Mackinaw Arriving

Mackinaw Arriving

A captain’s journey through love and loss, from Colorado to the Great Lakes.

The city of Greeley lies roughly 70 miles northeast of Denver. This is a different Colorado, one that is home to sprawling feedlots and dusty farmland rather than tony ski resorts and jaw-dropping mountain vistas.

It is also the hometown of a Great Lakes ship captain — and not just any captain. This is where the commanding officer of the U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Mackinaw was raised.

Going to Hogwarts

A career on big water was the farthest thing from Commander Jeannette “Jeannie” Greene’s mind when she was young. She did not grow up around water, other than the nearby Cache la Poudre and South Platte rivers, which spill out of the Rocky Mountains and carve their way eastward across the high prairie to the Missouri. Greene attended Highland High School in Ault, Colorado.

One of just 43 students in her class, she planned to attend art school after graduation.

That is, until her older sister, Molly, took the first step on a path that would change life for both of them. Greene said she still remembers the day the U.S. Coast Guard Academy information packet arrived at their house.

“We saw a photo of this three-masted ship, and as a kid from the cornfields, we thought, what is that?” she recalls with a laugh. “It’s a pirate ship!”

Molly applied, was accepted and began her life as a cadet at the U.S Coast Guard Academy. She encouraged her younger sister to apply to the academy’s introduction program for high schoolers. Greene says she rolled her eyes but applied anyway.

“[Molly] was driven and serious, got good grades and planned to attend a military academy after high school,” she explains. “I wasn’t what I thought a military person would be like. I was a jokester, and I didn’t push myself like she did.”

To Greene’s surprise, she was accepted. She stepped onto an airplane for the first time and traveled to New London, Connecticut.

“What a different atmosphere,” she says. “I couldn’t see anything, just trees, trees, trees. It was a little claustrophobic, but the academy felt like going to Hogwarts. I loved it right away, and I knew I wanted to work toward a career in the service — stopping drugs, protecting the coast and saving lives. Yes, I was a free spirit, but I also liked the structure, mission and teamwork.”

As she prepared for college, Greene also considered the other military academies and went through the process to secure nominations from her Congressional representatives and senators. Her heart, however, remained with the Coast Guard.

“My big sis was two years older and already there, so I went for it and somehow got in,” she says. “At the time, I think Molly and I were unique in the Coast Guard, as two sisters from Colorado!”

A coastie career is born

College life at the academy was an eye-opener for the new cadet in 2001. It was a rigorous environment, and she had a heavy academic schedule, but she was willing to work hard and couldn’t wait to earn her first commission.

“I enjoyed it in a weird way,” she remembers. “When everyone is in uniform, you have to look beyond that to see people for who they really are. I also loved marching, the uniforms, the flags and being with young people from all over. I thought that was the coolest thing ever.”

During the summer, Greene finally got to sail on that pirate ship. It was the training vessel USCGC Eagle, taken from the Germans after World War II, and she found herself in the rigging, at the helm and practicing to fight disasters like fire and floods.

She earned her degree in civil engineering in 2005 and then experienced a defining moment in every cadet’s career. She received her first commission at the Class of 2005 Billet Night.

“Molly got assigned to the original USCGC Mackinaw in 2003 (she would also serve as commanding officer of the USCG’s Neah Bay and Hollyhock), and she let me in on a secret,” Greene says. “The ship was going to be decommissioned after 62 years, and they were building a new Mackinaw that would be both icebreaker and buoy tender.”

U.S. Coast Guard cadets often hope to be assigned to a buoy tender, she explains, because they are aboard for weeks rather than months at a time. The nature of the work keeps the ship in shallow waters, which means it is closer to shore and can make routine port calls.

The new 240-foot Mackinaw would be home-ported in Cheboygan, Michigan. As sought-after as buoy tender commissions are, Greene noted that Cheboygan does not have the same allure as seaboard ports, which improved her odds of landing a commission.

“Molly suggested that this might be the right opportunity,” she says. “I applied in January and found out I got it at Billet Night in March.”

Greene reported to Marinette, Wisconsin, where the new Mackinaw was under construction at Marinette Marine Corporation, which today is part of Fincantieri Marine Group. She learned everything about the new vessel, from the electrical system to the propulsion system, which incorporates two Azipods and a bow thruster; this system, unique for the military, allows the ship to push a large amount of water in any direction.

As a deck watch officer, Greene also learned to drive the ship. She says she will never forget the excitement of launch day.

“We motored away into Green Bay, a baby icebreaker born into beautiful ice,” she reflects. “To date, that is the biggest ice I’ve ever seen.”

(Main photo) The USCGC Mackinaw is a Great Lakes icebreaker and buoy tender out of Cheboygan, Michigan

Commander Jeannette “Jeannie” Greene

Jeannie followed her older sister, Molly, to the U.S. Coast Guard Academy

The sisters’ first command in the Greeley streets

Sisters Molly and Jeannie

Highlights in Jeannie’s USCG career include her cadet experience, meeting President George W. Bush, serving aboard USCGC Maple in Alaska and forging bonds with her shipmates at sea

By land and sea

When Greene’s tour aboard Mackinaw ended, she served as the operations officer aboard a 140-foot icebreaking tug and then as an operations officer aboard the 225-foot buoy tender USCGC Juniper. While serving aboard Juniper, fate stepped in with a new twist.

