NAV EX 3rd QTR. 2017 NavEx 3rd Qtr 2017 - FINAL Draft | Page 29

in 1974. Martin, who joined the Auxiliary in 1977, was
keenly aware of what the organization accomplished
on the home front during World War II and wanted to
ensure that that history was not lost with the passing
of the World War II generation. Under his diplomatic
and skillful leadership, the Auxiliary History Division
was established and Martin was named the National
Historian of the USCG Auxiliary. Martin oversaw
the establishment of District Historians who were
to serve as the regional historians of the Auxiliary.
Drawing on his knowledge of the chief historians in
the U.S. Armed Forces who usually served a decade
or more in office, Martin argued in 1989 that District
Historians “should be ‘non-political’ [and] selected
for their talents and expected to remain in office
for reasonably long terms.” The District Historian
was to be tasked with collecting oral histories of
long-serving members, writing district histories,
and promoting Auxiliary history at the division and
flotilla level. Even more importantly, Martin took the
beginnings of an Auxiliary archive, about 30 boxes
of papers essentially forgotten at the Auxiliary
National Materials Center warehouse in St. Louis,
and worked tirelessly to establish an official USCG
Auxiliary Archive in collaboration with J.Y. Joyner
Library at East Carolina University (ECU), Greenville,
NC, in 1988. When Martin died in 1999, the Auxiliary
recognized his contribution to preserving Auxiliary
history by renaming the archive at ECU in his honor.
Since 1989 the Auxiliary History program has gone
through many organizational transformations
and benefited greatly from the work of talented
historians at the flotilla, division, district, and national
level. Today the History Division is part of the Public
Affairs Directorate and works diligently to promote
Auxiliary history through historical preservation at
the archives, encourages districts, divisions, and
flotillas to write their histories, and supports Coast
Guard history by recruiting museum docents for
the CG Museum in New London, CT, and archive
assistants at the USCG National Historian’s Office in
Washington, D.C. I