Katherine Mcdonnell
 | Author:
Nancy Marks
Nancy Marks: MT43 News Secretary and News Editor |
Broadwater High School 2016 graduate Katherine McDonnell is show here with a TH 7 helicopter in Pensecola, Florida. She is specializing in helicopter flying after graduating from the United States Coast Guard Aacademy military school in New London, Connecticut in 2020. She was commissioned as a ensign and has since been promoted to Lt. Junior Grade Officer.
McDonnell qualified for Coast Guard Academy scholarship right out of high school. She spent four years earning a mechanical engineering degree. The course is paid for by five years of active military service after graduation.
She opted for flight school where she trained first in flying Cessna planes then on to the 6 Navy turbo prop planes school where she studied for ten months. She now trains on the Navy TH57 helicopter. She explained the helicopter is old, “But reliable so they just keep working.” She will receive her wing s" as a winged aviator and will be a able to fly in the Coast Guard fleet.
The 80,000 active-duty members of the US Coast Guard are deployed from ports on both US coasts doing search and rescue and contra-drug enforcement. The Coast Guard trains its high recruits at a shared base with the US Navy in Pensecola.
Asked if the Coast Guard will be her life’ career, McDonnell said maybe , but it is an additional com¬mitment of 13 years from 2020 “However, it is pretty hard to walk away because the Coast Guard pays our living expenses and all of our insurance plus a good wage, ” she said.
McDonnell is the daughter of District #1 School board member Kevin McDonnell and Beth Ihle of Santa Fe, New Mexico.
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Image 1 Caption: Katherine McDonnell. Credit: Nancy Marks
