The Honorable Helen Delich Bentley
 
                      The Honorable Helen Delich Bentley
 
      Throughout her career, Bentley has tirelessly promoted two primary issues – the advancement of America’s industrial/manufacturing base and its maritime community.
 
      In 2006, Bentley served as Chairman of the Port of Baltimore’s Tricentennial Committee, which oversaw a yearlong celebration honoring the Port’s 300th anniversary. During a Tricentennial Committee dinner gala on June 1, 2006, Maryland Governor Robert L. Ehrlich, Jr. announced he had officially renamed Baltimore's port as The Helen Delich Bentley Port of Baltimore.
 
      “There has been no one,” said Ehrlich in making the announcement, “who has championed the vital role the Port plays in both the global economy and our everyday lives more than Helen.” 
 
1985 – 1995:  Member, U.S. House of Representatives
 
      In 1984, Bentley was elected to serve the first of five terms, representing Maryland’s 2nd Congressional District. While in Congress, she sat on the Appropriations, Budget, Public Works & Transportation and Merchant Marine & Fisheries Committees, in addition to the Steel, Art, Northeast, Human Rights and Trade & Tourism Caucuses.
 
      She developed a reputation as a skilled mediator between labor and management, and an energetic advocate for jobs and economic opportunity. An internationally recognized expert on maritime issues, Bentley pushed for fair trade and a strong national defense.
 
      Bentley also laid the groundwork for the establishment of the Maritime Security Program to provide safe transport for cargo ships. Today, this program has salvaged a major remnant of America’s merchant marine.
 
1969 – 1975: Chairman, Federal Maritime Commission
 
      Upon her 1969 appointment as Chairman by President Richard Nixon, Bentley became the fourth-highest ranking woman in the history of America's federal government, the highest ranking woman of Nixon’s administration, the first woman to serve in a key governmental position in the maritime field, and the first woman appointed by a President to head a regulatory agency,  
     
      She was a principal architect of the Nixon Administration’s 1970 Merchant Marine Act, which established a level of government support for building tankers and bulk carriers in U.S. shipyards.
 
      Bentley used her chairmanship as a platform to strengthen American industry, and then continued the fight in Congress, where she became a leader against the transfer of jobs overseas.
 
1945 – 1969:  The (Baltimore) Sun, maritime reporter and Maritime Editor
 
      Bentley created the most-respected maritime section in the nation during her 24-year career at The Sun by breaking important national stories through dogged determination and a personal style that made her famous from boardrooms to the docks. Her coverage of the supply problem for America’s war effort in Vietnam led to the institution of containers as the preferred method of cargo transport.
 
      In 1950 she moved into television. For 15 years, as she turned out weekly 25-30 minute segments, Bentley produced, directed, edited, wrote and did interviews for her series, “The Port That Built a City,” and, later, “The Port That Built a City – and State.” Throughout, she still covered maritime and edited all maritime copy at The Sun. Her focus on the Port of Baltimore intensified both public and government awareness of the Port’s substantial economic impact on Maryland.
 
EDUCATION
 
      Bachelor of Arts, Journalism with honors, University of Missouri, 1944.
 
      Awarded 10 honorary doctorates:

  

AWARDS

 

      Mrs. Bentley's numerous national and international honors and awards include:

 

 

LAUNCHINGS

 

      Mrs. Bentley has christened 16 American flag ships. In 1987 at Baltimore’s Bethlehem Steel Shipyard, she christened and named five ships simultaneously (MS Cape Decision, MS Cape Diamond, MS Cape Domingo, MS Cape Douglas, MS Cape Ducato).

 

 

SPEAKER AT LAUNCHINGS