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International Seafarers' Center serves sailors
Nov 29, 2009 (The Beaumont Enterprise - McClatchy-Tribune Information Services via COMTEX) --
Nestled against a freight railroad track adjacent to the ship berths of Port Arthur stands a still-incomplete replica of a station that once welcomed train passengers to the city. The new building, however, welcomes travelers of a different sort -- sailors from around the globe who crew the ocean-going vessels.
The building, which opened in March 2008, is the home of the Port Arthur International Seafarers' Center, Inc., which was founded in 1973 by several area religious congregations to provide a friendly port of call to the sailors who, however briefly, find themselves in the Golden Triangle.
Formerly, the center was housed in a double-wide trailer that was provided at $1 per year by the Port of Port Arthur.
On Wednesday, about 15 children from the Kids Town day-care center in Nederland visited the center. After receiving a tour of the completed wing (including a look at a vintage ship's wheel and binnacles, donated by Texaco, in the main foyer), the kids helped wrap holiday gifts for sailors.
Doreen Badeaux, the president of the center's board and a member of Apostles of the Sea, the Catholic Church's outreach ministry to mariners, said the center's mission is derived from the Christian Beatitudes, especially the call to "welcome the stranger" and provide for his needs.
Robert Collins, who has served as the director for about 18 months (he started as a driver for the center in 2005), showed a reporter around the new building as the kids wrapped their gifts.
Construction began in 2005, and is being done in phases as fund-raising continues. In the completed wing on the first floor, the center has a communications center with two computers with Internet access and Web cams and phones that sailors can use to call family and friends. There's a main recreation room, with ping-pong tables and a large-screen television, a library with dozens of donated books that sailors can take with them, and a small store that sells toiletries and other sundries that also serves as the center's office.
Read more in Saturday's Beaumont Enterprise.
To see more of The Beaumont Enterprise, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to
http://www.www.beaumontenterprise.com/. Copyright (c) 2009, The Beaumont
Enterprise, Texas Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services. For
reprints, email tmsreprints@permissionsgroup.com, call 800-374-7985 or
847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group
Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA.
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