To begin our program, please welcome the honorable donnie artech, mayor of the city of hampton. [applause] please take your seats. Good morning and welcome to the 400th anniversary of the first african landing commemorative ceremony. It is my honor to welcome Governor Ralph Northam and first lady pamela northam, Lieutenant Governor justin fairfax, attorney general mark herring, senator mark warner and senator tim kaine. U. S. Representative bobby scott and representative elaine luria of virginia. Representative karen bass of california, and representative william clay of missouri, speaker of the house of delegates burkland cox. Bonsaiounselor lawrence of the apathy of her wanda former Virginia Governor cheryl , liles, former Virginia Governor robert mcdonald, former missouri governor eric greitens, former representatives james moran and mf payne, chief judge Roger Gregory of the First Circuit court of appeals members of the governors , cabinet, members of the virginia General Assembly,
[applause] please take your seats. The morning and welcome to 400th anniversary commemorative ceremony. It is my honor to welcome the lady, thend the First Lieutenant governor justin fairfax, the attorney general, senator mark warner, and senator tim kaine. Scottepresentative bobby and a representative from virginia. Bass andative karen from missouri. Speaker of the house of for thes, first counsel embassy of wanda. ,he former Virginia Governor the former Virginia Governor robert mcdonald, the former missouri governor greitens, former representatives james payne, members of the governors cabinet, members of the virginia General Assembly, including senate ,ajority leader Thomas Norment portsmouth mayor john wrote, the members of the 400 years African American history federal museum, Deputy Assistant secretary of fish and wildlife parks, National Parks service officials, including daniel lla,h and david ve members of the Hampton City Council and other special guests. On behalf of the mem
Cap mark. Thank you all. So many College Age Students are here at 8 00 a. M. A lot of my democratic colleagues were here as well. Im sure a few of you stayed up to watch the debates. I did not. We are still advocating for decriminalizing crossing our border illegally. Giving them taxpayer healthcare, too. One of my colleagues recently said we have to pay taxpayer funded abortion. That sounds like something some of you might come up with your thinking about parity. I could go on about our democratic friends but i see you have a fascinating book in front of you. I hope you all enjoy the book. Its about the old guard of the army in which i. I think theres a lot for all of you at your age. Raise your hand if youve been to the cemetery cracks if you did not raise your hand, i would encourage you to make it over there and spend a couple of hours at the tomb of the unknown soldiers. It is truly sacred ground. It seems to have been designed by some secret plan to become our national cemetery.
Off north carolina. This was part of a seminar the. Without further ado, let me introduce our first speake he has received many awards including the National Trust for Historic Preservations president s award for Historic Preservation and many, many others. His talk today is the ship that saved the nation, the monitors recovery and conservation. Please welcome mr. Quarstein. [ applause ] thank you. Well, you know, on march 8th, 1862 it was a terrible day for the union. In fact, it turned the tide, it appeared in favor of the confederacy when the css virginia emerged from the Elizabeth River and sunk two major union warships, the cumberland and the congress. The union navy was in disarray. People were in the white house looking out the curtains, down the potomac, fearing that this super weapon, as they would have called the merrimack, as southerners called the virginia, would be there soon and the war would finally end in a confederate victory. But all was to change as if magic, because
Property of mr. Howard hankins, who is a Business Owner of Hampton Roads materials. Its an recycling and mr. Hankins owned as much as 600 acres here and has partitioned off a couple hundred of that acres to the nearby golf course. And this is a small sliver of. Whats remaining of the 400 acres, the significance of that is that he was involved in partially involved in the creation of the original president s park, which was a tourist site, 12 miles from here. That was open from 2004 until 2010. That was the home. Sculptures. And he actually was also instrumental, commissioned in 2010 to come take these sculptures. When that park went bankrupt and put them in his stone crusher. So he did not have the heart to do that. Thank god and spent a considerable amount of own money to transport every one of these one by one from that bankrupt. Nonfunctional park 12 miles from here to his property here as a way to store them temporarily until he figured out what he wanted to do with them. The sculp