LUNCH CROWD – More than 70 Sitka seniors, including Liz Howard, facing camera, have lunch and socialize at Harrigan Centennial Hall this afternoon at Sitka Tribe of Alaska’s monthly Coffee Time for Elders event. Today’s lunch featured venison teriyaki and herring eggs. Next month’s Coffee Time will include a tribute to Sitka’s elders. Sitka SAIL staff helped serve at the lunch program that has been held since 2022. (Sentinel Photo)
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Daily Sitka Sentinel
Coast Guard Installs New Skipper on Maple
By Sentinel Staff
Lt. Cmdr. Michael D. Newell took command of the USCGC Maple Thursday at a ceremony aboard the ship at the Coast Guard dock on Japonski Island.
The assumption of command ceremony, held under sunny skies, included remarks by Rear Admiral Thomas Ostebo, commander of the 17th Coast Guard District. Capt. Ward Sandlin, commanding officer of Air Station Sitka, was in attendance, as well as Mayor Mim McConnell and City Administrator Mark Gorman.
Newell takes over from Lt. Raymond Reichl, who had been skipper of the 225-foot buoy tender Maple the past four months.
Part of the program included a ceremonial inspection of the crew, in dress uniforms, by Ostebo, Newell and Reichl.
Newell comes to Sitka from Homer, where he was the executive officer aboard the Coast Guard Cutter Hickory.
His previous tours include serving as the executive officer aboard the Hickory from 2011 until 2013. In 2009, he was selected as a Coast Guard Academy company officer and earned a master of arts degree in industrial and organizational psychology from the University of New Haven.
After graduation, he oversaw the professional training of 130 Coast Guard Academy cadets. From 2003 to 2005 he was executive officer on the Coast Guard Cutter Staten Island. His first assignment as a commissioned officer, in 2003, was as deck watch officer aboard the Coast Guard Cutter SPAR.
Newell is from St. Petersburg, Fla., and graduated from the Coast Guard Academy in 2003, earning a bachelor of science degree in government.
His military decorations include two Coast Guard Commendation Medals, two Coast Guard Achievement Medals and several other awards. The Coast Guard said he wears the permanent cutterman’s pin, signifying more than five years of qualified sea service.
Reichl took over command of the Maple on Oct. 1 when the previous captain was reassigned on short notice.
In his remarks at the transfer ceremony Admiral Ostebo praised Reichl for his service as temporary CO of the Maple, and presented him with the last pennant flown by the ship under his command, a traditional award to the outgoing captain at a change of command.
Reichl will stay with the Maple as executive officer until this summer when he will be assigned to his first permanent command as skipper of the USCG Cutter Henry Blake based in Everett, Wash., the Coast Guard said.
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20 YEARS AGO
January 2005
Photo caption: Faces of Public Health Coalition members, from left, Susan Suarez, Michelle Kennedy, Chari Hample and Penny Lehmann show the Alaska Public Health Association Community Service award they received at the Annual Alaska Health Summit held in Anchorage.
50 YEARS AGO
January 1975
James Welch, who lived in Sitka as a boy, has just had a book titled “Winter in the Blood” published by Harper and Row. Reviewers from Newsweek, the New Yorker and the New York Times, among others, have praised it. Laurence Porter, formerly with the BIA at Mt. Edgecumbe and now owner of Porter’s Men’s Store, said James Welch was in his Boy Scout Troop.
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