My Memoirs: Edifying Times (Hardback or Cased Book)

Walter R. Somerville Jr. grew up in humble circumstances with dreams of becoming a professional baseball player.

But with a young daughter to take care of and bills to pay, he enlisted in the recently integrated Air Force in 1951-never knowing that he'd spend the next fifty-four years serving his country.

After serving a tour of duty in South Korea, he returned to the United States before being honorably discharged and then re-enlisting to work at the Air Force Reserve Center in Baltimore. Eventually, he became a civilian Air Force Reserve technician at Andrews Air Force Base before taking a job at the Federal Aviation Agency.

He went on to work other jobs before becoming a chief with the Coast Guard's Civilian Equal Employment Opportunity Division, in 1970. Later, he was appointed to a Senior Executive Service position as chief of civil rights, the military equivalent of rear admiral in the United States Coast Guard.

Join the author as he looks back at a lifetime of making a huge difference in the lives of ordinary people-especially women and minorities-and living an active life after retirement in these memoirs.

Walter R. Somerville Jr. did not let growing up relatively poor prevent him from becoming assistant commandant for civil rights in the United States Coast Guard. In his fifty-four years of public service, he supported a Coast Guard culture that values diversity, a twenty-first century recruiting initiative, the creation of the Coast Guard JROTC program, and other initiatives. He is a graduate of the University of Maryland University College and a program for senior managers in government at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.