Humans of 黑料社: James Aiken '22

Humans of 黑料社: James Aiken ’22

Jamie Aiken '23
February 3, 2022

James Aiken ’22 is an Adult Degree Program student majoring in Business.听

听黑料社 a month into flight school, I’m sitting on the couch, watching the news before one of my flight lessons. It was something like six o鈥檆lock in the morning in Arizona, so it was nine-something in New York. I turned on the news to see one of the towers already burning, and as I’m sitting there watching it, I saw the second plane fly into the other building. So needless to say, my flight lesson that morning got cancelled.听

James and Debbie — James taking his wife, Debbie for a flight in a two-seater airplane

They cancelled all of our lessons for the next鈥擨 want to say six weeks, before they allowed us to go back to the flight school again. I eventually went back and finished my private pilot’s license in December. But pilots were getting furloughed in the year after that鈥攖he airline industry took a pretty big hit. I decided then that I was going to join the military instead of trying to pursue a pilot career. I went to the Army, the Navy, and the Coast Guard, and decided on the Coast Guard. The reason I did not consider the Air Force is because I wouldn鈥檛 have been able to be a pilot, which is what I really wanted to do. At the time, you had to have 20/20 vision, and they didn鈥檛 allow any Lasik surgery or anything. And the Air Force is all about flying planes, and I didn鈥檛 want any other kind of job if I wasn鈥檛 going to be flying.听 The Coast Guard is all about driving boats, and I could drive the boat.听 That’s what I wanted to do鈥攖hat’s why I joined. I literally had the conversation with the recruiter in his office. He had a poster on his wall of some guys on a small inflatable boat with long guns. And I said, who are these guys鈥攚hat’s their job? And he said, those are boatswain mates, and if you wanna drive one of those boats, you鈥檙e a coxswain.听 So that was my plan when I first joined. As soon as I got to my unit, I asked my chief: what do I need to do to be the guy out driving the boat? And he said, well, first thing you need to do is pass this test that everybody else here cannot seem to pass. It’s called the rules of the road, which is the Coast Guard navigation test.听 To drive the boats, you have to know all the different light configurations, the buoys, the sound signals鈥攁ll of that. And it鈥檚 a written test. So I said, alright鈥攁nd I took the book, studied it, and passed with a 98 on the first try. When the chief handed me the results, he was all excited, cause he had already had a bunch of guys under him fail the test multiple times. And I took it the first time and passed. But I was like, aw, I got one wrong? 鈥� I think I know which one that is.听 You can think of a Coast Guard station as being a police station combined with a fire station, but on the water. Police go out, and they patrol, they look for crime鈥攁nd the fire station, people call them when there鈥檚 an emergency. So they tend to hang out at the fire station and not really do anything unless they have a call. Especially on those three-day weekends, if we weren’t actively doing something, we鈥檇 just be watching movies or playing video games, hanging out at the station. But the most common thing I did on a daily basis was law enforcement, sprinkled with random search and rescue cases.听

James on a boat — James with his daughters, Jamie (right) and Kristen, in one of the boats he drove

We responded once to a woman who put out a distress call. Her boat was sinking. We went out there, and it was the middle of the night…and the seas were angry that day, my friend. But I mean, it was a pretty good chop, there were some pretty good seas; it was probably eight- or ten-foot seas, I mean, we were rocking around. And we got to her sailboat, and she was sinking, there was no doubt about it. But she would not let us pull her off the boat unless we got her cat off first.听 So we had to rescue the cat鈥攚hich obviously was not happy, and didn鈥檛 want to be picked up. And it wasn鈥檛 an easy operation鈥攊t was pitch dark, the boats banging against each other, and her boat was sinking pretty fast. But we got the cat in a duffel bag and hauled it up, and saved the lady and the cat. The whole time we鈥檙e telling her, come on, just come with us, get in the boat, we鈥檒l go back for the cat鈥攂ut she wasn鈥檛 having it. She was like, cat first, or I’m going down with the boat.听 I was in for eight years. But once you start getting up in rank in years of service, all those fun jobs鈥攖hose are young people jobs. If I was still in the Coast Guard right now, I would be at a desk, not on a boat. But I also had to think about the kids. We didn鈥檛 want to keep moving the family around to different schools; we wanted them to have all four years of high school in the same place. And here we are, over 10 years later. I have a very successful business, and I’m about to graduate with my degree.听 Getting my degree is really not going to affect me career-wise at this point鈥擨 just wanted to complete what I set out to do 20 years ago. And, of course, my GI benefits are going to expire in a couple years, so I figured I needed to use them before I lose them. I鈥檝e already got an associates in Aeronautical Science from Embry-Riddle, and I can鈥檛 wait to finally have my bachelor鈥檚 from 黑料社. Just to say, alright, I did it.听 黑料社 is a family affair for the Aikens.听 While James will graduate in 2022, his daughter Jamie will graduate in 2023 and his wife Debbie is a 2012 alumna.听