The U.S.
Coast Guard Auxillary Celebrates
Sixty-Nine Years of Dedicated
Service
(USCG) 2008
marks the U.S. Coast Guard Auxiliary’s sixty-ninth
year of dedicated service to the nation. Over the past year
the Auxiliary has provided over three million hours of direct
support to the Coast Guard. Admiral Thad Allen, Commandant
of the Coast Guard stated in his 69th Anniversary message
to the entire Coast Guard family that “the overall
contribution that Auxiliarist have given year after year
is impressive,
but the greatest measure of their impact is found in their
spirit of patriotism and their steadfast commitment to the
guardian ethos and the men and women of the Coast Guard with
whom they serve. The Coast Guard Auxiliary is an extremely
valuable asset to [the Coast Guard], the Department of Homeland
Security, and our nation.”
Over the
past few years the Auxiliary has significantly increased its
capacity to support Active Duty Coast Guard units in several
mission areas such as Maritime Domain Awareness (MDA) and the
America’s Waterway Watch program. Auxiliary members are
teaching tens of thousands of America’s recreational
boaters, and public and private stakeholders who live, work,
and play on and around America’s waterfront, how to properly
identify and report suspicious maritime activity for the benefit
of our nation’s safety and security.
Auxiliary
members have been incorporated into the Coast Guard’s port, waterways
and coastal security missions as well as providing administrative
and logistical support at venues ranging from medical clinics
to Coast Guard training center classrooms to foreign language
interpreter services aboard deployed cutters.
Of course
the Auxiliary continues to conduct its traditional recreational
safety boating missions. Over the past year Auxiliarist provided
the boating public over fifty thousand (50,000)hours of boating
safety education courses and conducted over one-hundred thirty-thousand
(130,000) vessel safety checks. These education courses and
vessel safety checks directly contribute to the prevention
of countless search and rescue cases and lives saved each year.
The United
States Coast Guard Auxiliary is the uniformed civilian component
of the United States Coast Guard. These men and women can be
found on the nation’s waterways, in the air, in classrooms
and on the dock, performing Maritime Domain Awareness patrols,
safety patrols, vessel safety checks and public education.
For more information on the United States Coast Guard Auxiliary,
visit us at http://www.cgaux.org.