The U.S. Coast Guard should establish a historical center to enhance its ability to collect, preserve, record, study, interpret, and publish history for the service and the American people. In this era of scarce taxpayer resources and greater priorities such as defending the homeland or fighting militant Islam around the globe though, it is fair to ask why the Coast Guard needs such a facility.
The Coast Guard needs its own historical center, modeled after the Navy's because it has a rich and proud history that is worth-collecting, preserving, and re-telling for future generations. If not given the proper resources (private or public funding), the danger will always exist that this proud and glorious heritage won't be available to subsequent generations. It is just that simple, especially since Coast Guard history is at the bottom of the food chain when it comes to dollars as it competes against aging ships, aircraft, and shore installations.
Like the rest of the service, the Coast Guard Historian's Office has not been spared from the "Curse of Can Do." Only a clear break from the past, such as establishing a historical center, would create a new culture in the service. Coast Guard History can inform, educate, and professionally develop Coasties and their leaders for the challenges they will confront during their time in uniform.
How would the Coast Guard's new historical center be organized? I propose that Dr. Robert M. Browning Jr., the Coast Guard's present historian, be elevated to a newly created position of Director of Coast Guard History and Heritage. Ideally, he would have a much larger staff than the five people (plus a few Reservists and Auxiliarists) he has now. It is most unfortunate that some offices around Washington, D.C., with much less heritage and history than the Coast Guard, such as the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, apparently have larger history staffs. Moreover, the Coast Guard Historical Center should have its own line item in the budget so that the days of "end-of-the-year" money are over.
There is no shortage of positions that would need to be filled at the new center. Key slots, at a minimum, that would need to budgeted and filled are: deputy director, senior historian, applied historian, cutter historian, aviation historian, revenue cutter service historian, Reserve and Auxiliary historian, ten staff historians to include oral/e-mail historians, public affairs officer, museum director, curator, archivist, Web historians and bloggers, artists, photographers, videographers, digital technicians, etc. These key personnel would be in addition to the necessary support staff needed to make a world-class organization like the new Coast Guard Historical Center enhance its ability to serve its civilian and military leaders
Priorities for the new historical center are many. Top of the list would be a safe location that is accessible to scholars and amateur historians alike, such as a nearby college campus. Following that, another vital task would obviously be digitizing the Coast Guard's entire archives to make them more available to the public. The conducting of oral, video, and e-mail interviews would be reconstituted in an aggressive program that would make it a priority to interview no fewer than 100 active, Reserve, and retired flag officers and senior enlisted personnel each year.
The historical center's IT shop would be busy as well, revamping the Coast Guard history Web site to use the latest Web 2.0 social networking tools in a bold attempt to connect with members of Generation Y. Finally, the staff historians would be churning out new titles and monographs on long overdue subjects, such as a biography of Admiral Russell Waesche, the Coast Guard's Commandant during World War II and its first four-star admiral. This biography is just one of many books that need to be written on one important aspect or another of the service's history.
The time is now for the Coast Guard to have a world-class history program that is the envy of her sister services over in the Department of Defense. History does not take a procurement holiday so let's get started today by establishing the Coast Guard Historical Center.