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	*Community service and Color Guard opportunities sought.* All members of the Aurora Division are encouraged to do community service whenever they can. Also, we would like to do more community service as a division. If you know of any opportunities, contact our Public Affairs Officer, INST Dooley. Advise INST Jackman if you know of any Color Guard opportunities.
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Former PO1 James Dooley, now a First Class Cadet at the U.S. Coast Guard Academy, has received his first duty assignment after his upcoming graduation and commissioning as an Ensign in May. He will report aboard the USCGC SPAR (WLB-206), based in Kodiak, Alaska. He will be part of a crew of 8 officers and 40 enlisted men.

The USCGC SPAR (also known as "The Aleutian Keeper") is a 225’ Oceangoing Buoy Tender. SPAR tends buoys and beacons from Kodiak as far west as Adak and as far north as Kuskokwim Bay, including all the Aleutian Islands. SPAR is a multi-mission Cutter executing Maritime Homeland Security, Maritime Environmental Protection, Maritime Law Enforcement, Search and Rescue, and Domestic Icebreaking.

This is the second cutter named SPAR. The first was commissioned on June 12, 1944. In addition to her primary duty of maintaining aids to navigation, SPAR’s missions included assisting in anti-submarine warfare along the coast of Brazil, a transit through the Northwest Passage, and completing an oceanographic charting expedition in the Northern Atlantic. After serving the Coast Guard for 53 years, SPAR was decommissioned on February 28, 1997. The current SPAR was built at Marinette Marine Shipyard in Wisconsin and was launched on August 12, 2000. She made the trip from Marinette to Kodiak from March to June 2001 and was commissioned on August 3, 2001.

SPAR was named after the Coast Guard Women’s Reserve, also known as the SPARs. Similar to the Army's WACs and the Navy's WAVES, the SPARs were created to allow more men to be sent overseas, while the women tended to duties back home. Captain Dorothy C. Stratton, former Dean of Women at Purdue University, was chosen from the Navy Women’s Reserves to be the director. Captain Stratton coined the acronym SPARs, which comes from the Latin and English translations of the Coast Guard’s motto, Semper Paratus! Always Ready!

Besides his graduation/commissioning on May 21, ENS Dooley will marry ENS Crystal Hudak on May 31. ENS Hudak, a 2007 graduate of the Coast Guard Academy, is stationed aboard the USCGC Munro (WHEC-724) a 378' High Endurance Cutter, also based in Kodiak. Named after the only Coast Guard Medal of Honor recipient, Signalman First Class Douglas Munro, MUNRO’s foremost mission is protecting the safety of life and property at sea. With a flight deck capable of landing a Coast Guard HH-65 Dolphin helicopter, a state of the art communications and sensor suite, and extended endurance, MUNRO is a floating command center capable of coordinating ships and aircraft for search and rescue or responding to natural and environmental accidents and disasters. Another mission that MUNRO performs is that of maritime law enforcement, protecting the stocks of living marine resources found in Alaska fishing grounds and reducing the flow of illicit drugs and other contraband into the United States, interdicting illegal migrants, and checking mariner compliance with vessel safety regulations. Defense Readiness is MUNRO's third primary mission.

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