VADM Sandra L. Stosz, USCG Ret. Oral History Part 1

title:

VADM Sandra L. Stosz, USCG Ret. Oral History Part 1

creator:

Stosz, Sandra Leigh (1960 April -

subject:

US Coast Guard Academy (USCGA) | Coast Guard

description:

Part 1 of 3 of this interview with RADM Sandra Stosz covers her early years, her time attending the Coast Guard Academy, and her service on/at USCG Glacier. She was born in April 1960 in Silver Spring, Maryland. Her father was a civilian chemical engineer working with the Navy, and her mother was a stay-at-home-mom until Sandra and her 3 siblings began attending school, at which point she worked as a substitute teacher. She started swimming on a swim team at age five, and competed in seasonal sports throughout the year. She began working over some summers instead of swimming when she was thirteen, wanting to help the family in the uncertain economic times of the 1970s. As a junior in high school in 1976, she was exploring options for college when someone showed her a headline about the service academies opening their doors to women for the first time that fall. She was immediately interested because it advertised a free education, a stipend, and the possibility of serving on a ship, and five years in the military afterwards didn’t seem too long for her. She was nominated for the Naval Academy first, but after a guidance counselor pointed her towards the Coast Guard Academy she applied and got her acceptance while her Naval Academy application was still processing. She shipped to the Coast Guard Academy in July 1978, in the third class to accept women. There were 20-30 classmates in her platoon, and only one was another woman. In her entire class there were about 30 women of 300 cadets, and they graduated with 10 women of 156 cadets. Two women from the first class to include them at the academy helped train her cadre through their boot camp in their first summer, and both of these women were mentors throughout the rest of Sandra’s career. When her class entered, the senior class was the last class at the academy that didn’t include women, so some in the class of 1979 would refer to themselves as the “last class with balls,” which Sandra took lightly, seeing it as a sign of their small-mindedness. For the last week before classes began, she was on the Coast Guard Cutter Eagle that went from Seattle, Washington to San Francisco, California, which she sees in retrospect as an experience that informed the rest of her service. She sailed every season that was available, including another summer on the Eagle. She struggled with the academic side but was never put on academic probation, and graduated in 1982 with a major in government. She was very excited when it came time to pick her billet after graduating, and picked the US Coast Guard Cutter Glacier. No one else had picked it because it was assumed the ship would be retired when it returned from the Antarctic, but it was available because they needed to staff it in case it continued sailing. She stayed for three months at the academy teaching as a summer ensign, then went to Long Beach, California to board the Glacier. There were 20 women on the crew of 200, which she sees as a critical mass that ensured the women weren’t too alone. They had so little power onboard that when they were crossing the equator, the whole crew would sleep on the deck because the crew quarters didn’t have any air conditioning. They stopped at several Pacific islands, including Western Samoa and New Zealand, on their way south. As they were moving closer, they were told that, unless they could get four engines working, their ship wouldn’t be allowed to go into the ice. After ordering a new generator from Australia, they were able to power the ship just enough to head into the ice around Antarctica. They made it and broke apart the ice enough for supply ships to make it to and from the US base regularly.

publisher:

Military Women's Memorial Foundation

contributor:

Unknown

date:

2011-10-16

type:

Moving Image

format:

DVD-R

source:

Foundation for Coast Guard History

language:

English

relation:

766981

coverage:

1980s | 1990s | 2000s | 2010s | 1978-1982 | 1982-2018

rights:

Restricted