I joined the Coast Guard thanks to a woman (well,
many women, but one in particular): my older sister. Four years before I showed
up at the Coast Guard Academy, she did the same. All throughout high school, I
watched her endure the training: the push-ups, the marching, the heavy course
load, the loss of the most basic privileges. I saw her excel in spite of all of
it, saw her grow even stronger than she was before, and I thought to myself:
Holy crap, I
am never doing that.
Still, it sucked me in like an undertow. A mere
two months after she received her commission, I began Swab Summer at the
Academy: a grueling introduction to a grueling four years. It’s not something I
ever would have considered, that I ever would have thought to do – if my sister
hadn’t done it before me.
In that spirit, I’d like to take a moment to honor
the sacrifices of some of the women who served as pioneers of the Coast Guard. Of
course, none of them signed up just to be the ‘first woman’ to do something. Rather,
they all saw a need, saw a purpose, saw an opportunity – and did something
about it.
Here are four women I admire.
FOUR
AWESOME COAST GUARD WOMEN