Today we had two boats at the Marathon Petroleum fleeting area at South Point, Ohio. Pictures in a minute, but first some sad news.
Many of you know by now that last Monday Jack Fowler, the only executive director the Point Pleasant River Museum and Learning Center has had in its 21-year history, passed away. Fowler did so much for the museum and for the awareness and preservation of river history in one of the most river-oriented cities along the Ohio. He won't be there to see the groundbreaking for the new museum, sad to say.
At a reception Dec. 15, 2017, at the Point Pleasant River Museum and Learning Center before the 50th anniversary commemoration of the Silver Bridge collapse, Jack Fowler, right, the museum's executive director, talks to Tom Smith, West Virginia secretary of Transportation, about what caused the bridge to fall. About six months later, the museum building would be damaged by fire. Most of the exhibits were saved, but some, including the bridge model, were damaged. Ground could be broken soon on a new museum, with the hope it will be open before Labor Day weekend next year.
I wrote few thoughts and published them in the Huntington paper. Jack definitely will be missed.
Today I went to South Point and got photos of the M/V Galveston Bay at the lower end of the fleet ...
... and the M/V Marathon at the upper end.
I've seen a lot of the Marathon lately. The Kentucky is in the area, too, but the Detroit -- the first of these three boats that Marathon took delivery of, spends almost all its time elsewhere. The same is true of the M/V Nashville, formerly the M/V Valvoline, which itself was the first of three similar boats Ashland Inc. took delivery of in the late 1980s.