“I met this hot dude in a bar,” Greene says, laughing. “We got married.”

At that point, she took advantage of Coast Guard-funded graduate school and earned a master’s degree in ocean engineering at the University of Rhode Island. She was assigned to a civil engineering unit in Cleveland, Ohio, where her son Grady was born in 2013.

“I got my engineer license, but I realized I missed being on a ship,” she says. “I sat down with my husband and told him I wanted to go afloat again. He said, ‘Of course you do.’”

With her husband’s support, Greene returned to shipboard life. She was assigned to the 225-foot Juniper-class buoy tender USCGC Maple in Sitka, Alaska — a move that thrilled them both, but she often felt torn about the life she chose.

“It was what I wanted, but I hadn’t seen moms on ships before,” she explains. “There are two of us on the Mackinaw right now, but that’s not how it was then. So there was this interesting push and pull of life happening all at once, and there was guilt because this rewarding yet demanding work took me away from my family.”

Greene thrived at sea, however. She was a natural at the helm, and her captain treated her as a captain in training.

“I never imagined that would be me,” she muses. “I always thought ‘I am not the type.’ But whenever the captain would leave the bridge, he would say, ‘You got it, XO!’ He taught me so much.”

Yet Greene headed shoreside again when she discovered she was pregnant with her second son, Sawyer. She took a position with a civil engineering unit in Oakland, California.

“We happily went,” she says. “My husband, Eric, was stoked about the mountain biking and the skiing.”

Then, one day, a mentor asked when she was getting underway again. In the moment, Greene says, time stopped.

“I thought, ‘oh no, I’m not done after all… it’s in me,’” she says. “I’m so fortunate that my husband supported me and was not only willing to take care of our home and the kids, but also was incredibly patient and talented in doing so.”

Home to Mackinaw

Then, in 2019, tragedy struck not once but twice.

On January 31, a mobile crane tipped over, killing the bosun of USCGC Hickory in Homer, Alaska. In May, Commander Molly Waters, Greene’s sister, died in a motorcycle accident in Washington, D.C., where she worked at USCG headquarters. As an organ donor, she saved three people’s lives.

The sisters had been estranged for years, and despite Greene’s ongoing attempts at reconciliation, they had not spoken prior to Molly’s passing. On the heels of this gut-wrenching loss, she learned that the position of commanding officer aboard Hickory had just opened up.

“With full support from my husband, I applied and got it,” Greene says. “I took my broken heart to be with a crew that was as traumatized as I was. I was the captain they needed, as much as I needed them.”

Together, Hickory and her tightly knit crew tended buoys from Dutch Harbor to Ketchikan. It was a powerful experience, Greene says, and the bonds they forged proved vital when they lost a junior officer to suicide at the end of her tour.

After three years with Hickory, Greene decided she wanted to return to Mackinaw. She didn’t expect to get the commission, as it is rare for a commanding officer to serve in that position twice in a row.

“When I got the call, it brought me to my knees,” she says.

Not only was Mackinaw where Greene’s career started back in 2005, it was where her sister’s journey ended in 2019. The family scattered Molly’s ashes in Lake Huron from Mackinaw’s decks.

“Now I was aboard the same ship as captain,” Greene says. “I just couldn’t believe it.”

Greene became Mackinaw’s commanding officer in 2022. Once again, she found her second family in her crew, and the strength of that connection carried them through another dark day: On October 21, 2024, MK2 (machinery technician second class) Joshua Brown, 32, took his own life in Cheboygan.

“We love him, and we miss him,” Greene says. “We want to keep his memory present. Josh was an amazing, wonderful person, and he should be remembered.”

The Brown family is planning to do a burial at sea aboard Mackinaw, which will happen this spring. Greene says she is glad she can support them in this after her own family’s experience laying Molly to rest.

“I know this is all pretty heavy,” she says. “When boaters see the Coast Guard, they might not realize we are real people with our low moments and heartbreak. I think it’s important to share that we all struggle with work, seasonal affective disorder, family and losses — but we also gain so much. We are proud to represent and serve our country, and we are grateful to do it together.

“Our crew is amazing,” she continues. “Everyone works hard and supports each other. We share stories, we have coffee when no one else would be having coffee, and we love each other unconditionally. And we always talk about the hard stuff, because wounds that aren’t visible are dangerous.”

As captain, Greene says she has learned that these relationships are her greatest gift and greatest responsibility.

“Yes, I can drive a ship, but people are the job — the very best part of the job — more than the buoys and the ice — although those are cool too,” she says. “Mackinaw is the core of my life. It is an honor to represent this ship and this crew.”

It has been a remarkable journey from the eastern Colorado plains to the Great Lakes — one that began with a brochure and a photo of a would-be pirate ship.

It is a journey that continues every day with the crew’s clarion call when Greene arrives on the bridge: Mackinaw arriving!

Indeed, the captain has arrived.

Every year, the Mackinaw is transformed into Chicago’s Christmas Ship, bringing trees to inner-city families for the holiday season

Commander Greene with her mother, husband and sons

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