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Event Advisory 105th Anniversary Saturday and Sunday, July 9 and 10, 2022 3-4pm Mare Island Explosion that killed 6, July 9, 1917

EVENT ADVISORY
July 8, 2022
For immediate release
Contact: Myrna Hayes, President, Mare Island Heritage Trust
Former Founding Volunteer Preserve Manager, 2007-2019
CELL PH: 707-249-9633
EMail: myrnahayes@mac.com

105th Anniversary Remembrance at the Mare Island Shoreline Heritage Preserve
Free guided history tours of the gravesites and locations where the WWI explosion took place that killed the
Mare Island Naval Magazine Chief Gunner and his family and employees, Saturday and Sunday, July 9 and 10, 2022 3:00-4:00pm


[VALLEJO], CA – Saturday, July 9, 2022 and Sunday, July 10, 2022, 3:00pm-4:00pm, the Mare Island Heritage Trust will host a 105th Anniversary Remembrance at the Mare Island Shoreline Heritage Preserve to mark the 105th anniversary of an explosion at the Mare Island Naval Magazine (Ammunition Depot) determined by the US Navy to be the work of an enemy agent at the beginning of WWI. Now, 105 years after the explosion killed Chief Gunner Allen S. MacKenzie and his wife and 2 youngest daughters, along with 2 civilian employees, new evidence points to the cause as a murder-suicide. The case for this new conclusion is made in an article by Historian and Author Stephen C. Ruder, published in the June 2022 issue of the Naval History Magazine, a publication of the U.S. Naval History Institute. https://www.usni.org/magazines/naval-history-magazine/2022/june/who-really-blew-mare-island

Saturday, July 9, 2022 is the 105th anniversary of an explosion that rocked the US Navy and its’ naval base at Mare Island and killed 6 people, four of which were the Chief Gunner of the Mare Island Naval Ammunition Depot, Allen S. MacKenzie, his 39 year old wife Malvina and their two youngest daughters, Dorothy, age 12 and Mildred, ‘Millie”, age 8. The additional two deaths were the Ammunition Depot Gardener and the longest serving employee of the Ammunition Depot. Join Myrna Hayes, founding manager of the Mare Island Shoreline Heritage Preserve from 2007-2019 and President of the Mare Island Heritage Trust Saturday, July 9 and Sunday, July 10 for a presentation and a guided tour of the explosion site, the location of the home in which the family was killed and a walk to the Mare Island Naval Cemetery to visit the graves of the MacKenzie family. The public may consider bringing flowers to place at the gravesite in remembrance of the family. The guided tour begins at 3:00pm at the former visitor center parking lot 167 O’Hara Ct. and will be from one half hour to 45 minutes in length. The Mare Island Shoreline Heritage Preserve is located at the southernmost end of Azuar Dr. on Mare Island in Vallejo, CA. Meet Myrna Hayes at the parking lot. Call/text her with questions and for directions. phone: 707-249-9633. email: myrnahayes@mac.com The Mare Island Shoreline Heritage Preserve is open Friday, Saturday, Sunday, 8:00am-5:00pm.

Myrna Hayes has written an e-book (Link to the e-book is on the Mare Island Preserve website: mareislandpreserve.com) about the MacKenzie family and the explosion that occurred July 9, 1917 with personal information about the family, excerpts from investigation reports and references to newspaper articles, excerpts from the Cemetery book by Peggy O’Drain and Joyce Giles of the Mare Island Historic Park Foundation and a link to the June 2022 publication of an article by Stephen C. Ruder in the Naval History Magazine in which he provides a convincing argument for an alternative cause of the explosion from the one the US Navy reached a conclusion of in 1917 and up until now. Note: This link is only available without the PayWall until July 22, 2022. https://www.usni.org/magazines/naval-history-magazine/2022/june/who-really-blew-mare-island

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Catch of the Day Jimmy Sarmiento’s Photo Osprey Carrying Striped Bass June 17, 2015

Catch of the Day Jimmy Sarmiento’s Photo Osprey Carrying Striped Bass June 17, 2015

The phone, email, text and PM have been “ringing off the hook” this week, as the word gets out throughout the Bay Area that we ARE holding our 10th Annual San Francisco Bay Osprey Days, June 24-26, 2022. And, friends have been posting and telling us where they have seen osprey nesting in the Bay. Here’s local Vallejo resident, Jimmy Sarmiento’s Facebook post “Memory” that came up. This is by far, the biggest “WOW!!” photo I have ever seen of an osprey with a fish. It is also a great story as Jimmy tells it. I am eager to return to our Mare Island Shoreline Heritage Preserve visitor center, because inside it’s doors, we have been locked out of by the City of Vallejo since September 2019, is a fabulous custom print on aluminum of this photo. It is stunning!!

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We ARE SO CLOSE Sign to get us to 10,000 signatures on our petition. Just 1 to go at 8:23pm July 10, 2022

We ARE SO CLOSE Sign to get us to 10,000 signatures on our petition. Just 1 to go at 8:23pm July 10, 2022

Hi and good afternoon, My Mare Island Shoreline Heritage Preserve Users! We are so close, we are holding our breath (well, almost). Think about starting out in December of 2019 when we started this online effort with one, just one signature to return our nonprofit land trust, the Mare Island Heritage Trust, to the management of the Mare Island Preserve. Now, we are closing in on, so very close to, 10,000. We CAN do this.Notice that our original post says, Reopen Mare Island Preserve Now! Lots of people think that because the City of Vallejo public works department did eventually open the Preserve back up, that we are finished. Oh, Hell NO!

Please click, sign and shareChange.org petition

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2020 San Francisco Bay Flyway Festival Cancelled

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