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INSIDE THIS SECTION:
THE BRUNSWKICfeRACON O .Sports, Pages 8-11
Thursday. ?? mCalendar, Page 7 2
Drug War Veteran
Arndt Finds A Home
On Oak Island
HY F.RIC CARLSON
When J.D. Arndt was growing up in landlocked
AllcntownJPa., his idea of going out on the
water meant rowing a little boat across a little
pond. Then one summer, on a family trip to Atlantic
City, he got a look at "the big pond."
Thai's all it took. One year out of high school, he
abandoned plans to be an electri
cian, enlisted in the U.S. Coast
Guard and soon found himself on
a 180-foot buoy tender on the
storm-tossed Pacific off Alaska.
Now, 15 years into a career
that has put him aboard dozens of
boats on three seas, Arndt has
found a home in Brunswick
County as the first chicf of the
newest Coast Guard station in the
United States. Arndt calls his Oak
Island facility "the best-built sta
tion this century" and says he
wouldn't exchange jobs with any
body.
"I'm having a great time," he
said. "I get up every morning and
I can't wait to get to work. And
they pay me to do it!"
An eager, wiry man of 34 years
with piercing eyes and a wide
grin, Arndt sits relaxed and alert
behind a desk overlooking an ex
panse of marsh flanked by the
Cape Fear River and the
Intracoastal Waterway.
A two-foot-tall brass cannon
shell stands in the office corner. It
is trimmed with white cord
worked into two "turk's head"
seaman's knots. From its mouth,
a three-inch diameter projectile
was oncc fired off the deck of
America's top ship in the war on
drugs. Now Arndt uses it to hold
his putter.
Islamorada in the Florida Keys. It was the late 1970s,
when the Coast Guard's cscalating effort to control
smuggling came to be called the "War On Drugs." As a
boatswain's mate on a patrol boat, Arndt and his crew
found more and more of the vessels running aground on
area reefs were loaded down with bales of marijuana.
Many of their catches were the high-speed racing
"cigarette" boats and smaller fish
ing vessels that smugglers used to
transport drugs from offshore
"mother ships" to remote landing
areas on shore.
"Late one night we were alert
ed by someone who got suspi
cious when they heard boat en
gines running back and forth
closc to shore," Amdt remem
bered. "We investigated and
found a fishing boat docked and
off-loading bales onto a tractor
trailer.
"They heard us coming and
pulled out, but they were heavy
laden," he said. "So they started
throwing bales overboard. We
followed the bales and arrested
them. Then we went back to re
cover the bales. There were hun
dreds of them floating in the wa
ter.
"I guess other people on shore
heard the activity on the radio,
'cause before long everybody in
their bathtub was out there pick
ing up bales."
In his next assignment, Arndt
was sent to the drug war's front
lines as a deck officer and gun
captain aboard the 210-foot cutter
Dauntless, the first vessel to seize
more than one million pounds of
marijuana.
The ship was featured in na
tional news magazines with pho
tos showing its rows of paintcd
on pot leaves, each marking a
successful bust. With the most
seizures of any vessel in the drug
war, the Dauntless became
known as "the scourge of the
STAFF PHOTO BY E*IC CARLSON
BMCS J.D. ARNDT is chief of the
U.S. Coast Guard's newest station on
Oak Island.
Though he enjoyed the splen
dor of Alaska's uninhabited off
shore islands, where "eagles were
as plentiful as sparrows," Amdt
said he was happy to accept a
transfer to his second ship in
Miami Bcach. Aboard the 175-foot Hollyhock, his mis
sion was to help tend the large navigational buoys that
guide small boats and huge ships through the maze of
shoals and reefs around Florida, the Bahamas and south
to Puerto Rico.
Then Amdl spent two years at a boat station on
Her targets were the big mother ships hauling tons of
marijuana from South America. Most were large fishing
vessels and island freighters with their holds and decks
loaded with bales, Amdt remembered. Cruising through
out the Caribbean and the Gulf of Mexico, the Dauntless
PHOTO CONTRIBUTED
SCUTTLED to avoid capture, the fishing boat "Sue C" rolls or. her side as a boat from the Coast
Guard Cutter Dauntless, piloted by J.D. Arndt, attempts to retrieve her crew of drug smugglers.
PHOTO CONTRIBUTED
LOWERING AWAY from the cutter Dauntless, Amdt (upper right) and his crew prepare for another
boarding in the "war on drugs." The first vessel to sieze a million pounds of marijuana, the Dauntless
was known as the "scourge of the Caribbean."
averaged two or three major busts on every patrol.
"One time we pulled along alongside an unllagged
fishing vessel, about 50 feet long, and radioed her to
stop. But she kept on going," Amdt said. "We tried
everything to stop it. We radioed in three languages. We
shot water down her stack. We threw stufT in front of the
bow to foul the propeller.
"Finally, we fired a shot across her bow. But it still
wouldn't stop," Amdt said. "So we began firing the .50
caliber (machine gun) at her waterline. We started at the
stem and worked our way to mid-ships and eventually
caught the gas tanks on fire. But the crew came out and
put the fire out.
