My husband's draft number was about to come up in 1970, and not wanting to go to Viet Nam and not wanting to go to Canada, he signed up for U.S. Coast Guard officer candidate school. Nearly all Coast Guard personnel who served in Viet Nam volunteered for that duty. We got married when he completed his officer training, emerging as a newly-hatched ensign with a reserve commission. Later on, when I saw what fun he was having in his many and varied assignments, I said I wanted to sign up, too. I had a desire to serve our country since I was 10 years old, squashed by the ridiculous objections of a too-traditonal family. I was finally able to fulfill that desire. So both of us ended up in the Coast Guard Reserve.
We thought my husband was the first in his family to serve in that branch of service. However, when my father-in-law died in 2004, my husband went through his papers and found a surprise.
During World War II, there were two types of Coast Guard reservists: the Regular Reserve and the Temporary Reserve. The Temporary Reserve consisted of both paid and volunteer personnel, serving only for the duration of the war or any part of it. They provided coastal patrol and port security personnel.(1)
The surprise was that not only my husband's father(2), but also his grandfather(3) had served in the Temporary Reserve of the U.S. Coast Guard. My husband was not the first to serve in the Coast Guard; he was, in fact, the third member of his family to do so. It was a proud tradition, indeed.
(1) United States Coast Guard Reserve, "Reserve History," https://www.reserve.uscg.mil/about/history/ (accessed 25 March 2024).
(2) U.S. Coast Guard, Volunteer Port Security Force, letter of 27 September 1944, congratulating VPSF member L. M. Rhodes, Seaman First Class, on his marriage. Family papers.
(3) U.S Coast Guard, Certificate of Disenrollment as a Temporary Member in the United States Coast Guard Reserve (honorable conditions; without pay), Andrew L. Rhodes, 30 September 1945. Family papers.
6 comments:
How wonderful that this was a family tradition!
I'm sure he was thrilled to discover he's fallen into a family tradition without knowing it! On a different note, I see the name LeSeuer at the top of your page. Is that a family name? I have some LeSueurs in my family tree - Charles Taylor Lesueur (1885-1949) who married Helen Marcia Graham (1889-1972, my great grandfather's sister). Any connection?
@Tonya Graham McQuade: My middle name is from my Grandaunt. Her spelling was different, as LeSourd, her maiden surname. The spelling I have, LeSueur, is the spelling she gave her son Wilmer LeSueur Reed when he was born. My Grandaunt was also my adoptive grandma, as she and her husband adopted my mother after her father died. The Reed family did not like her mother, and took her and her sister away from her, and had them adopted by two of my granduncles and their wives. My grandaunt's name was Mary LeSourd. She married Perry Wilmer Reed in 1907. They lived in Indiana, and then Chicago, back to Indiana, and then to Pensacola, Florida, where my mom was raised. The original LeSueur in this country was Jean-Pierre LeSueur, who came over with the French forces to assist the colonies in the American Revolution. He stayed in the U.S., settling in Maryland. Any connection there?
I can't say for sure if there's a connection - I have not done a lot of research on Charles Lesueur's line since he married my great grandpa's sister and is not my direct ancestor. Charles was born in Arizona and his father in England, so if there is a connection, it must be back many generations.
What a great discovery. We just never know what we're going to find in our research, do we?
That's a wonderful story, thank you so much for your service
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