One Important Piece of the
Coast Guard Foundation - Anne B. Brengle
Published
06/12/2009
 One
important piece of the Coast Guard Foundation’s
mission is “celebrating the proud legacy of the men
and women of the Coast Guard.” We do this by
honoring heroes at our dinners around the country;
through our support, alongside the Alumni
Association of the Coast Guard Academy and its
traditions; and by supporting the Coast Guard
Auxiliary and the establishment of a new National
Coast Guard Museum.
We thought about the Fortieth Anniversary of the
Coast Guard Foundation this year, and how best to
celebrate the many ways the multi-missioned,
multi-tasked Coast Guard touches all our lives
every-day every-night SEMPER PARATUS. In doing so,
we were inspired to tap into a growing fraternity of
people, those who have been rescued by the Coast
Guard. Director, Verna Kaye Gibson reminds us that
this number topped 1,000,000 for the first time
since 1790 last year.
While the Coast Guard celebrates this milestone as a
benchmark in its reports and position papers, it is
hard to pin down those inside the service on the
specifics of rescue stories. This past year (my
first as President of the Foundation) I have talked
to admirals, petty officers, rescue swimmers,
pilots, coxswains, and newly minted ensigns around
the country. These brave men and women simply will
not talk about it. They do not use the “I” word. The
most you will get is a shrug of the shoulders and an
“It’s what we do.” This is part of the Coast Guard
ethos, the part that speaks to “devotion to duty.”
On the eve of our 40th Anniversary the Coast Guard
Foundation is proud to launch a
“one-in-a-million-rescued.org” website so that we
the rescued can celebrate our rescuers. We want you
to join us in sharing your experiences. For us they
are observing a medical evacuation from the deck of
a cruise ship at eighteen knots, a seafaring
family’s grateful acknowledgement of generations
fishing safely under the watchful eye of the Coast
Guard, and being towed from a lee shore during a
blizzard in January on the coast of Maine with an
air-lock in the diesel engine – and these are just
stories from around the water cooler in our offices
in Stonington, CT.
Please share your experiences, use our blog, and
let’s collectively celebrate the unsung sea stories
of this amazing branch of the service.
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 Author
Name: Anne B. Brengle
Anne B. Brengle is President of the Coast Guard
Foundation
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