CAPE MAY — Imagine that you have just graduated from eight weeks of basic training from the Coast Guard Training Center (TRACEN) here and you are about to move to your first assignment. How will that affect your spouse or parents?
TRACEN has a group of officer’s wives who answer the questions family members may have about life in the Coast Guard. They call themselves “Guardian Spouses.”
At 10 a.m. on graduation day each Friday, the Ida Lewis Auditorium is filled with family members of the graduates. The Guardian Spouses present information to the family members from the stage and answer questions one on one.
Kim Leathers, who husband Mike is a company commander at the training center, said the spouses may be able to tell recruits and their families about the location to which they are about to be stationed.
“It’s really rewarding to talk to families and tell them of your experiences in the Coast Guard,” she said. “I absolutely love the Coast Guard and I think all of us feel that way, we’ve had a lot of opportunities.”
Barbara Wong, who leads the Guardian Spouses, said the program started last September and was inspired by a similar program at the U.S. Marine Corps training center in Parris Island, S.C.
Guardian Spouse Valerie Gehrke said the group provides families with resources such as Web sites, email addresses and phone numbers where assistance is available.
Wong said help is available “for keeping the house and yourself and your family together,” when a spouse is out to sea.
“We help them to budget their finances,” she said. “When you first join the service, you don’t make much money.”
Spouses are directed to commissaries to get less expensive groceries. Many larger units have child care development centers, said Wong.
About 3 percent of graduating recruits are married. The uncertain national economy has brought in some older recruits, she said.
On Jan. 29, the auditorium was filled with parents and brothers and sisters of graduates. For those being stationed far from home, Wong tells them about MAC flights, which allows stand-by travel on military aircraft such as Air National Guard.
A number of resources were on display including information about “Operation Military Kids,” which is funded through Rutgers University, and provides free camp for Coast Guard children, books and journals.
Wal-Mart Foundation has provided a DVD for military children called “Talk, Listen, Connect,” featuring Sesame Street characters to help cope with deployment, said Wong. For family members that may be deployed for an extended period of time, children are encouraged to keep a calendar of how long until dad comes home.
Families can stay in touch by email from a ship, she said. Larger bases have Morale, Welfare and Recreation units to keep the family busy while a loved one is away, said Wong.
At last week’s graduation, Leathers displayed a gift bag for a recruit who wife was due to deliver a baby in April assembled by the Guardian Spouses.
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