The following is a letter Linda sent along with her photos of USS Midway:

Friday, January 02, 2004

Great web sites, guys, and there are obviously a lot of you that have gone through great effort to save this ship and its history. Congratulations on all you've accomplished so far, and good luck in the future.

Small backgrounder (just FYI) --

I assume you're aware that the US Coast Guard Auxiliary is the civilian volunteer "third" (along with active duty and reserves) part of the CG forces. We get to buy our own uniforms, provide our own boats, etc., and then volunteer our time (once we pass qualifications/training/etc.). Depending on what qualifications you go for, you can wind up doing anything the CG active duty are assigned to do (except we don't carry guns, so no law enforcement and can't be sent on military duties). We have members that are engineers on CG boats, station radio watch standers, etc. My husband and I are pretty active in operations in the SF Bay area. Although we both also work full time at our "day" jobs, we go out on average at least once a week year round on patrols on our custom built patrol boat ("Silver Charm" - one more photo attached just FYI), so we see a lot going on in the bay and always keep our digital camera handy.

When not busy doing a case or helping with CG training or something, we try to find other things to be helpful, and since we always monitor Vessel Traffic System (VTS) frequency we know about movements of large vessels (and we had watched the news and knew to watch for Midway when on patrol that afternoon). We had started the patrol day with boat/helo operations with a CG HH-65 helicopter practicing hoisting their basket to/from our boat a mile or two outside the Gate early that afternoon, and when done with that since we'd heard on VTS the tow underway from Oakland, we headed back in and met up with it at Oakland Bridge. We were going to be out all pm (until midnight fireworks barge safety patrol), so kept us entertained for a couple hours finding something neat to do for awhile. We have helped escort a lot of ships in and out of SF Bay since 9/11, as well as all the "usual" SF Bay things we get to do (capsized sail boats, disabled power boats, and I've lost count of how many dozens of wind surfers and kite surfers we've had to pick up over the years!).

When I do get shots of something like this (or a tall ship visiting, other CG or PD or Fireboats working, etc.) I try to find "homes" for them, as I know people usually love getting the photos of their beloved ships (we like photos of our boat, just don't get many since we're always ON our boat taking the photos). And we have such a beautiful area here, with things like Alcatraz and the Golden Gate Bridge making very obvious backdrops that are pretty recognizable world-wide. So since these shots obviously found such great reception by you guys it was well worth the little effort (isn't Google great?) to track you down and see if someone was interested in some shots.

While my husband and I have no direct affiliation with Midway (the closest would be that we both worked as civilians for the Navy Supply System for years decades ago), we appreciate the old ships and their crews and all they have done for the country. We're even members and have taken a few bay cruises on the ol' Jeremiah O'Brien (SF's aging Liberty Ship). So we glad for the opportunity to be out there the right day and give the proud lady Midway an escort and honorable send off.

Again, congratulations on the success so far, and good luck on the new museum piece!

Linda, USCG Aux. Vsl "Silver Charm"