"They kept going and we kepi firing, he said."
Eventually we hit the engine and stopped it. She was
loaded with 15 tons of marijuana."
Arndt's next assignment was as officer in charge of a
small boat station in Coos Bay, Oregon, tending five
lighthouses and scores of navigational aids in the rivers
and inlets and along the rugged coastline south to
California. It wasn't quite as glamorous as catching drug
smugglers, but "the salmon fishing was great," he said.
From there Arndt was transferred to New Orleans.
There he served as executive officer on the 160-foot cut
ter Pamlico, a construction tender used to install aids to
navigation in the bayous and rivers of Louisiana and in
the Gulf of Mexico to Texas.
"1 loved it," he said. "Especially the food?lots of
jambalaya, gumbo, crawfish etouffe. I went to Mardi
Gras three years in a row."
In 1988, Amdt moved to the place he now calls home
as officcr in charge of the Blackberry, a 65-foot inland
buoy tender stationed at Oak Island. Two years later he
became the last chief of the 1932 station and the first to
lake command of the new facility, which was completed
in 1990.
Amdt loves the area and hopes to retire here. Tha? is,
if the Coast Guard will cooperate by granting his request
to take command of the 82-foot cutter Point Ward in
Wrightsville Beach when his next required reassignment
comes around.
"1 like the small-town atmosphere here," Amdt said.
"It's a good place to raise kids. Not as much crime and
drugs as you find in larger cities."
He and his wife Mary, a Florida native he married
while serving on the Dauntless, live off base in Long
Beach. Their son, Ryan, who is almost three years old,
has already been immersed?literally?in seafaring tra
dition.
Like the sons of sea captains throughout the centuries,
Ryan was christened in the upturned brass bell of his fa
ther's ship, the Blackberry. To mark the event, his name
Was engraved inside. According to maritime custom,
when the classic old 1946 ship is de-comissioncd, the
bell will be presented to Ryan Arndt.
Shallotte Middle Team Places 7th In Scientific
Olympiad
AlO-mcmbcr team from Shallottc Middle School
finished seventh overall Saturday in the Scientific
Olympiad, a knowledge and problem solving
competition among more than 25 teams from across the
state held at James Sprunt High School in Kenansville.
This was the first year a team from the school has en
tered, said Darrcll Cheers. He and fellow science teacher
Harvey Rash coached the group of seventh and eighth
graders. Their entry was sponsored by the Southeastern
Regional Partnership of the N.C. Science and Math
Alliance.
The Shallottc team picked up firsts in two events,
"Picture This," in which teammates Chrissy Hewctt,
Carrie Beth Wemyss and Brooke Odom created pictorial
representations for scientific terms against the clock;
and "Name That Organism," which required Neil
Ansley and Stacy Jankowski identifying pictures or ex
amples of organisms by phylum, class and order.
Wemyss and Brooke Odom placed third in astronomy,
identifying constellations and stars on an unlabeled star
chart, and Caroline Sheffield and Jamie Aiweii success
fully identified rocks, minerals and fossils for third place
in that category.
'They didn't know thev could lake notes and they did
Uiat well without notes," said Cheers.
Ansley and Jankowski finished third in A is for
Anatomy, which required identifying parts of the body.
fHOTO BY DARRELL CMHRS
SHALLOTTE MIDDIJE SCHOOL'S team placed seventh overall in a scientific competition with 24
other schools from across the state. On the front (from left) are Chrissy Hewett, Carrie Beth Wemyss,
Jamie Atwell, Brooke Odom and Tonia Jackson; and on the back, David Odom, Marcus Cause,
Caroline Sheffield, Stacy Jankowski and Neil Ansley.
Team members also placed in these events: Write of road and topographical maps), Marcus Cause and
It/Do It, Tonia Jackson and Atwell, fourth; Metric David Odom, sixth; Weather or Not (knowledge of
Mastery, Ansley and Sheffield, fourth; Road Rally (use terms and use of equipment), Ansley and Gausc, sixth;
Get Your Bearing (compass use), David Odom, eighth;
Egg Drop, Hewetl and Jackson, eighth; Simple
Machines, Sheffield and David Odom, eighth; and
Aerodynamics, David Odom, eighth.
The five top teams overall advanced to state competi
tion.
Shallotte's team, for its first time out, entered only 14
of 21 events, not enough to accumulate the points to ad
vance even though it placed eighth or better in 13 of the
14 events, said Cheers.
Shallotte Middle was the only Brunswick County
team to compete in the Scientific Olympiad.
However, teams from three other county schools
placed in at least one event each at a similar competition
held March 5 and 6 at Washington High School in
Washington, N.C.
The Student Challenge '93 featured 26 events, many
of them identical to in the Olympiad. While Challenge
events required knowledge in the sciences and math, the
focus was on application of science process skills and
piaciicai problem solving.
Lcland Middle tied for first place with two other
schools in the middle school pre-algcbra competition.
The other teams were Bath Elementary and Snowdcn
Elementary. South Brunswick Middle's team placed
third in Write It/Do It and North Brunswick High's team
place second in the high school algebra I event.
Caribbean.'