More Coasties off to the Gulf

[Tamaroa]

Coast Guard Reserve Unit Is Mobilized
By ADAM EMERSON aemerson@tampatrib.com
Published: Feb 2, 2004


More than 100 members of a U.S. Coast Guard unit in St. Petersburg bade a tearful farewell to their families and headed to Kuwait on Sunday to protect military ships and ports engaged in Operation Iraqi Freedom.
Port Security Unit 307, a specialized group formed in 1999 and largely made up of reservists from the Tampa Bay area and Florida, will be gone at least a year.

Members boarded buses in St. Petersburg early Sunday and headed to MacDill Air Force Base to gather boats and equipment before flying out for their mission.

Once in Kuwait the unit's members - from police officers and firefighters, to chefs and car mechanics - will receive more detailed orders.

``We're motivated, and we're ready to do the job our president has asked us to do,'' said Chief Ed Messina, Clearwater resident and an agent with the federal Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

``Hopefully, while we're over there, we'll make history.''

The St. Petersburg group is one of six specialized Coast Guard port security units based in the United States.

Local members have been deployed to Yemen, where terrorists struck the USS Cole in 2000, killing 17 sailors. After the Sept. 11 attacks, the unit guarded Boston Harbor.

In June, the St. Petersburg team protected the naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where the U.S. military holds several hundred foreign terrorism suspects.

Journeying to the world's hot spots can be exciting for some, but bittersweet for others, members say.

Some leave jobs and families. Some won't get to the see the births of their children.

``I've done this enough where my wife and kids are used to this,'' said Messina, 42, who served as a Marine in the 1991 Persian Gulf War. ``Some of these guys have little ones. I know there's six to eight who have wives who are pregnant. They'll have these children while we're gone.''

Lt. Tomas Kringel, a unit operations officer, found out about two weeks ago that he would head to the Middle East and prepared his wife and two daughters, ages 9 and 14.

Although the 42-year-old Pembroke Pines man has been deployed five times as a reservist, the missions usually take less than a year. Although the current assignment will keep him overseas at least a year, his orders call for as much as two years.

``This may be the longest I'll be away from home,'' said Kringel, who works as a revenue management controller for a car rental agency in Fort Lauderdale.

Some in the unit are active Coast Guard members, such as Petty Officer 2nd Class Douglas Walker. Walker, 25, is a Coast Guard electronics technician in Cape May, N.J., and serves in the St. Petersburg unit once a month. He isn't leaving a family behind, but it's the first time he will be overseas.

``I've never worn camouflage in my life,'' he said.

Ninety percent of the unit's members are reservists, Petty Officer 2nd Class Judy Silverstein said. Federal law ensures they'll get their jobs back when they return.

Ensign Tom Adams, 38, will be taking a leave from his job as a math teacher at Wesley Chapel High School in Pasco County. On Sunday, he said goodbye to his wife, Terri, and his two children, a 2-year-old daughter and a son, 7.

``He's the kind of person who feels it's his job to help out,''Terri Adams said through tears. ``It's something he's always been committed to. It's been going on for so long that our son accepts that that's what Dad does.''

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Fair winds and following seas guys!!
Bill