It was the humanitarian mission that pulled Chief Warrant Officer Paul Bostwick toward the Coast Guard when he decided to rejoin the armed forces in 2001.
“I’ve always been drawn to the Coast Guard and its mission of saving lives,” said Bostwick, a 2017 Navy Times Coast Guardsman of the Year honorable mention. “It’s a unique mission that wasn’t necessarily defense orientated, or national defense, but also had a humanitarian aspect to it. That really appealed to me.”
Bostwick, who enlisted in the Army in 1983 and later served in the Army Reserves, is now a reservist in the Coast Guard Command, Control, Communications, Computers and Information Technology Service Center in Seattle.
He deployed to Iraq in 2004 with the mission of providing information technology security for everything coming into and out of Iraq. The satellite communications he supported were “key to that mission.”
Later, Bostwick deployed to the Gulf of Mexico twice as part of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill response — the first time in 2010 when the offshore drilling rig was still spewing millions of gallons of crude oil in to the Gulf.
“My job was to set up the IT infrastructure for the aviation coordination command” and support the air space for 380-odd military, government and civilian responders, Bostwick said.
In 2016 he single-handedly planned and executed an advanced electronics two-week exercise for his coasties at the Tobyhanna Army Depot center in Pennsylvania.
“This was the first time any Coast Guard unit had participated in this type of training,” said Cmdr. Karen Smith.
This training model may soon be used as a template for the entire Coast Guard, she said.
Bostwick has been in the Coast Guard Reserves for 16 years, with a civilian job at Citizenship and Immigration Services. He works as a supervisor in resource management of the department that works on legal U.S. immigration, and helps “naturalize citizens and soldiers in particular get their naturalization through their service in the Armed Forces.”
Coast Guard of the Year Honorable Mention keeps IT systems in ship shape
