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The 1960s
Shortly after midnight on May 23, 1960 a seismic wave hit southern California. The resulting current surges tore piers loose on the Los Angeles waterfront and damaged boats in the harbor of San Diego. Coast Guard Auxiliarists provided assistance to over a hundred boaters that day.
By the early sixties the number of registered yachts and motorboats in the United States had surpassed five million, and membership in the Coast Guard Auxiliary had reached twenty-two thousand. The task of administering the organization had outgrown the capacity of the National Board.
In 1968 the staff at the national level was reorganized. The elected National Commodore and Vice Commodore were authorized to appoint a staff of forty additional officers, who would preside over four Departments: Comptroller, Public Relations, Operations, and Education. Each Department was divided into divisions, which were in turn subdivided into branches - a scheme system similar to that of the Coast Guard. In 1969 the position of National Rear Commodore was added.
More recent organizational changes have elaborated on the system that was worked out in the sixties. There are now three National Rear Commodores, representing the Eastern, Central, and Western Areas. The number and titles of Departments have fluctuated over the years. In 1996 the number stood at nine: Public Affairs, Finance, Education, Information Services, Legal Affairs, Member Resources, Operations, Training, and Vessel Examination.
The first national-level Auxiliary journal was a newsletter called Under the Blue Ensign, which began publication in 1959. Since a national boating magazine used that title for its column of Auxiliary news, the name of the journal was changed in 1960 to U.S. Coast Guard Auxiliary National Publication - a masthead that, though descriptively accurate, had little to recommend it aesthetically. Later that year a contest was held to find a better name. The winner was The Navigator, which has been the title of the Auxiliary's magazine since 1961.
The Navigator is subtitled "an official informational and educational tool for the Coast Guard Auxiliary." It serves as a means by which the National Board communicates policy and regulation changes, announces the recipients of awards, and passes on ideas to improve the Auxiliary's operations and programs.
One of the Auxiliary's functions since its early days had been to provide the Coast Guard with reports on errors in official nautical charts. In 1962 that function was formalized when the Coast Guard and the Auxiliary signed an agreement with the National Oceanic Service. NOS was to provide copies of its charts to members of the Auxiliary, who were to identify and report any discrepancies. The sheer number of Auxiliarists constantly checking the accuracy of their charts became a significant asset to both NOS and the Coast Guard.
Since the Second World War the Coast Guard has been barely large enough to perform the missions assigned to it. On many occasions the Auxiliary has stepped into the breach. In the early sixties, for example, it became clear that there were not enough Coast Guard radio stations in California. Auxiliarists of Flotilla 47 put their CB sets to work, and eventually set up a permanent radio tower on the roof of a restaurant in Santa Cruz. It has since been responsible for handling hundreds of distress calls.
During the Vietnam conflict several Coast Guard cutters were taken off their normal stations and sent to Southeast Asia. Auxiliarists put their boats to work on patrol duty, and the 11th District set up a "Vietnam Cutters Fund" to buy books, magazines, and other recreational materials for the Coast Guardsmen who had taken their ships to war.
In December, 1967 the retired British ocean liner Queen Mary ended its final voyage at Long Beach, California, where the great ship was to become a permanent tourist attraction. Hundreds of pleasure boats formed an unofficial welcoming committee; the Queen Mary's captain commented that "there were more craft than at Dunkirk." Eighty-seven Coast Guard Auxiliary boats kept the channel into Long Beach Harbor clear.
In 1967 the Coast Guard took the Auxiliary with it from the Department of the Treasury to the Department of Transportation. The DOT's budgets were not generous to the Coast Guard. Headquarters had to accept that a greater role for the Auxiliary was not only desirable but necessary.
The 1970s
Four years later Congress passed the Federal Safe Boating Act of 1971, which expanded the Coast Guard's role in supervising boating on inland waterways. The act also provided that the Auxiliary be placed at the service of individual state governments when they asked for its assistance.
Early in 1973 budget cuts forced the closing of seven Coast Guard stations on the Great Lakes. At the request of the affected communities, Congress ordered the stations to be re-opened and operated by the Auxiliary. The local division captains took responsibility for manning them and ensuring that Auxiliarists' boats were always available to assist distressed vessels. The Auxiliary later took over seven more stations on the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers.
Auxiliarists Lillian Phillips and Mary Roeder, of Tacoma, Washington, originated a water safety education program called "Water 'n' Kids" in 1973. The Auxiliary adopted the course nationally, and since then more than a million children have taken it. Phillips and Roeder received Certificates of Administrative Merit from the Commandant.
Any publicized event near the water attracts a swarm of enthusiastic but often careless boaters. Auxiliarists performed maritime crowd control service at each Apollo moon shot and Space Shuttle launch, and for OPSAIL '76, the parade of sail training vessels through New York Harbor on the nation's bicentennial. In August of 1979 President Jimmy Carter and his family took a cruise down the Mississippi River from St. Paul to St. Louis on board the sternwheeler Delta Queen, escorted by Coast Guard and Auxiliary vessels.
On June 5, 1976 the Teton Dam in Idaho burst, flooding a considerable area and washing toxic chemicals out of a warehouse into the reservoir below the dam. Coast Guard Auxiliarists warned boaters to evacuate, and helped build a levee that saved the city of Idaho Falls.
In 1976 the Coast Guard commissioned a study of the Auxiliary by a private research firm, University Sciences Forum of Washington. After interviewing key personnel in the Coast Guard and the Auxiliary and analyzing questionnaires filled out by about two thousand Auxiliarists, the researchers concluded that that Auxiliary was in good health. "In summary," they wrote, "we consider the Auxiliary the greatest economical resource readily available to the COGARD. It performs in an outstanding manner and its personnel are among the most professional group of volunteers in the nation...."
Another study, conducted the following year by a Coast Guard "Long Range Planning Board" chaired by CAPT G.L. Kraine, was not quite so euphoric. The Kraine study complimented the work done by the Auxiliary, but urged the regular Coast Guard to do a better job of utilizing Auxiliary resources and play a bigger role in its administration. One sentence in the report echoed the sentiments of many Auxiliarists: "Many Coast Guard personnel are not familiar with the Auxiliary nor aware of its capabilities."
The Coast Guard, to the extent that its budget would let it, took the Kraine Board's recommendations to heart. Information about the Auxiliary was added to indoctrination courses in Coast Guard boot camp and officers' candidate schools. Coast Guard officers newly appointed as Auxiliary Directors were put through a week-long special training course. The Auxiliary's data processing system, AUXMIS (Auxiliary Management Information System) was revised up to keep better track of Auxiliary activities, including individual Auxiliarists' service records. A Goal Attainment Program (GAP) enabled the Directors to set challenges for each flotilla on the basis of its capabilities and performance.
By the end of the decade Auxiliarists felt more a part of a truly national organization. In 1979 Auxiliary membership surpassed forty-six thousand - a figure that exceeded the numerical strength of the Coast Guard by about twenty-five percent. Another study by a Coast Guard board in 1981 concluded that "developments in the Auxiliary program in the last four years have to a great extent resolved the problems outlined in the 1977 report."
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