Coast Guard veterans in central Ohio want their due
COLUMBUS, Ohio — Bill Mondillo sums up the plight of a Coast Guard veteran in central Ohio with a little story about himself.
Last year, he was at a Veterans Day event at his granddaughter’s elementary school. The school played Anchors Aweigh to celebrate the Navy people there. The song that begins “From the halls of Montezuma to the shores of Tripoli ... ” celebrated the Marines.
The Army and the Air Force got their songs, too. But no song was played for the Coast Guard.
Hold on, you might say after decades of hearing only those four service anthems: Is there a Coast Guard song?
“Of course there is!” an exasperated Mondillo told the ill-informed reporter who had asked.
There’s not a whole lot of coast to guard around Columbus. Army, Air Force, Marine and even a few Navy reserve members make news here when they deploy overseas. Not the Coast Guard.
Mondillo, 69, of Westerville, was in the Coast Guard from 1962 to 1966. He joined because he was “draft bait” (the military still inducted people, even though it was between wars), and he was having trouble finding a job.He said he would like to hear his anthem played and see his service represented in veterans parades. He wants to find other Coast Guard veterans in central Ohio. So he’s starting a group here called the Buckeye Coasties.
There’s already a group with the same name that lives mostly on the Internet and in an annual retreat. An Akron offshoot has breakfast meetings once a month.
“Most of the (Buckeye Coasties) members are in the northern part of the state,” said John Estep, 75, who served in the Coast Guard from 1955 to 1959 and is the organizer of the online group. He lives in Norwood, in southwestern Ohio.
One of the Coast Guard’s nine districts is based in Cleveland. It covers the Great Lakes area from Duluth, Minn., to upstate New York, said Petty Officer Levi Read, a Coast Guard spokesman in Cleveland.
There are more than 700 active-duty and reserve Coast Guard members in Ohio. Except for a safety detachment on the Ohio River in Cincinnati — actually part the district based in New Orleans — almost all are in northern Ohio. There is a recruiting office in Columbus.
Coast Guard members serve everywhere and settle everywhere, however. Mondillo is from Philadelphia, served in New York and came to central Ohio as a civilian after a company consolidation. Estep, from Kentucky, served in Alabama and the Virgin Islands.
Ed Hutchinson, 70 and one of the Akron-area coasties, served in Japan and Hawaii. The Coast Guard is best known for its domestic work, but it’s “all over the world,” he said.
A Port Clinton group returned earlier this month from an Arabian Sea deployment, where it provided security for a naval base.
The most-common refrain from coasties who find one another on the Internet, or who find their way to the Akron breakfasts, is “I didn’t know there were other Coast Guard members here,” Hutchinson said.
Mondillo wants to spread the word. And maybe the larger Internet community of Buckeye Coasties will become known to some younger veterans.
“It would be great if we could get some young blood in there,” he said.
He’s already making a little progress in making his service better known. He has been invited to his granddaughter’s school for a Veterans Day program.
He has been promised that Semper Paratus, the Coast Guard anthem, will be played.
