A ceremony held Monday morning at U.S. Coast Guard Station Gloucester on Harbor Loop celebrated the promotion of Gloucester native Thomas Russell Dagle Jr. to chief petty officer.
Dagle, 37, is the son of Thomas and Carol Dagle of Gloucester. He has been enlisted in the Coast Guard for 16 years serving as a machinery technician. By trade, he’s an outboard and diesel engine mechanic.
He graduated from Gloucester High School with the Class of 2006 and attended Bridgton Academy for a year. His family also consists of his sisters Erika, Wendy, Heather and Robin. He’s the father of Isabella, Loralei and Thomas Dagle and stepchildren Spencer and Madison.
Since joining the Coast Guard in 2008, he has been part of the USCG cutter Dependable in Cape May, New Jersey, stationed in St. Inigoes, Maryland, conducting search and rescue.
He has also conducted law enforcement and heavy weather search and rescue in Ocean City, Maryland, as well as been stationed onboard the USCG cutter Mohawk out of Key West, Florida, as an engineer of the watch and small boat engineer/gunner for pursuit operations for drug interdiction in the eastern Pacific Ocean and migrant interdiction within the Caribbean.
Most recently, he was stationed at Station Cape May, New Jersey, as the assistant engineering petty officer overseeing seven assets and managing two separate “station smalls” of stations Townsend Inlet and Station Fortescue.
Dagle is getting set to deploy early next month for a year to Manama, Bahrain, in the Middle East aboard the USCG cutter Charles Moulthrope.
Dagle says his best advice is: “Make it a goal to make someone smile, you never know what someone is going through and how far in life that one interaction can take them.”
His favorite quote comes from Muhammad Ali: “It’s not the mountains ahead to climb that wear you down, it’s the pebble in your shoe.”
Command at Coast Guard Station Gloucester was very cordial and his family was thankful for their accommodating the ceremony to help him celebrate his milestone, Dagle said.
Ethan Forman may be contacted at 978-675-2714, or at eforman@northofboston.com.