CDR Michelle Webber, USCG Oral History

title:

CDR Michelle Webber, USCG Oral History

creator:

Webber, Michelle R. (Schleif) (1968 March 11 -

subject:

Coast Guard

description:

Michelle Webber (formerly Schleif) was born in Topeka, Kansas in March 1968. She has one older brother and two older sisters, her father worked on the railroad, and her mother was a registered nurse. She loved theater in high school so she started doing that in college but realized she wouldn’t make a living doing that, so she got a degree in English from Saint Mary’s College and spent a year working as a secretary. In college one of her jobs was to drive military officers between Fort Leavenworth and the airport, which put the idea of joining the military in her mind. Her husband, a Marine she married in 1989, encouraged her to look into the Coast Guard, and she did. In March of 1991 she went to Officer Candidate School in Yorktown, Virginia. Her first assignment was with Coast Guard recruiting as a minority officer recruiter, so she traveled to historically black colleges and universities (HCBUs) to recruit officers. In 1993, she transferred to Buffalo, New York where she was the assistant operations officer, qualifying as a Seach and Rescue controller and command duty officer in that time. She then spent about six and a half years in Cleveland, Ohio as a search and rescue controller and operations officer for the Military Entrance Processing Station, which she took command of in 2001. In 2003, she was stationed in San Diego, California as the surface operations officer. In 2005 she went to Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island and got a master’s degree in national security and strategic studies, becoming an instructor responsible for coordinating a program that showed naval officers from 63 different countries what military and general life was like in the United States. From there, she was sent to the Incident Management Branch in Juneau, Alaska in 2007. The 17th Coast Guard District is responsible for all of Alaska, but in practice there was very little non-research Coast Guard activity in northern Alaska because it was so remote and they didn’t have the resources to put stations or units up there. In the summer of 2007, Michelle was in charge of an operation to see what was needed to improve Coast Guard services and operations in northern Alaska, which included figuring out how best to get boats through the tricky waters and checking in with locals to see what they wanted. Barrow, Alaska didn’t have enough hotel rooms to house everyone on the deployment, so an Air Force base in the area housed some of them too. One project was to increase the used of float coats by whalers, and what worked best was talking to indigenous Alaskans, who said that the bright orange they came in wasn’t feasible for hunting. They changed the color of the float coats to white, and their use by whaling crews increased greatly. In 2008, they repeated the operation out of Nome, Alaska. Many locals discussed needing doctors and veterinarians, so they partnered with the Public Health Service, Air Force, and National Guard to fly doctors, dentists, and vets from Nome to twelve outlying communities. The first operation had about 45 people, and the second grew to 68 or 69 people. Their third deployment was based out of Kotzebue, Alaska, and was very similar to the Nome deployment, focused mostly on medical care but also on promoting water safety. As of the interview, Michelle had put in her letter to retire in the summer of 2012 with the rank of commander, and for her service she was awarded a Meritorious Service Medal, Joint Service Commendation Medal, Coast Guard Commendation Medal, Navy and Marine Corps Commendation Medal, and the Coast Guard Achievement Medal. A transcript of this interview is available.

publisher:

Military Women's Memorial Foundation

contributor:

Unknown

date:

2011-12-15

type:

Moving Image

format:

mini-DV

identifier:

1291; 2011.1291

source:

OHP | IMES

language:

English

relation:

636269

coverage:

1990s | 2000s | 2010s | 1991-2012

rights:

Unrestricted