Articles

Read articles by and about Russ Webster

October 13, 2026

New Book 'The Last Flight' excerpts in People.com

New Details in the Desperate Search for JFK Jr.’s Downed Plane and Its Passengers From left: Carolyn Bessette Kennedy and John F. Kennedy Jr. in 1997 and the wreckage of his plane, found in July 1999. Credit : DMI/The LIFE Picture Collection; NTSB “Every other narrative of the JFK Jr. plane crash…
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January 15, 2026

No ordinary hero—Silver Star recipient and FRC namesake Robert Yered

Few who saw Robert J. Yered, the weathered, aging groundskeeper in faded jeans at a local Massachusetts high school, thought he was anything more than a kind retiree trying to stay busy. Yered never offered clues to his past, but this quiet man, who passed in 2009, was a hero in the Vietnam War.…
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August 15, 2025

New Book Honors Coast Guard Legend Jack Downey

CHATHAM – There’s no shortage of yarns about Jack Downey. Most stories about the legendary Coast Guardsman were appreciative, a few recollections were less than flattering, and there were likely plenty that could never be put in print. But Downey’s imprint on the Coast Guard — both its procedures…
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February 21, 2025

Hero William Hart’s stolen Gold Lifesaving Medal

By Capt. W. Russell Webster, U.S. Coast Guard retired The Long Blue Line blog series has been publishing Coast Guard history essays for over 15 years. To access hundreds of these service stories, visit the Coast Guard Historian’s Office’s Long Blue Line online archives, located here: THE LONG BLUE…
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August 20, 2024

Hero without a headstone

The Long Blue Line blog series has been publishing Coast Guard history essays for over 15 years. To access hundreds of these service stories, visit the Coast Guard Historian’s Office’s Long Blue Line online archives, located here: THE LONG BLUE LINE (uscg.mil) In an unassuming burial plot in a…
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May 10, 2024

Now and Then

An essay about my year back at CGA Forty-five years after graduating in the Class of 1977, I returned to New London in August 2022 to teach for a year. During our class’s monthly virtual meeting, my classmates were curious if anything on campus had changed. The best I could say was, ‘everything is…
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