This winter Old Point Comfort Yacht Club members had Pointer Maritime University sessions on Saturday mornings to take their minds off the weather while expanding their maritime horizons. One of the best attended and most insightful sessions was an informal lecture on the modern transportation security environment given by Admiral James M. Loy on March 14.
Admiral Loy was the Deputy Secretary of Homeland Security 2003-2005, Administrator of the Transportation Security Administration 2002-2003, and Commandant of the United States Coast Guard from 1998-2002.
As Commandant of the USCG on 9/11/2001, with a significant Coast Guard presence in New York harbor as well as at Governor’s Island just off the Battery in Manhattan, Admiral Loy provided attendees with a unique insight into the challenge of evacuating hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers from lower Manhattan to the west across to Staten Island and New Jersey.
In response to 9/11, he supervised the resumption of commercial maritime traffic into and out of US ports after they had been shut down following the attacks. He then led the US delegation to the International Maritime Organization and was instrumental in ensuring that the International Ship and Port Facility Security Code was approved and implemented in 2002.
Hampton Roads and Chesapeake Bay sailors see the results of that implementation every day they sail. As the first Administrator of the newly formed Transportation Security Administration, he led the establishment of the security apparatus at more than four hundred airports which insure the safety and integrity of the nation’s commercial air passenger services, airports and aircraft as well as at the nation’s ports.
Admiral Loy’s discussion ranged from transportation security issues, to leadership—he holds the Chair of the Tyler Institute for Leadership at the US Coast Guard Academy, to Constitutional issues, and the current political environment, livened by an occasional sea story. All told it was a most enjoyable morning and far more pleasant than sweeping snow off a boat’s deck.
