The small envelope I received via mail contained a note card, and notecards, hand written, can mean one of two things for a small town editor and editorial scribbler:

• The writer — it’s usually an older woman — wanted to thank me for some small favor extended by the newspaper or
• The writer — it’s usually an older woman — wanted me to know she was praying for my cold, dark soul.

I’ve gotten some of both over the years.

This card, though, came from 45 members, cadets and crew, of the U.S.T.S. General Rudder, the training vessel for the Texas A&M University at Galveston maritime program, thanking me “for your generous Southern hospitality.” Signatures were included and, on this end, much appreciated.

The General Rudder pulled up lame at the Port of Port Arthur with, of all things, a rudder problem at the end of July. That meant crewmembers — the crew consisted mostly of instructors and senior cadets who were earning “on ship” hours for serving on the summer cruise — had to make do for more than a week in Port Arthur.

(Ironically, the ship is named for a soldier, A&M graduate James Earl Rudder, who served the Army at D-Day, served Texas as land commissioner, and served A&M as a change agent president during the 1960s. He led a remarkable life).

There were more than a few reasons for this thank-you note to touch my stony heart. One is that I am a native New Englander. Much as I have admired the elegance of Southern manners — my beloved, New Orleans-born mother-in-law handed such grace down to my bride, who in turn handed them down to my daughters — I am too often at heart a Yankee: brusque, hurried. I only aspire to present Southern manners like those I first encountered in the 1970s in Alabama.

Another reason to smile was it bolstered my hope in the crew’s generation. Port Director Larry Kelley had taken me to the General Rudder while it was docked downtown and before it went to repairs. I got to board the 242-foot vessel, which was built in 1984 as a submarine hunter, and, better still, to meet some crewmembers, most of whom are college seniors in the yearround degree program, which trains them to serve on ships.

They included First Mate Kate Fossati, an instructor I mistook for a student. My bad; Fossati, a veteran mariner, had served on vessels in the oil and gas industry in the Gulf of Mexico before taking a teaching job at Texas A&M. They included Max Teare, the “Ancient Mariner,” who graduated the program in its infancy, back in the 1960s. Now an instructor, the Beaumont native rejoiced in a life at sea. So did his young charges, who seem to serve equally in good cheer.

They included cadets like Dani Vanckhoven and Cassidy Colombo and the appropriately named Samantha Seaman. They included Cadets Shakeva Bootle and Zachery LeCompte. And more.

We met aboard the General Rudder and days later met at the Museum of the Gulf Coast, which hosted a dinner and an after-hours evening in the museum for the cadets. The crewmembers came from all over — most from Texas but some from Louisiana and New Jersey. (It was delightful to hear young people say, “Janis Joplin was from here!”)

But all of them were friendly and cheerful and grateful to be in Port Arthur, where local people at the port and the museum and at the International Seafarers’ Center treated them like the welcome guests they were.

There was plenty of reason for that. They older we get, the more heartening it is to see young people who show charm and grace and grit under tough circumstances.

They give us hope for the future of our state and country. They give us assurance that when American vessels dock anywhere in the world, they’ll represent our country with Southern grace and good cheer — as long as there is an A&M graduate on board.

That will make them welcome not only in Port Arthur, but however far they may travel.

That’s why I read my thank-you note and smiled. I think I’ll keep it awhile.

Ken Stickney is editor of The Port Arthur News.