Eschewing the usual cargo of coal and iron ore for doctors, nurses and operating rooms, third mate Matt Pizzedaz just completed a four-month stint on the UNSN Comfort.
The merchant marine and Great Lakes Maritime Academy graduate joined the Military Sealift Command last spring and soon found himself on a four-month humanitarian mission to Central and South America. Countries the floating hospital visited included stops at Belize, Colombia, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Guyana, Haiti, Nicaragua, Panama, Peru, Suriname and Trinidad and Tobago.
"It was really neat, a very different experience for me,” noted Pizzedaz, who completed the deployment last Friday morning when the ship moored at its home base in Baltimore, Md.
Offering surgery, fixing broken limbs and providing dental and optical care, the massive ship spent about a week in each port. In addition to his navigational duties, Pizzedaz also piloted small boats to and from the ship to shore carrying medical personnel, supplies and patients.
"It might have been just a band aid but there's no doubt that it made a difference in quite a few people's lives,” said Pizzedaz. "Patients would come off the ship and they were bandaged up and they'd come out with glasses on and it was neat to see that whatever they needed, we were able to give it to them.”
A native of Columbus, Ohio, Pizzedaz moved to Michigan after high school to attend the University of Michigan. His previous connections to the state came from vacations on family property near Sault Ste. Marie, where he loved watching the large freighters sailing past.
The fascination with the ships that began as a treat for a five year old kid — "Hey, let's go watch the freighters” — transformed into a career after he spied an ad for the Great Lakes Maritime Academy in a campus newspaper. The economics and finance major cast aside his post-graduation plans to land a job in banking and applied to the academy.
After completing his degree in 2000, he moved to Traverse City to enroll in the deck officer track.
"Nothing can beat driving a large ship for a living,” said Pizzedaz, who has made Traverse City his home base. "I loved the school, really enjoyed it, and as soon as I got out I was flooded with job offers. There was plenty of demand for me and my classmates.”
After sailing the Great Lakes for three seasons, Pizzedaz started in April as a civilian employee with the Military Sealift Command, where he had served as a cadet while at the Great Lakes Maritime Academy. The MSC transports ammunition, equipment, fuel and other supplies via the oceans to United States forces, primarily the Navy, around the world. Since it's consolidation from four World War II agencies into one command in 1949, the MSC has operated during both peacetime and war.
"I was hired just in general because they were looking for third mates and as soon as I finished my training, I was on the Comfort the next day,” said Pizzedaz.
The USNS Comfort is one of two hospital ships in the fleet; the USNS Mercy is stationed in San Diego. Floating hospitals in the United States date back to the Civil War when personnel aboard Red Rover, which sailed the Mississippi River, treated just under 3,000 patients between 1862-1865.
Prior iterations of both the Comfort and Mercy were first commissioned during World War I and 15 hospital ships served during World War II. The current and third Mercy and Comfort ships are retrofitted oil tankers that offer full medical and surgical services.
Commissioned in 1987, Comfort's missions around the world have included deploying during Operation Desert Shield and Desert Storm, after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, during Operation Iraqi Freedom and after hurricanes Katrina and Rita.
Noting that the just completed humanitarian mission was the first of it's kind in that region, Pizzedaz said the demand was huge.
"Everywhere we went, people were lining up to see us — they all had something to address,” he recalled. "The people who went out into the field, they were some of the hardest workers I've ever seen: the doctors and nurses would just see patient after patient. I knew a lot of people in the dental department, they just worked their tails off.”