Working for Newport News Shipbuilding is a livelihood that countless Gloucester and Mathews residents have relied on for well over a century. Last Thursday, the Gazette-Journal had an opportunity to take a comprehensive tour of the Huntington Ingalls-owned shipyard on the James River, led by its vice president of operations, Mathews resident Danny Hunley.

More than 900 Gloucester residents and nearly 100 Mathews residents, or 22 percent of all local residents who commute to Newport News for work, are employed at Newport News Shipbuilding.

The tour started inside Newport News Shipbuilding’s state-of-the-art Apprentice School. It continued through the revitalized neighborhood built to accommodate both students and the public, and on through the secured gates of the shipyard.

Inside, the yard’s 23,000 workers were hustling around performing their duties—some of them riding one of the 6,000 bicycles that Hunley said provide an easy form of transportation throughout the city-sized facility. The shipyard also has five miles of train tracks and maintains and operates its own locomotive.

The tour of the 550-acre yard included a first-hand look at many of the manufacturing facilities, including a dry dock spanning the distance of several football fields and a crane capable of lifting 1,050 metric tons of material. Hunley said that the shipyard performs over one million crane lifts a year with more than 600 cranes.

Next on the agenda was a tour along the shipyard’s two-and-a-half miles of waterfront via the tugboat Huntington, courtesy of Captain Allen Sutton of Mathews, the company’s docking pilot.

Out on the water, two of the largest warships built by the shipyard loomed over the landscape, perched side by side in dry docks. The USS Enterprise, the shipyard’s first nuclear-propelled aircraft carrier, which is in the process of being decommissioned, sat alongside the newest carrier, the 1,100-foot Gerald R. Ford, which is in its final stages of construction.

Hunley said only a handful of people in the world are able to move the huge Navy ships, and Sutton, “that old Mathews County boy,” is one of them.

Sutton has been at the shipyard for 34 years, since the age of 22, and received all his training on the job. He proudly said that one of the yard’s tugboats was named the Capt. Ambrose after Mathews County native Marvin L. Ambrose, who retired in 1973. When Ambrose left the shipyard’s service, he was replaced by another Mathews County native, the late Captain Reginald F. “Reggie” Hunley.

When a hurricane is threatening the East Coast, said Danny Hunley, Sutton and his crew are never home. Instead, they’re at the dock, doing everything they can to protect the billion dollar assets sitting in the docks.

Newport News Shipbuilding is the largest industrial employer in Virginia, the largest shipbuilding company in the United States, and the only U.S. shipyard that builds aircraft carriers. In addition, it is one of only two shipyards that build nuclear-powered submarines. The other is General Dynamics Electric Boat in Groton, Conn., with which NNS shares production.

The two shipyards currently have nine submarines under production, said Hunley, and the government has ordered 10 more.

“We’re focused on serving our nation with products that play a key role in protecting our freedoms as Americans,” said Hunley.

Danny Hunley

Hunley started his career with Newport News Shipbuilding when he was just 18 years old. “At first, I came for a paycheck,” he said. “I stayed for the mission.”

That mission, Hunley said, is to always give the United States the advantage over any enemy it might face in open seas by building the most advanced ships possible. “That’s non-negotiable,” he said.

The top priority of the company, he said, is the safety of its people, followed by ensuring the quality of the work, completing that work at the lowest possible cost to provide the best value to the nation and taxpayers, and fulfilling commitments on schedule.

For example, Hunley said that once the USS Ford goes to sea, “it will be head and shoulders above anything in terms of capability.” In addition, it will be operated by a third fewer crew members and will have significantly lower operating costs in general than previous aircraft carriers.

When Hunley started his career in 1974 as a welder trainee, he said, “No one made less money than me.” Three months later, he was approached about attending the Apprentice School. He had planned to work just long enough to earn the money to return to Virginia Tech, but at the Apprentice School he could get an education free of charge and earn money while doing so. He accepted the offer and never left.

Since that time, Hunley has held numerous positions that gave him opportunities for increasing responsibility, including welding supervisor, general foreman, superintendent, head of the industrial measurement group, welding engineering supervisor, director of the commercial tanker program, director of trades, and vice president of manufacturing. In 2005, Hunley was named vice president in charge of two areas—“production trades” and “education and training for production and maintenance workforce,” which includes the Apprentice School. In 2008 Hunley took on the responsibility for a third area, “facility maintenance and plant engineering.”

“Maybe they’re trying to find something I can do,” he joked.

The people

Hunley said the real heart of the shipyard and the company’s greatest asset are its people, which is why so much effort and money are put into its Apprentice School. A student coming into the school can leave with a bachelor’s degree in engineering—a scholarship worth $400,000—as well as four to six years of experience, he said.

Education is crucial to the success of the shipyard, said Hunley, since 80 percent of the international workforce that’s capable of building nuclear warships is there. “It’s not like going to Jiffy Lube and getting your oil changed,” he said.

Hayes resident Angel McCoy said her education at the Apprentice School is the reason for the many opportunities she has been granted during her time with the shipyard.

McCoy was able to rotate in and out of several departments every six months. “I was able to see so much of the company and what it takes to operate,” she said. She also became very well-rounded, developing an understanding of how the many departments within the shipyard work together. “I got to understand the big picture,” she said.

As she advances, McCoy said she will never forget what it was like in the beginning.

“In the Apprentice School, everybody gets dirty,” she said. “It makes a difference when you move on. You know how to treat people—what they’re dealing with and going through.”

Cobbs Creek resident Lincoln Shuber said he didn’t want to go to college like many of his classmates. He began attending the Apprentice School because he wanted to learn something he hadn’t learned before and ended up completing his associate’s degree in technical studies—engineering. He said he’s now a lot better off financially than many of his friends who are struggling to find jobs.

“It was icing on the cake to work and get education on the top of that,” Shuber said. “It was an extreme blessing.”

But the fact that the Apprentice School invests so much in an employee’s education doesn’t mean he or she has to feel stuck in a job that might be the best choice over the long term.

“We want to train people to build ships,” said Apprentice School director of education Everett Jordan, “but we don’t want to shackle people to the company. We encourage apprentices to continue their education and prepare for the future, whatever it may be. We want them to be successful.”

Mentioning Mathews residents who graduated from the Apprentice School, Hunley added, “If you want to go out and be a sheriff, like Danny Howlett, you can. If you want to start an insurance company like Joe Diggs or run a Radio Shack like Keith Morgan, that’s fine with us too … But here you can work for a Fortune 500 company and build a career to last a lifetime.”