The Military Taught Me to Die for My Country
Like the majority of Team Rubicon's 90,000-plus volunteers, I am a military veteran. I retired from the Coast Guard in April of 2016 after a 27-year career, which included 16 years of sea time on a variety of Coast Guard vessels up and down the East Coast. My desire to join the military wasn't born from a desire for action or service, but rather from necessity. After my service, I found an option to utilize my skills and education through a disaster relief organization called Team Rubicon.
Long before Team Rubicon came into existence, I joined the service in 1989. Up to that point, there was very little stability in my life. I was the firstborn of my mother and father's marriage, but not their first. All total, I am one of 8 combined siblings between my parents and their previous relationships. My younger siblings and I grew up in foster homes before relocating to Maine in 1977, where we continued to reside in the foster care system. At the age of 16, I became an emancipated minor and thus began my journey into adulthood, college, work, life, and finally, parenthood at 22. At this point, I had no choice but to join military service if I were going to provide properly for my new and unexpected family.
Prior to this phase, I had several friends who joined the military and tried to encourage me to do the same. I had no desire to join the Marines or Army, as I didn't care to go to war on foreign soil. I certainly had no desire to join the Navy and be away from home for months or even years. The Air Force never appealed to me as I didn't care about aviation. That left the Coast Guard. I grew up in coastal Maine and recalled seeing Coast Guard stations and buoy tenders in Rockland and other communities for years. My future father in law had recently retired from the Coast Guard, so he encouraged me to investigate the service and see what they offered. I was enticed by the humanitarian aspect of the service but also wanted to join the front lines of the war on drugs. In February 1989, I signed on the dotted line in a Portland ME Coast Guard recruiting office and began my journey into law enforcement and humanitarian shortly after completing boot camp in Cape May, NJ, with my first assignment to a 270-ft Coast Guard cutter out of Portsmouth VA.
Over the next 27 years I would serve on several other ships, help rescue Cuban, Haitian and Dominican migrants at sea, respond to natural disasters, including hurricanes, witnessed 9-11 first hand, tow disabled vessels back into port, enforce fisheries and natural resources laws, inspect merchant ships, publish navigational information for mariners, fight fires at sea, coordinate search and rescue cases, inspect recreational, commercial, and fishing vessels, train junior members, and finally perform maintenance work on hundreds of aids to navigation in the New England area. I always felt a sense of accomplishment that what I did helped make our coasts and oceans safer, enriched the lives saved so they could go home to their loved ones, left the world a better place than what I found, and helped others succeed in their careers.
I did all this knowing that I took an oath to defend our country, uphold our Constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic, and die if necessary while serving alongside the very same sailors and shipmates who took the same oath and believed in the same ideals and goals. It was a very satisfying and rewarding experience, one which I never thought could be replicated ever again. I was fortunate to live through some of these harrowing experiences, but never forgot those who made the ultimate sacrifice in our service performing those duties. Many of these sailors, shipmates, and airmen lost their lives knowing the inherent risks involved in performing these missions, yet they went forth without hesitation, not knowing if they'd ever come back home, and sadly, never did.
Even though I maintained many friendships throughout my career and beyond with many of my Coast Guard shipmates, I still fell into a severe depression and state of loneliness after I retired. I missed the calling, the dependency on being there for those less fortunate, and missed the work hard, play hard mentality on patrol and during our port call visits and experiences with other shipmates. I tried to make the best use of my new downtime by going back to school, taking online and on-campus classes, and in the process earned my associate's and bachelor's degrees. However, my personal life faltered with relationships and family. I was truly going through post-deployment depression, to put it mildly. My health struggled and I found myself hating to face each day because I really felt like there wasn't much to look forward to.
In the meantime, I found out a former co-worker, who was now out of the Coast Guard and herself getting her college degree, joined Team Rubicon. I had heard of them briefly and saw one of their vehicles rolling down the highway in New Hampshire one day, but I had no real idea of what they did or who they were. At the time, I had a keen interest in getting an emergency management degree but wanted a more real life experience to go with that pursuit. Nonetheless, I signed up for Team Rubicon and then forgot about them, like many others probably have done, figuring I was too busy for it.
Life moved on. My stepdaughter graduated high school, my girlfriend and I sold our home in Maine and we relocated to a new home in Florida. We volunteered in animal rescue and discovered a passion for helping others through disaster, deploying to Panama City and Bainbridge GA in the wake of Hurricane Michael. On our first trip we brought over 200 cats and dogs to Atlanta, animals who would have otherwise been euthanized had we not gotten to the rescue site in time. It was then I started to feel the calling return to help those less fortunate, and so I looked into Team Rubicon once more. I went back through my Coast Guard career, updated all of my training and lateraled it over to Team Rubicon, took all of the training offered by FEMA, and started to make myself available for various Team Rubicon ops and training sessions.
