Coast Guard assigns permanent party to Goodfellow

  • Published
  • By Connie Hempel
  • 17th Training Wing Public Affairs
GOODFELLOW AIR FORCE BASE, Texas --  Goodfellow has been a joint service base since 1966, training members of all branches in intelligence and firefighting fields. Those guiding the students seemed to be missing one service component though. On July 1, the first Coast Guard permanent party member joined Goodfellow's ranks with the arrival of Coast Guard Chief Petty Officer James Price.

A 15-year Coast Guard veteran, Chief Price comes to Goodfellow to fill his new role as the sole Coast Guard liaison, senior instructor for the Navy Analysis and Reporting course and as detachment supervisor for Coast Guard students.

Chief Price comes well qualified. He was the Coast Guard detachment officer in charge at Corry Station, Fla., and has been in the intelligence field since the Coast Guard designated it as a career field in 2008.

Although he's here as a Coast Guard liaison and instructor, he hopes he can also use his time to educate everyone on the Coast Guard's mission.

Traditionally, the Coast Guard's mission has been law enforcement focused, much of which dealt with smuggling drugs, illegal aliens and weapons, to name a few. With personnel attending the Navy A and R course, they now collect intelligence for prosecution. Another mission they handle is ice breaking operations in the Arctic and Great Lakes.

"Getting people to understand what we do, our mission and our capabilities, is one of the biggest challenges," he said. "It surprises a lot of people that for such a small service, we're able to do so many valuable and critical operations."

He said that as each of the Armed Forces becomes more aligned in what they do, it's important to keep his personnel educated on the other services as well.

"One team, one fight," he said. "We're all very different services and unique in our own right, but more of our missions are becoming similar. We all need to be able to speak the same language and think the same way so we can get it done the right way the first time."

Coming from a five year assignment at a joint service base, the Coast Guard Chief said he's glad to be in another joint environment.

"You gain a greater respect for what other folks do when you see where they're coming from," he said. "An environment like this helps to broaden your scope of what your possibilities can be. If you can reach out and rely on your partners, you're a whole lot stronger."

Training at joint service bases requires teamwork from all branches and requires each service to provide instructors. The Coast Guard sends more than 10 students annually through training here, but never provided instructors.

"We weren't meeting our fair share instructor requirement here with the amount of people we were putting through and the quotas we were requesting for training," Chief Price said.

After noticing this error, he informed his chain of command and a position was created. He said he's not only glad that he was able to correct the situation, being a Texas native, he's also glad he could fill the position.