Cathy Hammond Reflects On Life, Learning And Legacy

When Tava Foret, co-founder and president of the Towing Vessel Inspection Bureau (TVIB), sent Cathy Hammond a text message this spring to ask her to give her a call, Hammond didn’t really think anything of it.

“I’ve been retired for three years, and I thought it was odd,” Hammond said, “but Tava and I have always been close. I just thought that she wanted to pick my brain about something.”

Rather than to simply catch up, Foret was reaching out to inform Hammond that she had been chosen to receive the 2025 Mike Rushing Legacy Service Award, which will be presented at the upcoming Inland Marine Expo (IMX), to be held May 28–30 in Nashville, Tenn. Hammond will receive the award May 30 during the IMX awards luncheon, which will also feature this year’s 40 Under 40 honorees.

“I was speechless and humbled,” Hammond said. “The people who know me know that I can talk, and I was speechless. I will be forever grateful.”

A lot of that emotion grew out of the fact that Hammond counts the award’s namesake and its first recipient as dear friends.

“It almost brought me to tears, simply because I knew Mike [Rushing], I know Todd [Rushing], I know George Foster, and I know what a wonderful man Mike was,” Hammond said. “To go into that category and be a part of his legacy means a lot.”

Throughout her years in the maritime industry, Hammond has been a trailblazer, not just for women, but for the industry in general. Hammond cofounded Inland Marine Service (IMS) in the late 1980s with her ex-husband, David Hammond.

“For 30-something years, we were the only vessel management company in the United States,” Hammond said. “We’ve operated for Midland. We’ve operated for Ingram. We’ve operated for ACBL, ARTCo, Crounse, TVT [Tennessee Valley Towing] and Riverway.”

Rather than owning the vessels, IMS would crew, insure and repair them for the vessel owners. In the early days, Hammond kept the books for IMS while continuing teaching. As the company grew, she joined IMS full time as an owner and manager.

It was a surprising turn for Hammond, who grew up in northern Indiana as one of four children.

“My dad worked in a factory as a tool and die maker, and my mom did not work,” Hammond said. “I was the first one in my family to go to college.”

Hammond graduated from Ball State University, then spent 14 years teaching in the Cincinnati public school system. From there, Hammond went to public schools in Kentucky, where she worked a handful of years.

“It was during that teaching career that I met my ex-husband, because he was teaching a deckhand program in the Cincinnati public schools,” she said.

At the time, the Ohio River Company approached David Hammond about managing some vessel operations for the company. The Hammonds launched Inland Marine Service in 1988.

Cathy Hammond doesn’t shy away from the fact that, when IMS was in its infancy, she didn’t know much about the towboat business. For that, she went back to school—the school of towboats, and the mariners were her teachers.

“You have a 30-something-year-old girl that knows nothing about the river other than I crossed it to go into Ohio, so David put me on a boat,” Hammond said. “I rode and rode and rode and rode and asked one stupid question after another. Those people became my family because they taught me everything I know. They answered my dumb questions. They made fun of me. They treated me like the crew. That’s how I got my education.”

With David Hammond running the day-to-day business, Cathy Hammond began attending events and workshops. That’s how she got introduced to the world of safety management systems, Coast Guard regulations and advisory committees.

“It was just the two of us at that time, so I went out into the jungle of D.C. and worked on some working groups,” Hammond said. “That became my segue into AWO [American Waterways Operators] and being on the executive committee that got me hooked up with TVIB.”

IMS had already implemented an internal operations manual, so Hammond was a natural leader as AWO began developing its Responsible Carrier Program (RCP). The IMS operations manual became a template for the RCP, which in turn served as a forerunner for the Coast Guard’s Subchapter M regulations.

Hammond said throughout that time she was passionate about not only representing the maritime industry as a whole, but also being a voice for smaller companies. In her view, those smaller companies could perform just as well as the larger operators.

Besides her time on towboats and leading in the maritime industry, Hammond has always been passionate about serving others as an extension of her faith. In 2015, that passion for helping others led her on a mission trip to South Sudan, where she worked with teachers and young girls.

“I spent a week in South Sudan, and the people there just touched my heart, so I went back the following year, and I stayed for three weeks,” Hammond said.

It was during Hammond’s second trip to South Sudan that she ran into trouble. The country had been engaged in a civil war since 2013, and while Hammond was in the country, civil unrest broke out, and the airport was overrun. Hammond was trapped for nearly seven days with no access to information about what was happening around her. Calling home was her only link to the outside world. After nearly a week of waiting, Hammond was finally rescued by Samaritan’s Purse and brought back to the United States.

“It was harder on my family than it was on me, because when you don’t know, your mind just tends to wander,” Hammond said. “I was living it every day, and I knew what I was up against. I never felt afraid.”

Hammond has not travelled outside of the country for charity work since that experience. She instead volunteers for local organizations, such as Royal Family Kids Camp, which serves children in the foster care system, and Operation Christmas Child, a ministry of Samaritan’s Purse that sends gift boxes around the world to children in need.

“It’s my way of saying thank you to Samaritan’s Purse, since they were the ones that brought me out of South Sudan,” she said.

Looking back on her career, her life since retiring and the news of the Mike Rushing Legacy Service Award, Hammond said she’s thankful and humbled.

“I owe a thank you to Mike Rushing and his family,” Hammond said. “I had the honor of working with Mike, so I know Mike personally, and I’m humbled by the people or persons that nominated me. I don’t know that I feel worthy of the award, but I’m grateful to accept it.”