The Wrong Turn That Led Coast Guardsman Vince Patton to the Top

A chance recruiting‑office mix‑up set his course to reach the service’s highest enlisted rank

Aaron Kassraie,

AARP

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Published December 19, 2025

On Vince Patton’s 17th birthday, his mother and stepfather told him they would sign the consent he needed to enlist. The next morning, the Detroit teenager hurried to the local recruiting office, intent on joining the Navy like his brother.

On the way, he spotted a sailor entering a recruiting office and followed him in, figuring it must be the place — only to find that the photos of ships on the wall weren’t Navy gray. They were white or black, and labeled “Coast Guard.”

“I walked into the wrong office, and I had already made eye contact with the Coast Guard recruiter, and he says, ‘Have a seat,’” Patton, now 71, recalls.

Too embarrassed to walk out, he explored the room as the recruiter finished a phone call. He came across an article about a 1952 Cape Cod rescue in which four Coast Guardsmen in a 36-foot lifeboat saved 32 people from a shipwrecked tanker amid a raging nor’easter."I read this and I said, ‘Wow,’ ” says Patton. “The Coast Guard recruiter stopped his phone call, looked at me and said, ‘I guarantee you can do something like that in your first four years in the Coast Guard.’ That’s when I decided to join the Coast Guard.”

vince patton raising his hand during his coast guard re enlistment

Vince Patton re-enlists in the Coast Guard in 1976.

Courtesy Vince Patton

At boot camp, Patton told a career counselor he aimed to become master chief petty officer — the Coast Guard’s highest‑ranking enlisted post. His company commander overheard, assumed he was being a smart aleck, and ordered him to do 50 push-ups. “The day you become master chief petty officer is the day I walk on clouds,” the commander said.

Twenty-six years later, in 1998, Patton proved him wrong — rising through communications and personnel roles to become the first Black service member to hold the post.

'Low diversity' and early barriers

In the mid-1970s, about 7 percent of Coast Guard members were Black, according to the Coast Guard’s Historian Office. Patton says that when he arrived at boot camp in Cape May, New Jersey, in 1972, only a handful of the recruits in his 60-person company were African American, and he was the only Black trainee in radioman school.

That limited representation coincided with the prejudice Patton encountered in everyday situations. He remembers one encounter after he’d dined at a nice local restaurant with three of his peers .

vince patton wearing a coast guard uniform, standing beside a sign for radio man school

After completing radio school, Patton's first major assignment was a mayday call from an injured Soviet sailor.

Courtesy Vince Patton

“This lady pulls up in a station wagon, and she says, ‘Are you guys going to the Coast Guard base? I’ll drop you off.’ As I got ready to get in the car, the lady told me in all kinds of negative, derogatory terms [to] get my hands off of her car."

Patton’s friends stood up for him, telling her she had no right to treat him that way. “These guys, they looked at me that I’m one of them. They didn’t look at me that I’m the Black kid that hangs out with them. I’m one of them,” he says. “There were lots and lots of barriers that I had to deal with.”

On his first posting, Patton says, his chief was initially skeptical of his abilities and pushed him hard on the ship. Rather than being discouraged, he sharpened his skills, getting faster and more accurate at Morse code and tightening his radio procedures. His first major assignment came during a mayday call for a seriously injured Soviet sailor — a tense Cold War situation that, as Patton recalls, required close coordination with the United Nations. Patton took the call and maintained steady circuit communications until the crew could complete the rescue. Impressed, the captain told him, “You’re the best person for this job, and I’m keeping you on it.”

Making history at the top

From 1998 to 2002, Patton served as the master chief petty officer of the Coast Guard, advising the commandant on key issues affecting enlisted personnel, such as career development, quality of life and morale. Over the course of his career, he earned numerous honors, including the Distinguished Service Medal, awarded for “exceptionally meritorious service in a duty of great responsibility.”

vince patton posing for a portrait in his coast guard dress uniform

Patton became the Eighth Master Chief Petty Officer of the Coast Guard in 1998.

Department of Transportation

Well before he reached that peak, Patton worked on ways to help his peers maximize their potential. He prioritized improving conditions for enlistees and later developed a protocol to help all Coast Guard members rise as he had, incorporating clear, actionable feedback into an evaluation system that had been based solely on numerical ratings. He also made evaluations collaborative, so enlistees and their evaluators work in tandem to map the growth and readiness needed for the next level, while improving the evaluator’s leadership too.

“You join this organization for any number of reasons. Let’s ensure that you meet that particular obligation of what you want to do,” he adds. “I think that is why the system is still successful today.”

‘Failing’ at retirement

Patton retired from the Coast Guard in November 2002, but he jokes that he has “failed at retirement.” Since leaving the service, he has earned a master's degree in theology, taught ethics at the University of California, Berkeley, and worked for organizations that help service members transition to civilian careers.

Today, he mentors the next generation through the U.S. Naval Sea Cadet Corps, serving on its national board, and supports junior ROTC cadets at Detroit’s Cass Technical High School — his alma mater — through a scholarship in his name.

Through it all, Patton says, he’s been guided by the Coast Guard’s core values — honor, respect and devotion to duty — and his own “three P’s.”

“People, passion, performance — and that’s it. That’s what says who I am.”

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Aaron Kassraie writes about issues important to military veterans and their families for AARP. He also serves as a general assignment reporter. Kassraie previously covered U.S. foreign policy as a correspondent for the Kuwait News Agency’s Washington bureau and worked in news gathering for USA Today and Al Jazeera English. 