52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks: Week 21 -- Military

This week in 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks, Amy Johnson Crow asks us to post about the military members in our family history.

Here's a roster of military service in my family:

8x-great-grandfather Samuel Packard served in King Philip's War (1675–1678).

My 4x-great grandfather Richards Packard served in the American Revolution (1775-1783). 

My great-great grandfathers Mathew Hale Packard and Charles Reed served in the Civil War, for the Union (1861-65).

My great-great granduncles Thadeus Bullock Packard and William B. Packard served in the Civil War, too, also for the Union.

My husband's great-grandfather, Daniel McLeod Marshall, served in the Civil War, for the Confederacy.

My father, Arden Packard, served in the U.S. Navy in World War II (1939-1945).

My father-in-law, Leonard Marshall Rhodes, served in the temporary U.S. Coast Guard during World War II.

My husband's grandfather, Andrew Lewis Rhodes, served in the temporary U.S. Coast Guard during World War II.

My brother, Arden "Ned" Packard II, served in the U.S. Marines in the VietNam War (1955-1975).

My husband, Keys Rhodes, and I both served in the U.S. Coast Guard in the Cold War (1945-1991).

 We were surprised to find that my husband's father and grandfather had been in the Coast Guard before he was.  We had thought he was the first in his family to serve in the USCG, but he was actually the third.

I was the first woman in the Packard-Reed family to enter military service. 

We're proud of our service and of our families' military tradition.

 

Military Monday: An Unexpected Tradition

 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.

C is for Coast Guard

This post is part of the A to Z Challenge for genealogy bloggers.

When my husband joined the Coast Guard in 1970, we thought he was the first in his family to do so.  Many years later, when his father died in 2004, we discovered in some family papers he had, that this was not the case.

My husband's father and grandfather had also served in the Coast Guard, as temporaries during World War II.  They were port security personnel, patrolling the port of Jacksonville.  It is rather indicative of my father-in-law's lack of communication with his son that he never mentioned that he had been in the Coast Guard.

So, rather than being the first, my husband was part of a three-generation tradition in the family!

But the story does not end there.

While he was in the Coast Guard, one of his duty stations was in St. Petersburg, Florida.  He did a variety of things, as everyone in the Coast Guard is called upon to do.  He inspected a nuclear plant.  He was in charge of safety and security for sailboat races.  He was the local command's liaison with the Coast Guard Auxiliary, a civilian organization dedicated to providing help and support to the Coast Guard through public instruction in boating safety, courtesy examinations of pleasure craft, search and rescue, patrols, and in other ways.

I saw how much fun he was having, and decided I wanted to be part of it, too.  Due to some misunderstandings, it wasn't until we were back in Jacksonville, after my husband had transferred from active duty to the Coast Guard Reserve, that I managed to enlist in the Coast Guard Reserve.  I took the oath on 3 February 1976, entering as a yeoman third class.  During my years in the CGR, I went from yeoman third class to a commission, as a lieutenant junior grade.  I had to stand down before I made lieutenant, because I had developed osteoarthritis and could no longer carry out my duties. 

And before that, he and I had also joined the Coast Guard Auxiliary!  We had a 17-foot open runabout, a beautiful little boat with a lot of get-up-and-go.  We did search and rescue and patrols in that boat, and had a great deal of fun in doing so.

We definitely are a Coast Guard family.

International Coffee Day: How I Came to Drink Coffee

In celebration of International Coffee Day, for which I have a pot brewing as I write, I shall tell the tale of how I came to be a coffee drinker.

When I was about 10 years old, around 1957, I spent a couple weeks of the summer at Camp Weed, the campground of the Episcopal Diocese of Florida.  It was located in the area called "The Big Bend," where the panhandle of the state takes a bend to join the peninsula.  The camp was right on the Gulf of Mexico, and it could be magical to get up in the morning for our morning prayer and see the Gulf mirror-smooth, reflecting the sky so that we could not tell where the horizon actually was.

In the mess hall there, some of the kids drank coffee.  It had been a stretch in my family to allow me, at 10, to drink iced tea because of the caffeine content. My mother drank coffee, but only in the morning.  After high noon, she did not drink it because she said it kept her awake at night if she did. 

After breakfast one morning, when everyone else had cleared out, I decided I would try some coffee, just to see what it was like.  I tried it black.  I tried it with sugar.  I tried it with cream and sugar.  It was awful.  I decided I never would bother with it because I did not like it.

Fast-forward to the late 1970s, when I was in the Coast Guard Reserve.  It was 1979, I believe, and we were having a change of command ceremony on the open wharf at the Mayport, Florida, Coast Guard Station, located near the mouth of the St. Johns River.  It was January.  It was raining.  It was cold.  Yes, it does get cold in Florida, certainly in the part where I live, the northeast corner.  It has been down as low as 11 degrees in my now home county of Clay in my lifetime.

I was a Yeoman Second Class at the time, and we enlisted folk were standing in formation at parade rest (feet apart, arms behind the back, hands clasped one over the other).  We were in our dress uniforms, but no additonal protection from the wind and rain.  We were cold.  We were wet.  We were some miserable sailors.  And the officers could not get their you-know-what together, and we waited, and waited, and waited.  It was something like 45 minutes, at parade rest, in the cold and wind and rain. 

