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COPY OF AN ARTICLE PUBLISHED ON THE NEW YORK TIMES.
The Coast Guard's Deck Hands
By STEWART AIN
Published: May 23, 2004
ITH an estimated 100,000 boats plying Long Island waters every summer, the United States Coast Guard is often busy with search-and-rescue missions, safety violations and law enforcement.
But after Sept. 11, 2001, its role as the protector of America's coast became an even higher priority. It has even been called into war; Nathan B. Bruckenthal, 24, a petty officer who grew up in Stony Brook, was killed with two Navy sailors last month in a suicide boat attack near Basra, Iraq. He was the first member of the Coast Guard killed in combat since the Vietnam War.
With its ranks spread thin - its 39,000 members worldwide is comparable to the size of the New York Police Department - the Coast Guard is relying heavily not only on its 8,100 reservists, but also on the 37,000 members of the Coast Guard Auxiliary.
This volunteer group is the "eyes and ears of the Coast Guard," said Rear Commodore Harvey Miller, 66, of West Babylon, who is in charge of the Coast Guard Auxiliary on the South Shore.
Although the Coast Guard Auxiliary is not permitted on any military or law enforcement missions, it can conduct rescue missions and security patrols just as the Coast Guard does.
"If we see a terrorist at the base of a bridge putting something there, we call the Coast Guard," Mr. Miller said, though he declined to discuss whether they had actually seen such an incident. "We have no weapons and cannot take any direct action. We do not do law enforcement."
But if a boat is in distress, the Auxiliary will try to help, Mr. Miller said.
"I was once on patrol and came across people who had grounded," he said. "We tried to help them off, but they would not cooperate and were intoxicated. I couldn't do anything other than call the Coast Guard and ask them to send a boat. I then kept them under observation. There was no more I could do. The Coast Guard came, saw they were drunk and arrested everybody."
The Auxiliary also teaches boat-safety classes. Most of its members are boaters themselves; their average age is about 50. "Some of our guys are old, but some aren't," Mr. Miller said. "Usually you have a mixed crew so that not everybody is 70."
Chief Warrant Officer Douglas E. Wyatt, commanding officer of the Coast Guard station at Fire Island, said that his crew, with just two boats to cover the 40 miles from the Nassau-Suffolk border to Smith Point and up to 50 miles from shore, was kept particularly busy during boating season. But he said the Coast Guard Auxiliary "usually adds 25 to 30 percent additional manpower to my active duty crew every week."
"My job here and my crew's job would be a lot harder if the Auxiliary wasn't here," Mr. Wyatt said. There are 320 Auxiliary members under his command.
Along the South Shore's 110 miles from East Rockaway to Orient Point, there are 235 active duty members of the Coast Guard, 75 reservists and 720 Auxiliary members, said Cmdr. John N. Healey, who oversees them all. The North Shore Auxiliary is run from Connecticut.
Despite the importance of port security since Sept. 11 - the Coast Guard was incorporated into the Department of Homeland Security in March 2003 - Mr. Miller said that the Coast Guard's efforts in law enforcement, drug interdiction and search and rescue had not been diminished.
Before it was incorporated into the Department of Homeland Security, the Coast Guard "was a stepchild of the Department of Transportation," said Susan J. Albertsen, 61, a real estate broker from Smithtown and a member of the Auxiliary since 1997. "After 9/11, the Coast Guard came to the forefront."
This added mission has provided the Auxiliary with a "new sense of purpose," said Capt. William D. Goelz, 68, an Auxiliary member and retired high school principal who lives in East Patchogue. "We're a real service organization now instead of just a club kind of thing."
He said Coast Guard officers now had a greater appreciation of the Auxiliary.
"Coast Guard people come and go every four years," Captain Goelz said. "We live here. We know the area. They are now beginning to recognize with new respect the fact that the gray-haired guys know what should be and shouldn't be in an area."
Commander Healey said the Auxiliary still did mostly search and rescue because the South Shore was "not a terrorist target that we know of compared to Manhattan."
On a recent Sunday morning, William Jacobs, 53, of West Islip, was aboard his 25-foot personal boat with two other members of the Coast Guard Auxiliary, Russell Venti, 49, an office furniture salesman from Babylon, and Ralph G. Sposito Jr., 48, an oil terminal manager for Slomin's who also lives in Babylon. All three wore "dry suits" to keep them dry if they had to enter the 40-degree water, as well as life vests and Coast Guard Auxiliary patches.
On the side of his boat, Mr. Jacobs, an English teacher in the Patchogue-Medford school district, had hung a placard that said "Coast Guard Auxiliary Patrol." And his boat flew the Coast Guard Auxiliary flag.
The men were on an eight-hour patrol of area waterways, searching for anything out of place. "It gives me a chance to give back to the community," Mr. Venti said, "and to help the Coast Guard and to help the country at this sensitive time."
He said he joined the Auxiliary 16 years ago to help the local Coast Guard station. "Now, I look at it in a national sense," he said.
Mr. Sposito, a member of the Auxiliary for 15 years, said Sept. 11 also changed things for him. "It made what we are doing more serious," he explained. "There are a lot of people sacrificing for the country, and this is our way of helping."
Mr. Jacobs added that the Coast Guard was "working a lot of hours, and we're trying to take the burden off of them."
Mr. Miller, who is also chief financial officer for Harrison Leifer DiMarco, an advertising and public relations firm in Rockville Centre, said the work of his members was comparable to that of volunteer firefighters, "only we bring our own fire truck."
But owning a boat is not a prerequisite for joining the Auxiliary. The requirements are simple: the applicant must be at least 17 years old and an American citizen and have no felony convictions. Women are welcome.
To go on patrol, an Auxiliary member must pass some basic physical requirements, including the ability to swim with a life jacket and a dry suit.
"Of course, if you took a 20-year-old and a 45-year-old and asked them to perform the same test, the 20-year-old will last a lot longer," Mr. Miller said. "They can't be exactly the same, but they do perform to the same standards and rescue people the same way the Coast Guard does, but within reason."
To ride on a Coast Guard vessel, as opposed to a private Auxiliary boat, members must meet more stringent requirements, including sit-ups, push-ups and running, just as full-time Coast Guard officers do.
Other jobs in the Auxiliary include handling radio and telephone calls, teaching safety classes and even cooking.
Mrs. Albertsen, who said she met her husband in the Auxiliary, said that as a flotilla commander in the Bay Shore area, she must make sure that at any time there are as many boats on patrol as the Coast Guard requests. "We have to provide not only the boats but qualified crews," she said.
The oldest member of the Auxiliary on the South Shore, Charles W. Baack of Holbrook, is 88. He said he owned his own floor-covering business when he decided to join the Auxiliary 20 years ago, thinking it was a "good place to learn about boating."
The more he became involved, Mr. Baack said, the more he enjoyed it.
"It kind of grows on you," he said. "This is just another aspect of volunteering."
Copyright NY Times.
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