Ocean City Resident Honored for Service to Veterans

MAYS LANDING – Noel Koch, former Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for the Office of Transition and Care Coordination has been a respected local veteran advocate and advisor since he left Washington, D.C. and retired to Ocean City, N.J. two years ago.
Koch was honored by the NJ Employer Support of the Guard and Reserve (NJ ESGR), a Department of Defense Operational Organization, Sept. 26, 2014 at the Mays Landing Country Club where he was participating in the 1st annual April C. Kauffman Memorial Golf Outing. The event and awards luncheon was attended by patriotic supporters and included participation by twenty wounded warfighters and their service dogs/caretakers who were cited for their military service and sacrifice.
ESGR’s public affairs liaison, Donna Clementoni, presented Koch with the ‘Seven Seals Award’, minutes after he bequeathed 6 year old Anthony Afanador, the son of Egg Harbor Township wounded warrior Ed Afanador, with his personal ‘special forces’ challenge coin.
The “Seven Seals Award”, depicting the heraldry seals of the seven military services, is given at the discretion of the NJESGR chairman to recognize the efforts by a citizen, business, or organization, whose supportive actions have benefited all of the Guard/Reserve Components in a significant manner. Recipients of this award to not necessarily employ Reservists, but have demonstrated outstanding support, commitment, and extreme patriotism to the United States military.
Koch is personal friends with famed author Richard Marcinko, the first commander of Seal Team 6 and Red Cell, which tested the Navy’s vulnerability at their nuclear facilities. At Koch’s request, Marcinko traveled to Atlantic County and addressed the warriors at a banquet organized to attest to their persona sacrifice, at Mays Landing Country Club the evening before. All proceeds went to the newly established Southern New Jersey Chapter of Disabled Sports USA whose Warfighter Sports Program takes the most severely disabled warriors and gets the involved in adaptive sports.
Koch is a founding member of the Chapter that is providing golf clinics and other adaptive sports programs to wounded veterans of all conflicts at their headquarters at Mays Landing Country Club.
In May, 2009, President Obama named Noel Koch as the first Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Transition Policy and Care Coordination (TPCC). He was responsible for policy and programs related to disability systems, Service member transitions to Veteran status, separations from the Armed Forces, and wounded warrior care coordination.
In the private sector, Koch is the former President and Chief Executive Officer of TranSecur, Inc., global security corporation that provides information and support services to foreign and domestic government agencies, corporations, families, and individuals at risk from crime, terrorism and high-level threats in the multinational environment. Koch pens a weekly article for their corporate newsletter.
During his tenure in D.C., Koch was a frequent guest on television which including Primetime Live, Nightline, Nightwatch, Viewpoint, ABC World News, CBS Evening News, NBC Nightly news and 20-20.
Frequently called to testify before U.S. Senate and House of Representatives on defense, special operations and terrorism issues, Koch served President Richard Nixon and President Gerald Ford. as a Special Assistant to the President of the United States, responsible for preparation of Presidential speeches, legislative messages, energy policy development, representing special White House interests before members of Congress; and, selected foreign travel with the President.
Noel Koch served for six years in the United States Army in Vietnam and recalls how he and his peers ‘were shunned by the American citizens when they returned from overseas.’ Addressing the mustered warfighters he commented, “We all had our own watch to stand.”
The distinguished veteran is always ‘leaning forward’ when asked, by a veterans organization or an individual warrior, for help or support. By his patriotic actions, it is evident that Noel Koch’s mission’s has no immediate end.
In uniform or as a civilian, ‘We all serve.’