Chicago-resident, Captain David Truitt has been serving with the U.S. Coast Guard for 60 years. His entire life, he says, he worked on a rescue boat. The boat he captained.
On the Coast Guard Cutter Mackinaw ship, Captain Truitt sat in a lounge below deck sharing stories with the ship’s Commanding Officer Jeannette Greene. The two appeared to be enjoying each other’s company while sitting next to a solid wood table donning a perfect etching of a ship no longer in service.
“It didn’t even fit through the locks,” one of the officers said. “It never left Lake Michigan.”
Two plates in the middle of the table were responsible for the delicious smell of the cabin. One with nearly a dozen chocolate eclairs, the other overflowing with pastries that are common in any family-owned bakery around Chicago.
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When asked if he could talk about what the Great Lakes Christmas Ship had meant to him, he paused for a moment with emotion.
“We were very successful at what we were doing,” he said. “We’d go around and do helpful things.”
Over six decades, the captain served the only Coast Guard in Chicago.
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“We would go out and do rescues every summer,” he recalls. “And when we’d go out there, here's this couple in a storm in the water!”
“We pull them out of the water, and they say ‘what about the boat?’ And I say ‘okay’,” the captain chuckles. “We tie it onto the boat and tow it!”
This story happens time and again with boaters in Lake Michigan, and it was a significant part of Truitt’s daily responsibilities.
However, it was during one Christmas season over two decades ago, that Truitt came to a stark realization.
While doing good deeds for Chicago residents, Truitt and his fellow “Coasties” noticed that some homes were having Christmas parties. Those homes had Christmas trees. However, in poorer neighborhoods, there were no parties, and there were no Christmas trees.
“Now that seems obvious to some people,” Truitt explained. “But it wasn't obvious to us. We said, “being us, we can fix that because we can fix anything!”
That’s when the Great Lake Christmas Ship was born.
Well, perhaps, RE-born.
During the early 20th century, a ship known as the Rouse Simmons was the original Christmas Tree Ship. It carried pine trees across Lake Michigan to Chicago from the late 1800s into the early part of the 1900s. Tragedy struck in November 1912, when the ship encountered severe weather. The vessel sank into Lake Michigan killing its captain and all crew members on board.
It was then 23 years ago that the Christmas Ship Committee worked with Captain Truitt and the U.S. Coast Guard to revive the tradition. Since that time, over 25,000 Christmas trees have made the trek across Lake Michigan from Cheboygan, Michigan down to Chicago.
On board the Coast Guard Cutter Mackinaw ship, George Degener a spokesperson for the Ninth Coast Guard District, welcomed NBC 5, to see the 1,200 fresh Christmas trees carried in from Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.
Just walking up to the ship, the scent of fresh pine brought the deep woods of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula to Chicago’s lakefront. They are donated from a tree farm and taken to Cheboygan where they are loaded onto the ship and secured to take a multi-day journey south on Lake Michigan.
“This ship is the only kind in the Coast Guard fleet that does what it does,” Degener explained. “The Great Lakes Icebreaker that keeps commerce moving, keeps people safe, and brings Christmas cheer to the city of Chicago.”
The massive ship not only cracks through the frozen Great Lakes during frigid winter months, but it also performed an incredibly important job before docking at Navy Pier.
“The Coast Guard Cutter Mackinaw is primarily an icebreaker but also a buoy tender,” says Degener.
Therefore, this time of year, the lakes are starting to freeze as rough weather moves in.
The 55-member crew of the Mackinaw moved from buoy to buoy to take the navigational aids that guide and keep mariners safe out of the water. The crew then replaces those with winter markers that are more resilient to ice and cold. It is a big job for a big ship as these buoys and their anchors weigh tens of thousands of pounds each.
But Degener says that several members of the U.S. Coast Guard eagerly want to be on this mission, so they can share the moments of spreading joy once arriving in Chicago.
“This was my very first ship back in 2005.” Jeanette Greene said. “I was a young Coastie trying to figure out my job.”
Now the commanding officer of the Mackinaw, she joins a group of female Coasties accounting for 50% of the officer corps on the ship.
“To be back here now as the commanding officer is extremely special to me,” she said. “To be here in Chicago [with you guys] doing this really amazing event…it’s just an honor!”
The crew will unload the trees on Saturday morning during a ceremony at Navy Pier. The trees will be put onto trucks that will take them to residents across the city.
“What really gets to me is I see a kid this big,” Captain Truitt said as he used his hand to show the height of a small child. He then widened his reach and continued, “with a tree that’s THIS BIG. And he's holding the tree. And he's so happy. And then behind him is a mother with a big grin and a dad with a big grin. And they're holding each other, together. And I realized this is a good thing to do.”
The program for Saturday, December 3, 2022, is listed here on the Christmas Ship website.
