After a year apart, the public is invited to the USS Constitution Monday to celebrate its annual 21-gun salute on Presidents’ Day. And Anne Grimes Rand, president and CEO of the USS Constitution Museum, is thrilled to welcome museum-goers back to the Charlestown Navy Yard.
Rand has studied and shared the history of Old Ironsides with the museum for more than three decades. And she told Morning Edition co-host Jeremy Siegel that Old Ironsides is — fun fact! — a misnomer.
“She earned the nickname Old Ironsides when cannonballs bounced off of her thick wooden hull,” Rand said as she and Siegel chatted while reclining in hammocks in the museum. “She's an all-wooden ship. There's no iron.”
The museum, located right by the ship, is open seven days a week. It has special programming this week for schools’ February vacation week on top of all of the museum’s typical offerings that teach Old Ironsides’ history.
All these years later, Rand still loves seeing the “aha!” moments as kids and families learn about the USS Constitution’s history and have fun in the museum’s galleries.
“USS Constitution earned her victories in the War of 1812, and not everyone is excited about the War of 1812,” she said. “But when you walk on the decks of that ship, you see the towering masts and you think, what was it like to live and work on this ship?”
“She's the racehorse of the day. When the tall ships come into Boston and you can see the harbor filled — if you look closely, her masts are taller than any other ship, and her hull is so sleek and lean,” Rand added. “She is a mean fighting machine, and [we’re] trying to help people respect what amazing technology she was.
In the War of 1812, she recalled, the USS Constitution went undefeated.
“At a time when we were a young nation, we were still trying to establish ourselves on the seas and in the international sphere,” Rand said. “She's a point of pride, and she's been a point of pride for over 224 years now. She’s getting ready to celebrate her 225th birthday. This was a ship that is expected to live for 15 or 20 years, and here we are.”
When Rand first started at the museum 35 years ago, taking on jobs like research associate and assistant curator over the decades, the field of maritime history was still very male dominated. But now, the ship has its first female commanding officer: Billie J. Farrell, who took command last month, and Rand says there have been major shifts.
“When I first started, I would attend maritime museum conferences and be one of, say, three women at a conference. Now when I go to conferences, they’re 50/50,” she said. “Now that we’ve got a new captain of Constitution, after 224 years, the ship has a female commanding officer. Boston has elected a female mayor, we have a female vice president, I’m proud to be running this institution — and I have a daughter, and I’m proud to know that she’ll be able to do whatever she wants to do.”
For Siegel, he told co-host Paris Alston back in the GBH studio, walking around the ship brought out his inner child.
“There's just so much to do. I mean, you can also — if you're a kid — see what it's like to hoist sail,” he said. “There's there's plenty of stuff to do out there.”
