Owen W. Siler

Admiral Owen Wesley Siler (January 10, 1922 – July 17, 2007) served as the fifteenth Commandant of the United States Coast Guard from 1974 to 1978.

Biography
Siler was born in Seattle, Washington and raised in Santa Maria, California where he attended Santa Maria High School. He graduated from Santa Maria Junior College (now Allan Hancock College) in 1940, and transferred to the United States Coast Guard Academy in New London, Connecticut, graduating a year early due to World War II. Upon graduation, he was assigned to the assault troop transport ship, USS Hunter Liggett (APA-14), and participated in the invasion of Bougainville.

During the war, he quickly advanced through the ranks serving as Gunnery Officer, Assistant Navigator, and Deck Watch officer. In the immediate aftermath of the war, he participated in the U.S. occupation of Northern Honshū, Japan.

Upon returning to the United States in April, 1946, he briefly served as a Personnel Officer at the Coast Guard Training Center in Alameda, California, before his assignment as Navigator of the USCGC Taney.

He received a Master of Science degree in International Affairs from George Washington University in 1968.

His Coast Guard career highlights included serving as a deck officer afloat, as an aviator performing search and rescue patrols, and ashore in the law enforcement, marine safety and environmental protection fields. Other assignments included chief of the search and rescue branch in Juneau, Alaska, deputy chief of staff in Washington, and commanding officer at Air Station Miami, where the station received a Coast Guard unit commendation for Cuban exodus operations during October and November 1965.

From 1971 until his appointment as Commandant, he served as Commander of the St. Louis-based 2nd Coast Guard District.

During Siler's tenure as commandant he instituted a minority recruiting program and was instrumental in having women admitted to the United States Coast Guard Academy, making it the first of the military service academies to do so. He also oversaw the expansion of the Coast Guard's marine environmental protection program, with the passage of the Fisheries Conservation and Management Act of 1976, to include an increase of the service's jurisdiction along the nation's coastline to more than two million square miles.

Following his retirement from the Coast Guard, he moved to Savannah, Georgia. He died from complications of heart failure at the age of 85 in Atlanta, Georgia, and was buried in Savannah.