The officers -- including my husband -- were under cover.  They were sitting down.  They were wearing their nice warm bridge coats (wool overcoats).  Finally, they got themselves together and the ceremony was conducted.  At least the outgoing and incoming commanding officers made very brief remarks.

When the call of "Dis-MISSED!" came, we all broke formation and ran for the mess hall.  We burst into the place and demanded, "Where's the coffee?"

Nothing ever tasted as good as that cup of nice hot coffee on that cold, blustery day.  It was pure heaven.

Now, let me tell you about Coast Guard coffee.  It has a reputation among the sea services.  It is strong stuff.  Even the Navy says that when the Coast Guard runs out of fuel for our ships, we run them on our coffee.  We use it to swab the decks, as a powerful cleaner.  I once heard a Florida Army National Guard lieutenant colonel say he could only take one cup of Coast Guard coffee per year.  (Wuss!)

Because her parents both drink and brew Coast Guard coffee, and that is how she learned to make it, our younger daughter has been banned from making the coffee in three different workplaces!

Maybe the reason I didn't like the coffee at Camp Weed was that it was too weak.  I was destined to drink Coast Guard coffee.

So, excuse me, but my coffee is ready.

Happy Coast Guard Day!

Today is the 221st anniversary of the founding of the United States Coast Guard. My husband and I both spent time in the Coast Guard.  He entered Officer Candidate School at Yorktown, Virginia, after graduating from Florida State University.  We married while he was in the Coast Guard on active duty.  He was assigned to the Coast Guard Cutter Ingham out of Norfolk, Virginia.  I was on contract to the Jacksonville Public Library, which had sponsored me for graduate school in library science under the Library Services and Construction Act. 

Once we were a family unit again -- to which had been added our older daughter Marti -- we went to St. Petersburg, Florida, where he was assigned to the Group office.  He had so much fun overseeing safety at regattas; being liaison with the Coast Guard Auxiliary, a civilian body which voluntarily provides a great deal of help to the Coast Guard; and taking other assignments as they came along.  I saw how much he was enjoying it, I decided to join, too, an idea he enthusiastically supported.

That did not happen until we returned to Jacksonville after he had been released from active duty and transferred to the Coast Guard Reserve.  I enlisted in the Reserve in February of 1976 as a yeoman third class.   By the time I had to stand down because of the onset and progress of osteoarthritis, I was a lieutenant (junior grade).  During my time in, I had had some fascinating and fun stints of active duty, as well.

It was not until fairly recently that I discovered my husband's genealogical link to the Coast Guard.  During World War II, local people along the coasts of the United States could serve as temporary members of the Coast Guard, with such duties as patrolling the waterfront or the beaches.  Among my husband's grandfather's papers and his father's papers, we found documents showing us that both his father and grandfather had been temporary Coast Guard personnel during the war.  When he went into OCS, we thought he was the first in his family to serve in the Coast Guard.  Turns out he is a third generation Coastie.

I do have a first on my side of our family -- I am the first woman in my family to serve in the U.S. armed forces, as well as the first in the Coast Guard. 
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Blog Action Day: Water

My connection of the clean water theme of Blog Action Day to genealogy is easy:  My husband and I both served in the United States Coast Guard, which -- among its many and varied duties -- is responsible for enforcement of federal clean-water laws in federal waters.  I had some connection to this in some small ways.  As the officer in charge of a sub-unit of reserves who manned the Jacksonville, Florida, Marine Safety Office during the 1980s, I was in charge on my weekend of pollution response.  There were a few small incidents of "a visible sheen on the water," the principal sign of pollution.  It mainly came from factories along the St. Johns River or from the ships that called at the port of Jacksonville.  We never had any serious pollution problems on my watch.

Currently I'm taking a class on the environmental history of the St. Johns River, for which we in the class will be taking oral history from people involved with the river in one way or another.  I am not on a team that is looking into the varied sources of potential pollution to the river, or the history of that aspect of it.  My subject is how artists have depicted the river over time, and how that depiction has changed.  Or not.  I have not yet encountered any visual arts representations of St. Johns River pollution.  Though I have as yet found no artistic representations (paintings or art photographs), there are news photographs of such things as the periodic algae blooms the river is unfortunately subject to, and historical photographs of channels of the River or its tributaries choked with water hyacinths, which at one time constituted a hazard to or at least an obstacle to navigation.  They are pretty much under control these days, though it is a continuing battle.  The explsotive growth of the hyacinths through much of the twentieth century, and the problems they presented, is an object lesson in the hazards posed by invasive species here in Florida.

The algae problem is due to the introduction into the river of hypernutrients, via runoff from agricultural fields and residential properties.  The nutrients spur the algae growth, which uses up the oxygen in the water.  In consequence, fish and plants die.

