After weeks of often dangerous work on commercial ships, the seafarers who stop at the Port of Vancouver are greeted by a friendly face and a place to relax, pray or contact far-away family.
That place is the Fort Vancouver Seafarers Center, which celebrated its 50th anniversary on Sunday with a special guest: the woman who started it all.
Anni DuFresne Beach was 19 when she decided to leave Clark County. She hopped on a Japanese freight boat to learn about agriculture in southeast Asia, “and that’s how it all started,” she told the crowd of about 75 people at the anniversary celebration.
DuFresne Beach, who now lives in Arizona, said her adventure as a young woman took her to the Philippines, Hong Kong, Taiwan and several other exotic places, and she loved meeting the merchant mariners on the ship.
“I just had a blast,” she said. “I heard lots and lots of stories.”
She wrote a letter to her family back home, determined to find a way to help seafarers who land in Vancouver. After her trip, she and her mother came across the Rev. John Larsson, a Methodist minister, who also wanted to help seafarers, and the center was born.
At first, the nonprofit organization started out small in a house on Evergreen Boulevard west of downtown Vancouver. In 1995, the center landed a space at the port and constructed the building it uses today.
There are about 1.3 million seafarers worldwide, and not all of them make it back to their families, said the Rev. Jeremy Lucas of the Christ Church Episcopal Parish in Lake Oswego, Ore. Some are injured at sea. Some die.
Bob Archer, a retired grain elevator operator at the port, recalled a time when he encountered some Chinese seamen who came in on a ship from India, and whose lives had been threatened by others on the boat.
“They didn’t speak English. We didn’t speak Chinese. But we could see that they were scared to death,” Archer said. The port workers contacted the seafarer’s center, and volunteers got the three men in touch with the Chinese consulate so they could get home safely.
Several thousand seafarers stop at the Port of Vancouver each year, and ships reach the port from about 60 countries. These days, many of those seafarers who stop at Vancouver are from the Philippines, said Mary Moreno, the center’s board president.
The center includes foosball and pool tables, a piano and an organ, a TV room with a couch and chairs, a kitchen, bathrooms, a fish tank, several shelves of books and magazines, and a small chapel. The books are printed in different languages and are free for seafarers to take. Each ship also gets a jigsaw puzzle.
“It gives them something to do,” Moreno said.
Volunteers welcome seafarers as they get off their ships, and offer them a lift to the store or wherever else they might need to go. Around Christmas, the center puts together about 500 gift bags for seafarers, complete with warm clothing and toiletries.
DuFresne Beach looked around the center on Sunday and expressed amazement at how her idea had grown.
“Wow. Just looking at all of you, how wonderful,” she said. “What you have done is a miracle.”
