Coast Guard Community Spouse of the Year: Janelle Quigley

Janelle Quigley is this year’s Coast Guard Community Spouse of the Year, an award presented to a Coast Guard spouse who provides exemplary support for his/her active duty counterpart and family while at the same time enriching the wider community.
Janelle has been a military spouse for 18 years. She and her husband, David, have lived in seven communities and moved to Cape May in 2016 with their two children.
Janelle is an active member of the Guardian Spouses, a group that provides guidance to new military spouses, significant others and family members on the benefits and challenges of the military lifestyle. She assists with presentations on military life, ID cards, insurance and Permanent Change of Station processes.
As the Spouse’s Club Social Services Chair, Janelle is active in many community service projects. She has provided turkeys to area soup kitchens, organized coat drives for the poor and homeless and assisted the police department by wrapping gifts for less fortunate families. At Christmastime, Janelle helps to make the holiday special for recruits. She co-chairs Stockings for Recruits, which organizes Christmas for young service members away from their families for perhaps the first time. She is the liaison for Sandboxx, providing real time information to recruit’s families during boot camp and coordinating travel for families coming to graduation.
A special area of interest for Janelle is education. She serves on the Education Grant Committee which presents scholarships to Coast Guard families for continuing education. While working for First Command, she coordinated retirement and financial briefings for the crew of CGC LAWRENCE LAWSON and Coast Guard members in Cape May. Janelle serves as the first Ombudsman for CGC LAWRENCE LAWSON. She played a key role in keeping information flowing to crew members’ families while they conducted a four-month training stint away from home port.
Outside of the Coast Guard, Janelle volunteers regularly at Cape May Elementary School where she is an active TASK member of the school’s PTA. As chair of the Cape May Elementary Book Fair, she coordinated a highly successful book fair for the entire school.
In recognition of her extensive community service both within the Coast Guard and beyond, Janelle was nominated as the 2017 Military Spouse of the Year by the leadership of Coast Guard Training Center Cape May. She was a regional winner and narrowly missed being named one of the 18 national finalists.