Editor's Note: Twenty years ago, the Coast Guard displayed its enduring role as America’s maritime first responder. The disaster tested the strength of survivors, responders and the very fabric of our nation. Throughout it all, our members gave 125 percent. They did not rest. They did not give up. The National Coast Guard Museum just launched a new website dedicated to those responders’ devotion to duty, courage, humanity, and most of all their selflessness. This story is excerpted from a longer piece that appears on that site. Read the full story here.
Oftentimes during a crisis, an iconic image or object defines that moment. During the search and rescue effort following landfall of Hurricane Katrina, several of those images and relics became a hallmark of Aug. 29, 2005, the day the massive storm ravaged the Gulf Coast. To the men and women stationed at Coast Guard Air Station New Orleans, the air station’s sign became that iconic relic. The sign, which is safely at rest awaiting its permanent home in the future National Coast Guard Museum, became a beacon of hope for so many. It was battered, bruised and leveled by Katrina, but it was never counted down and out.
The Air Staton New Orleans sign has come to represent so much more than the building itself. It epitomizes Team Coast Guard, resiliency, relentless determination and grit – all characteristics shared by the Coast Guard service members who answered the call to duty, post-storm. The story of how it came to rest in the Coast Guard’s Heritage Asset Collection has as many twists and turns as the gorgeous wrought iron surrounding the sign. The sign’s journey begins when Air Station New Orleans flight crews returned to the air station on the back end of Katrina. One aircrew dropped off EM2 Rodney Gordon, who was essentially responsible for putting the air station back together.
“I was on the last helicopter to leave and the first one to come back,” Gordon said. “If my memory serves me correctly, I’m pretty sure the air station’s public works department was first to find the sign.”
The sign, like so many other structures, had fallen victim to Katrina. Bruce Jones, a retired Coast Guard captain who was the commanding officer of the air station when Katrina made landfall, said the sign had been knocked off its base. Its home, up until Katrina, was at the entry drive to the air station. When the Air Station New Orleans crews returned to the air station immediately after Katrina to inspect the facilities, it was to determine if fuel was available and if the air station was going to be operable. The sign was not visible from the angle the crews flew in.
Keep reading on the National Coast Guard Museum's site.