Celebrating 40 years of service at Ingalls

After 40 years of service to Ingalls Shipbuilding, 46 workers will be inducted as master shipbuilders tonight at the Biloxi Civic Center.

“What you do today matters and it does matter because you never know if you’re going to build a ship that one of your family members is going to serve on or not.” ‘What you do today matters,’ it’s been Denise Moore’s motto since her first day on the job at Ingalls Shipyard in 1978. As Moore celebrates her 40^th anniversary with Ingalls, she also reflects on the long journey to this milestone, including meeting her husband then watching her son serve on the USS Yorktown, a ship built at Ingalls. “When I first came into the yard and I seen the steel and I seen the pipes  and the pieces of the ship, but to actually see the final product and to actually have someone in your family serve on that, that’s a wow. That’s a big wow.”

Harry Jones has also put in 40 years with the Pascagoula shipyard and is equally as passionate about his work. Regardless of what department they work in, these dedicated employees know the weight of their responsibilities working at the nation’s largest military ship building company. “So when we build a ship, it’s not just a ship for Jackson County or the United States, we’re building a ship that’s going to represent us all over the world,” said Jones.

Their hard work and 40 years of dedication to the company is paying off. Moore, Jones, and 44 other Ingalls employees join the ranks of master shipbuilder at an induction ceremony Thursday night, boosting the number of master shipbuilders to 344, all dedicated employees with nearly 15,000 years of combined experience.

For long term employees like Harry Jones, it’s been four decades of a job that wound up as a lifelong passion. “I guess you could say this place is a great place. It’s wonderful.”