- Announced Annual Awards:
- Large Unit History Award Winner: Air? Station Houston. In preparation for the 50th anniversary of Air?Station Houston, staff contacted more than 12,000 people to ?participate in, attend, or contribute to the celebration?commemorating the semi-centennial celebration of the commissioning of Ellington Field. Air station members spent the year of 2013 working with the Coast Guard Aviation Association to contact former commanding officers, pilots, and aircrew to collect air station?history and memorabilia that reached all the way back to the opening of the air station on December 23, 1963. The crew developed storyboards for use during the ceremony, and then installed them in passageways. To commemorate the 50th anniversary of the air station, Air Station Houston redesigned the unit patch to reflect its date of establishment and commissioned a new painting from artist Bryan Snuffer that was unveiled during the ceremony.
- Small Unit History Award Winner: Station Quillayute River. The crew of Station Quillayute River excelled in? the presentation of two segments of the unit’s history. First, the? unit forged and held a long relationship with the Quileute Nation, on whose land the station was first built in 1929. Secondly, through its history, the unit has witnessed two major casualties involving Coast Guard fatalities that had profound impacts on the Coast Guard. Through recent preservation efforts, the station has sought to shed light on the factual events of these tragedies through the exhibition and interpretation of artifacts telling their stories. The year was emotionally punctuated by a unit morale kayak trip to the site of the 44363 disaster of February 13, 1997, during which the station’s crew found the 44-foot MLB mast protruding from sand. The unit extracted it from the sand, returned it to the station, restored it, and put it on display. This singular action personifies the connection to? the past, with current unit members paying homage and respect to past unit members they never knew.
- Book awards.
- Coast Guard Heritage: Steve and Grace?Truman, Storms And Sand: A Story Of Shipwrecks And The Big Sable Point Coast Guard Station
- Lighthouses: Merita S. Whatley, Images of America: Point Arena Lighthouse
- Heritage awards.
- LCDR Kenneth Sieg, USCGR, Sector Hampton Roads. LCDR Sieg processed more than 50 oral histories and associated artifacts ?collected in the field during travels to U.S. Central Command area of operations including Afghanistan, during operations of Patrol Forces Southwest Asia and the Redevelopment Assistance and Inspection Detachment. He also led the charge to bring the in-country Coast? Guard Humvee ELEANOR II back from Afghanistan for preservation and display at the Air Station Wildwood Aviation Museum. LCDR Sieg also deeply researched the previously unexplored history of the Coast Guard’s signals intelligence efforts, and assisted in a wide-ranging documentary declassification that shed new light on Coast Guard intelligence activities during World War II. For these reasons and? many others, the Foundation for Coast Guard History owes a great debt of gratitude to LCDR Sieg for his actions in support of the Service’s history.
- Tracey Mertens, USCG Auxiliary, Flotilla 23 Kodiak, AK. Auxiliarist Mertens worked with ten active duty Coast Guard units in Alaska to preserve and present the story of the Coast Guard. Over the course of 17 months, Ms. Mertens volunteered more than 2500 hours under the direction of the D17 public affairs staff and Air Station Kodiak. During that period, she took more than 3000 photographs that have been used by local units and the D17 Public Affairs Detachment.
- Lennis B. McFadden, USCG Auxiliary, Flotilla 0920-04-02, Rochester, NY. Auxiliarist McFadden dedicated more than 575 hours to the digitization and organization of his flotilla’s historical ?archives, ranging from 1939 to 2012, scanning and cataloguing more than 3500 pages of documents and over 650 photographs. Due to his work, all flotilla members have access to all historical materials? without the need to disturb the originals. This project led to the? creation of an exhibit at the Central Library of Rochester and ?Monroe Counties, and the 2015 celebration of 75 years as a unit for? the flotilla.
- Continued sponsorship of Coast Guard History Award to Honor Graduate of each Chief Warrant Officer Professional Development Class.
- Published three editions of The Cutter, FCGH’s magazine.