These problems are not a direct threat to the population hereabouts, for very few areas get their drinking water from the River.  They get it from the Flroidan aquifer, a large system of underground limestone caves.  However, with the population growing, especially in the central part of the state, some municipalities south of us (which is actually upriver, not down, as the St. Johns flows north) have their eyes on diverting many hundreds of thousands of gallons of water from the river for their drinking water.  This prospect alarms those of us living downriver (i.e., north), because of the real harm it could do to many aspects of life on the river, including commercial fishing and recreation, as well as the problems it would cause with salt-water intrusion into the river itself.

The problem is more severe in other parts of the world, where climate change, war, and other conditions have altered the availability of water in drastic ways, threatening populations with actual extinction.  There are ways to conserve water, keep it pure, and provide for these peoples who need it so much.  That is what this year's Blog Action Day is all about.  Even in my own very small way, on a very local level, I've helped through my service in the Coast Guard.  It is a problem we all need to be aware of.
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Sentimental Sunday: A Yeoman's Birthday

Here I am on my birthday, 12 April 1981.  I was a Yeoman Second Class in the U.S. Coast Guard Reserve.  As I have my uniform on, it was a drill weekend.  The location is at my father-in-law's house in Jacksonville, FL, where my husband had been busy all day baking and decorating that cake, which bears the insignia of a Yeoman First Class.  That day, at drill, I received my letter of advancement to YN1, and I had called my husband that morning with the news.  It was a nice birthday present.  The cake was a nice surprise, too, and my husband did it all by himself!
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Armed Forces Day: A Family History

Today is Armed Forces Day, so I am going to talk about ancestors and other relatives who have served in the military forces of the United States.

On my father's side, I can trace back to a Revolutionary War ancestor, Richards Packard.  He enlisted in Massachusetts at the age of 17, in 1780, and serve two enlistments.  We don't have any War of 1812 ancestors in this line, because in around 1796, Richards Packard headed up to Canada, not because of any change of heart after the war, but because in Canada, in Quebec, the government was giving land away without much worry about who they were giving it to!  He found farmland to his liking, and settled in the area of present-day Georgeville.  His movements after the Revolution had a northward trend, from Massachusetts to New Hampshire, up into Northern Vermont, and then into Canada.  I guess he was more picky about his land than about the winter climate!

My great-great grandfather Mathew Hale Packard "retro-migrated" back to the U.S. in around 1850, settling first in Chautauqua County, New York.  He is enumerated there in the federal 1850 and 1860 censuses and in the 1855 New York state census.  He was still in New York in the 1860s, and there enlisted in a cavalry regiment for the Civil War.  On the other side of the family, another great-great grandfather, Charles Reed, served in an Indiana infantry regiment.  Both men suffered more from illness than from combat action, neither having been wounded, but both feeling effects of disease.  Both received pensions based on disability; Matthew Hale Packard didn't benefit from his for long, for he died in 1881.  Charles Reed lived, in poverty, until 1920.

I don't have any record of anyone in World War I.  My maternal grandfather Perry Reed was a railroad freight agent, and therefore in an occupation of national security importance, so he wasn't drafted.  My paternal grandfather ran a dairy; I don't know if he had any particular deferment; I haven't looked for the draft  registration status of either one of these yet.  Just haven't had time.

My father, Arden Packard, enlisted in the U.S. Navy in 1929, right out of high school.  A year later, he took a competitive exam and won entrance to the U.S. Naval Academy (the way serving sailors got in).  He graduated from the Academy in 1934, served on aircraft carriers, and finally got to indulge a passion of his childhood and youth -- he entered flight training at Pensacola Naval Air Station in 1937.  It was in Pensacola that he met my mother.  He was medically retired in about 1939; in 1941 -- several months before Pearl Harbor -- he was called back to active duty.  He was restricted to limited flying because of his medical condition, but became a flight instructor.  Despite the limitations on his flying, he was rated in one fitness report among the top 5% of Naval aviators!

My brother, Arden Packard II ("Ned"), enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps in 1960, after he graduated from high school.  I can imagine what our father, who died in 1954, would have thought of that.  Daddy taught his dog, Smoky (registered name Ceiling Zero) a couple tricks which indicated his opinion.  He would set two identical bowls of dog food down, calling one "Navy chow" and the other "Marine chow."  Smoky went for the "Navy chow" every time.  He would say to the dog, "Smoky, which would you rather be -- a dead dog or a Marine?"  The dog would roll over on her back, all four legs in the air.

When I was a little girl back in the 1950s, I was unconventional.  Alas, I grew up in an all-too-conventional family.  When I expressed a desire to go into the Navy, my mother and brother were aghast and absolutely prohibited it.  "Nice" girls didn't do such things.  When my husband and I got married, he was in the Coast Guard.  I saw what fun he was having -- he really did enjoy it -- and said I wanted to share in the fun.  "Sure," he said.  His confidence in me (and in my sense of honor and self-respect) enabled me to do what I had been blocked from doing earlier on.  I enlisted in the Coast Guard Reserve 3 February 1976 as a yeoman third class, becoming the first woman in my family to serve in the military. When I had to stand down in 1991 because I had developed arthritis, I was a lieutenant (junior grade).  I had been selected for lieutenant, but did not get to advance.

Happy Armed Forces day to all serving members and to all veterans!
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