Meet US Coast Guard Cutter Northwind

On July 7, 1980, 350 young men and women came together to form the US Coast Guard Academy class of 1984. In that group were 6 young men that over the next four years would become Coast Guard officers and interact at different levels, by company, sport, activity, summer assignment, and through the shared challenges and experiences formed friendships as classmates. In January 1984 five of these men would select the United States Coast Guard Cutter (USCGC) Northwind (WAGB 282) as their initial assignment and arrive together in June 1984 to begin their assignment. A year later another classmate would join them from the USCGC Westwind (WAGB 281) after it had been decommissioned following damage suffered while in the Antarctic. Onboard during that first year, they would befriend an Officer Candidate School (OCS) graduate who would become a major part of this circle of shipmates, classmates, and ultimately lifelong friends. For two years aboard ship together, they sailed from the Arctic to the Tropics and survived a stint in Charleston, SC’s Braswell Shipyard. Three would get married during that time.

Their assignments on ship were generally divided into two categories: Deck and Engineering. The “deckies” were:

• John Bingaman
• Michael Bradly
• Burt Deshayes
• Tom Ollen

The engineers or “snipes” were:

• William (Tom) Douglas
• George Stephanos
• Bruce Herring

Unfortunately, the group would lose Tom, who had been a CG pilot and after retirement flew commercially, on June 6, 2016 to a form of brain cancer, but not before the band of six held a group reunion in West Virginia in 2006. Then starting in 2021 the group started having annual reunions and have gone on to form a more cohesive group attending each other’s significant life events and celebrations…the bonds first forged at the CG Academy have been tempered and hardened in the years since.