U.S. Coast Guard honors BHS graduate

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Chief Sean P. Lynch, a Baldwin High School graduate, was recently honored by the U.S. Coast Guard (USCG) for his nearly 32 years of dedicated service. Several dozen people, including Lynch’s family, friends, shipmates, and band-mates were on hand at the military ceremony held at the USCG Atlantic Strike Team (AST) unit hangar at Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst in New Jersey last December.

At the ceremony, Eric J. Doucette, AST commanding officer, presented Lynch with the US Coast Guard Achievement Medal. He was cited for “exceptional leadership initiative and technical expertise as chief of the reserve engineering division.”

In 1982, Lynch and his best friend, Eric Mathison, joined the USCG on the “buddy system,” shortly after they graduated from BHS. Lynch was on active duty for four ½ years, serving at Station FT Totten in Queens and Station Montauk on Long Island’s east end, before joining the USCG Reserves when he enrolled as a student at SUNY Maritime in the Bronx.

As a reservist, Lynch served at Station New York, Station Jones Beach, Station Kings Point, and for the past five years, he has been a member of the prestigious Atlantic Strike Team (AST), a highly trained unit recognized worldwide as an expert authority in the preparation for and response to the effects resulting from oil discharges, hazardous substance releases, weapons of mass destruction events, and other emergencies.

As a member of the Strike Team, Lynch volunteered for deployment to Mississippi for the Deepwater Horizon after BP oil spill in 2010 and New York City in the aftermath of the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Most recently, as he was rebuilding his own Freeport home destroyed by Superstorm Sandy, Lynch volunteered for active duty to help protect the people and property in and around New York City who, like him, were devastated by the massive storm.

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