After completing Core Ops in Atlanta, my first opportunity to serve came when I volunteered for remote ops in the wake of Hurricane Michael. It was during this time I received phone calls from people desperate for help. I took the information down and plugged data into a computer, but more importantly, I listened to every single person who needed help, and heard the despair and pleading in their voices for something, anything, anyone, to come help them from the hurricane damage. Several times I was left in tears after these phone calls. I began dreading the calls after the first couple of days because it was so depressing to hear the sadness and trembling in some of the voices, particularly from the elderly or families with young children. Yet here I was in the comfort of my own home, drinking hot coffee and working in an air conditioned office, feeling bad about myself. And then I'd go on Facebook and read the posts from those already deployed or engaged in remote ops, read their experiences and what they were dealing with, and finally realized what I was dealing with wasn't really that bad. It was more important to be there for those less fortunate. Giving to others who need help, those who need others who are capable of giving and can be there at a moment's notice when the call goes out is what really matters. My thinking was significantly altered at that point.
Later I received the opportunity to deploy to Panama City in December 2018. The area was still gravely decimated by Hurricane Michael, and cleanup moved along at a snail's pace. I found myself completely humbled by what I saw and who I met. I discovered many of us were still fighting battles no one could see, and that the only way to get through some of these issues was to head into these arenas with others who knew exactly what we were going through, then share our experiences whenever possible so we didn't have to keep everything inside and bottled up. It was extremely gratifying to be surrounded by so many grey shirts who needed that calling to feel a sense of purpose again, and to work for an organization which goes far above and beyond to make sure we are cared for while we are caring for those who truly need us, and to be there for other Grey Shirts going through those invisible battles.
In other words, we were all learning to live. Team Rubicon was teaching us just that, and more. Instead of being willing to die for what we used to do, we were now learning to live for what we could do. We were helping not only those who experienced traumatic events and felt hopeless or lost, but we were also helping others who needed to see their true worth in making themselves available for others, every single day. In a sense, much like many of the muck-outs we were performing for homeowners, we were learning to muck ourselves down to our foundations and walls, so we could learn how to rebuild ourselves again. We all learned to see ourselves as humans, not robots, and to see ourselves worthy of contributing to society again while being given the opportunity to experience camaraderie and fellowship the military once gave us.
Since my first deployment to Panama City, I've volunteered for four more Houston rebuild deployments and also deployed to Collier County, FL. It was during my July Houston deployment I heard the words which headlined this writing. One of the Clay Hunt Fellowship cohorts spoke, after we all shared our experiences, and said what we all needed to hear - that while we were taught by the military to die for our country, Team Rubicon helped us live for it. What a significant and profound statement.
In all of my Team Rubicon experiences, I walked into a room full of strangers, then left knowing I have family, brothers, sisters, all Grey Shirt comrades for life, and friends and family to truly live for. I made lifelong friends with a young Minnesota politician, a Marine vet from Virginia, a former cop from Buffalo, another cop from Greensboro NC, a young college grad on her very first deployment, and discovered other Grey shirts who served in the Coast Guard or lived near my home in Maine. I even met a Grey Shirt who had the same passion for cat rescue as my girlfriend and I did. We shared our struggles and realized we didn't have to be ashamed of our feelings. Every grey shirt in those rooms listened to us, hugged us, shook our hands, helped build our self-esteem up, and let us know we weren't alone. We no longer needed to die for a cause. We could now live for one and be there for others who need us just as badly as we need them.
Team Rubicon helped us, and continues to help us, see our value and true worth by giving us opportunities to help those who are at, or were near, one of the lowest moments of their lives. People lost more than their homes. They lost their livelihoods, their memories, their cherished possessions, and possibly even family and friends. We were, and are here, to help them get back on their feet, to restore their lives, to live again, and to restore their faith in humanity. In those moments, Team Rubicon is helping me and other fellow grey shirts learn we don't need to die for our country to ensure others can live freely. We are here today, tomorrow, and in the future, ready for the call, living a life of purpose so that we help others stay alive and healthy. Team Rubicon truly is helping us live for our country and others so that no one has to die for it. I know this to be true because every one of us leaves here completely changed with a burning desire to come back again, to continue helping those devastated by disaster to resume normalcy in their lives. That is a cause truly worth living for.