THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT 
              Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: Saturday, March 16, 1996               TAG: 9603160384
SECTION: LOCAL                    PAGE: B5   EDITION: FINAL 
SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS 
DATELINE: JAMESTOWN                          LENGTH: Medium:   55 lines

PRESIDENTIAL YACHT SEQUOIA TO APPEAR AT RE-ENACTMENT THE VESSEL IS BEING RESTORED TO TAKE VISITORS TO 1933.

The Sequoia, the presidential yacht first used by Franklin Roosevelt, will be among the displays at the ``Military Through the Ages'' re-enactment this weekend at Jamestown Settlement.

For four months, Eric Gibson and a restoration crew have been getting the vessel back to how it looked in 1933, hiding such modern additions as radar and closed-circuit TV. Everything will be authentic, including the 48-star flag on the bow.

``We're taking extreme measures to mask out every modern intrusion,'' said Gibson, watching a colleague camouflage a radar screen with a muslin cover. ``We want people to think 1933.''

Constructed as a private pleasure craft in the mid-1920s, the Sequoia became a Navy vessel in 1933. It served exclusively as Roosevelt's yacht for three years before being reassigned to the secretary of the Navy, Gibson said.

Presidents Truman, Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon used the 104-foot boat, but Jimmy Carter, who considered the craft a luxury, ordered it auctioned off in 1977.

It then passed through two private owners, including the failed Presidential Yacht Trust, before a Norfolk shipyard seized the vessel in 1991 to recover more than $2 million in restoration costs.

The Sequoia has remained locked in an Elizabeth River shed for nearly five years. Gibson, who owns a Norfolk machinery company, asked the shipyard if it would lend the boat out for the annual military history display.

``I'd been fantasizing about doing an exhibit with the Sequoia for a long time,'' he said. ``So everything just worked out.''

The Sequoia's role is to re-enact a fishing trip made by Roosevelt to Virginia on Sept. 23, 1933. Gerald Montgomery, a retired Marine, will play the part of the president. Other re-enactors will play the yacht's Navy crew and Secret Service agents.

The group will lead visitors on extended tours of the vessel. Authentic artifacts have been placed throughout, from medical equipment and navigational instruments to magazines, uniforms, a clock and an old phone.

In the main dining room, visitors will exchange a few words with ``FDR.'' Montgomery said his role includes showing what many people of the time never knew, that Roosevelt was disabled.

``The president's men did a lot of things to hide his disability in public,'' Montgomery said.

``But I'll be doing him in period leg braces.''

KEYWORDS: SEQUOIA by CNB