Several alumni served on Navy hospital ship that’s providing assistance to New York during COVID-19 crisis and was stationed in Baltimore from 1988 to 2013.
The U.S. Naval Ship (USNS) Comfort, which is currently aiding the COVID-19 response in New York, is a hospital ship with 1,000 beds and 12 operating rooms that has been deployed in times of crisis and peace around the world.
The USNS Comfort is stationed in Norfolk, Va., but for a significant portion of her life (1988-2013) as a hospital ship, she was stationed in Baltimore’s port. The location is not her only tie to Baltimore, as several University of Maryland, Baltimore (UMB) alumni and faculty have served on this ship during her 33-year history.
The USNS Comfort is actually the third Navy ship christened with the name Comfort. The first Comfort (USS Comfort AH-3) was a repurposed passenger and Army transport ship that was transferred to the Navy during World War I (1918-1921) and commissioned as a hospital ship. This USS Comfort, like the current Comfort, was stationed in New York Harbor to support the hospitals during the 1918 flu pandemic. However, it was primarily used to transport wounded soldiers across the Atlantic Ocean following World War I.
The second ship christened the USS Comfort (AH-6) served the Navy as a hospital ship during World War II. Following the war, the ship was transferred to the Army. It was on this Comfort that Dr. H.G. Robert Knapp, University of Maryland School of Medicine Class of 1946, served as chief medical officer treating patients returning from Germany and Japan after the war. Knapp achieved the rank of captain in the Army. After discharge, he opened a private practice in orthopedics and taught at the University of Arkansas. He died in 2010.
The current USNS Comfort is a converted oil tanker; it was transferred to the Navy in 1987. The USNS Comfort served in Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm in the 1990s. During this deployment, Commander Barbara Vernoski, Lt. Commander Barbara Schmitz, and Lt. Commander Elana Schavalend, all graduates of the University of Maryland School of Nursing, served on board. Schmitz served as head of the burn unit on the ship and shared her experiences of wartime nursing with The Washington Post in 1990: “Some people felt like they didn’t do enough when they died, even though we did everything we could. It’s different at home – when they die, they’re 90. Here I’m writing the ages – 20, 22, 25 is the oldest.”
The USNS Comfort also was deployed to New York Harbor after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. During that deployment, it served as a place for emergency workers to get medical care, rest, and showers while sifting through the rubble. In 2005, the ship was sent to aid Hurricane Katrina victims in the Gulf Coast, and in 2010 it was sent to Haiti to provide medical aid to those injured in the earthquake. While in Haiti, Eddie Lopez, a University of Maryland School of Nursing masters graduate in 2002, served as lieutenant commander on the vessel. Lopez reflected on his time on board in a 2011 School of Nursing publication: “We worked 16-hour days with limited supplies. It was disaster medicine, which means you just do the best you can with what you have.”
The USNS Comfort also has been deployed in peacetime missions, as it was in 2009, when Brian Kirkwood and Andrew Pakchoian, then-third-year students at the School of Dentistry, served with Dr. Patricia Meehan, assistant dean of admissions and recruitment, and Dr. Gary Hack, professor, on board the ship. In the mission, the members of the School of Dentistry traveled throughout the Caribbean to work with other students and faculty from dental schools in the region on digital dentistry.
In 2013, the USNS Comfort left its home in Baltimore for the last time and was transferred to the Naval station in Norfolk, ending a 25-year history with the city. During that time, medical personnel, including several from the schools at UMB, saved thousands of lives.
To see photos of those mentioned above, go the HS/HSL website.