Joe Aleba:  

The photo you see was taken in November at the Jupiter Inlet Lighthouse, where we had recently installed a camera for the museum and local TV station. After graduation in 1973, I joined the U.S. Coast Guard, along with David Stout. David and I arrived at the U.S. Coast Guard Training Center in Cape May, New Jersey on July 23, 1973 and after 12 long weeks, thousands of push ups and sit ups we graduated in September. We were both assigned to temporay duty at Cape May until October 73 when we received our orders for Radioman School in Petaluma California where we received training in communications until April 1974. Upon Graduation from Radioman school, David and I parted ways, he went off to San Juan Puerto Rico and I was assigned duty at the Coast Guard Yards in Baltimore MD. I remained in Baltimore until November '76 when I transferred to an Air Rescue Station in New York. There I met my wife Ilene. Ilene worked for the US Park Service. We married in November 1977 and began a wonderful journey and life together now 31 years later. I received orders in 1978 for advanced communication training at the U.S. Navy Training Center in San Diego CA, Ilene and I departed NYC with a 9-month old son (Jason) in a loaded car off we went cross country. After completing training in San Diego, I received orders to report to the Coast Guard Communications Station in Point Reyes California, where I along with my shipmates would stand rotating watches listening to the international morse code distress frequency, air to ground communications, ship to shore communications through very many mediums. While station in Pt Reyes I began going to college, our daughter Davi-Beth joined the world and family. I was transferred to the Coast Guard Training Center in Petaluma CA in 1982 as a military communications instructor. After a year of intense study and preparations I became a Chief Petty Officer (E-7) in j...Expand for more