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Jeffrey Palazzo—a 9/11 Coast Guard hero’s story
Saving lives was what drew Jeffrey Palazzo to the Coast Guard, and on Sept. 11, 2001, Palazzo, a Coast Guard Reservist, was one of hundreds of New York Fire Department personnel who made the ultimate sacrifice trying to save others.
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Vincent Danz—9/11 hero and FRC namesake
—As a member of the Emergency Service Unit, he and his fellow officers were the first to enter the doomed Trade Center. He called home to his wife and told her it was real bad up in the Towers.
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Maturing and Making an Impact—Coast Guard Intelligence in the 1980s and 1990s
—In the early 1990s Coast Guard Intelligence made extensive contributions to mass migration preparation and response.
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Hero without a headstone—Forgotten Keeper Joseph Doyle and his Gold Lifesaving Medal rescues
—The weather was horrific with dark skies, steady rain, and tumultuous seas. The keeper and his crew were quickly away and encountering “fearful seas.”
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Raising “The White Picket Fence”—the origin of the Coast Guard’s Haitian Migration Interdiction Operations
—While 1980 is most remembered for the arrival of 125,00 Cuban refugees during the Mariel Boatlift, thousands of Haitians also arrived in south Florida by sea that same year. They were collectively referred to as “Cuban-Haitian Entrants.”
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SS Steel Executive—an impossible and heroic aviation medevac in the fog
—Lewis had to make what he considered to be one of the most crucial decisions of his life. Peering at the fog below him, he remembers asking himself a question to plunge or not to plunge…
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The service’s first drug seizure at sea? The mostly mistaken case of the George E Starr
—"On August 31 the American Steamer George E Starr was seized on Puget Sound by a detail of four officers and 18 men sent from the Wolcott. Two Chinese subjects, together with a quantity of opium, were discovered secreted on board. "
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Honor, Respect, Devotion to Duty—Foundational principles of Coast Guard culture
—Three decades after Adm. John Klime officially promulgated the service’s core values as “Honor, Respect, and Devotion to Duty,” these core values stand the test of time.
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Isaac Mayo—Surfman, Gold Life-Saving Medal recipient and FRC namesake
—Like many other local mariners on Cape Cod, Isaac Mayo volunteered his professional services as a sailor and boatman to the Massachusetts Humane Society. He quickly proved himself to be a very competent surfman handling boats to rescue shipwreck victims in Cape Cod’s storm surf.
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The last flight of Coast Guard Aviator #3
—It was 3 p.m. and Thrun had already made three perfect landings. He was starting his run for his fourth take-off, when something happened.