed shoes and books file into the brick building or go to a production job on the waterfront to study and work in 21 different trades.

As President Clinton looks for ways to successfully launch a feder- ally-sponsored apprentice program, one NNS Apprentice School gradu- ate, Glen A. Davenport (Class of 1968), who is now president of his own insurance company, thinks

Washington should turn to NNS for ideas. "I remember reading how Bill

Clinton commissioned a task force that did a study on why European industry was more productive," said

Mr. Davenport. "The task force reported that

Europe's great competitive advan- tage was the apprentice system found in just about every industry. I re- member thinking that he didn't need to send a task force to Europe to find this out; he just needed to look at

Newport News Shipbuilding."

Just eight years after Newport

News Shipbuilding was founded in 1886, it certified its first apprentice,

Norwood Jones.

In 1911 the company initiated a system whereby apprentices and other company employees could at-

The Newport News Shipbuilding Apprentice School, which opened in 1919. tend night classes at Newport News public schools.

NNS is the largest and one of the most modern shipyards in the west- ern hemisphere, and it currently builds some of the most complex ships afloat, vessels which inclu nuclear-powered aircraft carrie and submarines, with state-of-th art computer technology and pi duction methods.

Over its history it has built hu

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