The Swanson Family

Station Cape Disappointment

Petty Officer 1st Class Jon Swanson and his family have been stationed across the country as part of his service in the U.S. Coast Guard.

Swanson, an electrician’s mate first class, has been in the Coast Guard for 19 years. Currently based at Station Cape Disappointment in Ilwaco, Washington, Swanson supports 13 buildings on base, 47-foot motor lifeboats, 29-foot response boats and facilities.

“The boats are high demand. They’re older,” Swanson said. “They’re 30 years old now, some of them. They just require a lot of maintenance and I take on a lot of extra projects.”

Swanson lives on base with his wife of 16 years, Sara, and their two sons, 11-year-old Blake and 15-year-old Blaine.

Jon describes the family’s lives as being busy. Sara’s days begin at 2 a.m. when she works at the Safeway deli in Astoria. While her schedule allows for her to be home in time to see her sons after school and to their activities, she may not see her husband for the whole week at times.

However, due to their opposite schedules, Jon mostly sees his wife during the weekends. During that time, he said, the two of them enjoy going on drives throughout the region — previous trips have included spots like the Tillamook Cheese Factory, Newport and Ocean Shores, Washington. He also added the weekends are when he’s able to thrift shop — a favorite activity of his.

The Swansons met while they were both working at Firgrove Veterinary Hospital in Puyallup, Washington, prior to Jon enlisting. While working at the veterinary hospital, Jon met a retired Coast Guard master chief, who was the clinic’s maintenance man and introduced him to the idea of serving.

Jon had other influences who had served in the Coast Guard and other branches of the military. His grandfather served in the U.S. Navy, one of his uncles served in the U.S. Army and another uncle served in the Coast Guard for six years.

“I wanted to make sure that was the path I wanted to take,” he said. “ … Having the stability and paycheck and the retirement and the dental and all that was huge.”

Upon his initial enlistment, Jon intended to serve 20 years in the Coast Guard. His goal now is to make the rank of chief prior to his retirement from the military.

His Coast Guard career began on the cutter Alert, based out of Astoria.

Over the course of 19 years, Jon has been in numerous places throughout the U.S. He’s been stationed on the cutter Fir, based in New Haven, Connecticut, spent time at the Air Station in Port Angeles, Washington, and most recently was in Alaska aboard the cutter Hickory. Normally, these moves take place every three to four years. A boat assignment will last three years, while a land assignment lasts four.

“They like to spread you out a little bit, so you can learn some new things,” Jon said. “And I think it’s been beneficial for me to, you know, learn land side, boat side, facilities, hangars, all that kind of stuff. That’s pretty cool.”

When the Swansons do transfer between Coast Guard stations, they’ll typically put in “picks” for their next station in November. However, the family won’t find out where they’ll be moving until around March. Then, they’ll pack up and move to their new location around May or June.

“Then it’s like, engage the wheels, start moving, start prepping, get rid of stuff and then load up and go,” Jon said. “That’s the worst thing too, is that when you meet great people, you have to leave them.”

Housing has also been a challenge during the Swansons’ time in the Coast Guard. The branch’s basic allowance for housing, Jon said, sometimes doesn’t match pricing in the areas Coast Guardsmen are based.

While based in Port Angeles, the Swansons were paying $300 to $400 out of pocket per paycheck to cover rent and utilities. Not every unit will have housing available, and Jon said there is difficulty finding housing that will match a Coast Guardsman’s housing allowance at his rank or lower in places like Long Beach or Astoria.

For Sara, being a Coast Guard spouse requires independence.

She moved down to Astoria as Jon spent his first enlistment on the Alert. During the entire summer, she was alone.

“We were talking about getting married and I thought, ‘Is this what I want to deal with for the next 20 years?’ So, I had a good three months to really think about it, you know, but I kind of thought, you know, I’m pretty independent,” Sara said. “I was working. I thought, ‘I don’t really need a man.’ But I figured, I would rather, you know, have this, some of this off time without him and underway than not have him in my life.”

She describes her time as a Coast Guard spouse as enjoyable — such as allowing for the opportunity to see Alaska, something she described as being on her bucket list.

“It’s been a fun ride,” she added.

John Kopp

Station Cape Disappointment, 2015-2019

For former Petty Officer 1st Class John Kopp, his passion for the Coast Guard was kindled during a family trip to Long Beach, Washington, when he was about six or seven years old.

Kopp remembers that, prior to 9/11, he was able to walk on to Station Cape Disappointment. The trip was his first exposure to the Coast Guard, and Kopp’s fascination with the military branch didn’t fade with time.

“Once high school was over, I was obsessed with the Coast Guard and with the motor lifeboat, Cape Disappointment kind of theme,” he said. “So it just seemed really natural to enlist.”

Kopp was initially stationed out of Seattle aboard the Coast Guard 378-foot cutter Midgett. However, he’d always hoped to be based at Station Cape Disappointment. At the time, the only other surf station with motor lifeboats that had openings was Station Barnegat Light in New Jersey.

So, Kopp made his way to New Jersey and, in 2015, was able to come to Station Cape Disappointment, where he spent four years.

Kopp’s occupational specialty was as a boatswain’s mate first class. While based out of Station Cape Disappointment, he managed training for the unit and worked as a boat operator during missions, ranging from search and rescue operations, training and law enforcement.

“I really, really enjoyed learning how to operate boats and being on the water,” Kopp said. “And I don’t see ever really being a recreational boater. So it’s kind of like a chapter of life that’s closed.”

He left the Coast Guard in 2019, transitioning into a new career in counseling psychology, and completed a master’s degree in counseling psychology in June 2023. But the Coast Guard wasn’t far out of Kopp’s mind, even after leaving.

“For like two years after getting out, I had Coast Guard dreams every night,” he remembered. He wondered if he should re-enlist and come back to Cape Disappointment, yet that choice didn’t sit well with him.

 

Kopp recounted a memorial that was held each January at Station Cape Disappointment to commemorate incidents that have ended tragically. In that first year stationed at the base, Kopp learned about a training boat accident that had occurred in 1977.

“My experience in just being at the station for four years was that nobody really knew about it,” Kopp said. “People who were getting assigned there weren’t really being told about it, because people had forgotten long ago.”

The training accident was one he hadn’t heard of previously — he had maintained an interest in the Coast Guard’s history, even seeking out additional information from the National Archives in Seattle.

He would also later learn that the next-door neighbors of family friends in Long Beach had lost a son in the 1977 accident.

“That’s when the pieces came together, like, ‘Okay, I’m still really interested in this history, I’ve been out of the Coast Guard for a while, there’s this accident that hasn’t really been told or recounted,’” Kopp said. “And I have a number of connections with people from that era or from past eras who could kind of maybe help me find out more.”

He decided to write a book, “CG 41332,” about the training accident, which involved about 18 months of in-depth research, drawing from previous background research he’d done prior to beginning the writing process. The book was published in January 2023.

Kopp now lives in Port Angeles, Washington, with his wife, Sydney Heath. When reflecting back on his time spent in the Coast Guard, he describes there being so much “passion and aliveness” during his time serving.

“I got to collaborate with a lot of really great, dedicated people, interesting people, people from all over the country I wouldn’t have met (and) got to do really cool work,” Kopp said.