PEA RIDGE — At 17, he tried to join the Marines, but his mother wouldn’t sign for him, Alex Martfeld said, admitting now that was probably a good decision.
Recently graduated from the U.S. Coast Guard Academy, Martfeld was home for a week before heading to Connecticut where he will teach younger recruits to sail. Then, this fall, he will be stationed in Florida attending flight school.
A 2008 graduate of Pea Ridge High School, Martfeld was one of 13 of the 84 graduates that year who had a 4.0 grade point average. Martfeld graduated 36 of 233 from the Academy.
He earned a bachelor’s degree in Marine and Environmental Science. In addition to attending flight school, Martfeld willowe 13 years service to the Coast Guard.
“We had a great class. Once a group starts doing well, they pull everyone with them. I got caught up in a lot of peers doing well,” he said, recalling with pride and fondness his coaches and teachers, especially John King, Tim Pate, David Wentz and Rita Zumwalt.
“Coach King not only taughtabout baseball, but taught us about life,” Martfeld said.
“We’re training to be officers” at the Academy. Each summer he had a different course. The first summer, he worked as a junior enlisted man off the Massachusetts coast. “We can’t be officers and look after the people below us if we don’t know their jobs.”
The second summer, Martfield sailed from Bermuda to Hallifax. It was a six-week course.
And the third, he was responsible for putting new cadets through boot camp.
“The Coast Guard is really diverse. It’s smaller than the New York City Police Department.
It’s the only military branch with law enforcement authority,” he said. Jobs include patrol-ling the entire coast line, customs agents, fisheries enforcement, ice breaking, search and rescue.”
He said the Coast Guard is under the Department of Homeland Security.
“It’s a dream job,” said Martfeld, of his work with the Academy.
“My dad wanted to go in the Coast Guard,” Martfeld said, noting that there is a long history of military service in his family. Both of his grandfathers served in the military - his maternal grandfather in the Army and his paternal grandfather in the Navy Seabees. Several uncles and cousins also served, with two killed in Vietnam.
At Pea Ridge High School, Martfeld played sports “with the same group of kids” throughout school.
He said it was an advantage, not a disadvantage, to have the background he was provided at Pea Ridge when heentered boot camp for the Coast Guard.
The only son of Chris and Sara Martfeld, Alex has three elder sisters.
“I owe my teachers and parents a lot,” he said. “My parents are really hard working folks. I learned my work ethic from them.”
News, Pages 1 on 06/27/2012