FEATURE STORY: COAST GUARD, FIRST IN FLIGHT BY WRIGHT

Coast Guard aviators have patrolled the nation’s skies for nearly 100 years, but it wasn’t the pilots who first helped get the airplane off the ground.

On a stretch of empty sand in the Outer Banks of North Carolina 111 years ago, a group of surfmen from Life-Saving Station Kill Devil Hills guarded the shore near the town of Kitty Hawk. The surfmen lived hidden away between the Atlantic Ocean and Albemarle Sound, within the sparsely populated lands of the Outer Banks.

Commanded by Capt. Jesse Etheridge Ward, the surfmen; Will S. Dough, Adam D. Etheridge, Bob L. Wescott, Tom Beacham, “Uncle Benny” O’Neal and John T. Daniels, patrolled the isolated stretch of sand between their own Kill Devil Hills Life-Saving Station and the four-miles north to Kitty Hawk Life-Saving Station.

Their life was that of routine, stability and endurance. The Atlantic was a treacherous neighbor, having claimed numerous wrecks along it’s shoreline throughout the years.

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