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Biden on 1st female armed services chief: ‘It’s about time’
WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden hailed Adm. Linda Fagan as new Commandant of the U.S. Coast Guard and the armed forces’ first female service chief, declaring during a change of command ceremony Wednesday, “It’s about time.”
“The trailblazing career of Adm. Fagan shows young people entering the services, we mean what we say: There are no doors — no doors — closed to women,” Biden told around 2,000 cheering guests at Coast Guard headquarters. Those attending included service chiefs from other military branches and Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.
Biden added, “This is what an admiral and service chief in the United States armed forces looks like” and thanked Fagan for “all that you’ve done throughout your career to open the doors of opportunity just a little bit wider” allowing “those following behind you a way through.”
“Now we need to keep working to make sure Adm. Fagan may be the first but not the only,” Biden said. “We need to see more women at the highest levels of command in the Coast Guard and across every service.”
Fagan, who was previously the service’s second in command, relieved Adm. Karl Schultz. She graduated from the Coast Guard Academy in 1985, in just the sixth class that included women. She steadily rose through the ranks, serving at sea on an icebreaker and ashore as a marine safety officer.
It was not until much later in her career that she thought becoming commandant might even be possible.
“A lot of people would say, ‘Oh yeah, I knew she was going to be an admiral,’ but I didn’t think about it,” Fagan told The New York Times. “Even when I was first selected as an admiral you don’t think about it, and then all of a sudden you look around and you go, ‘Oh yeah, all right, I guess this is possible.’ ”
She will be the 27th commandant of the service, which traces its roots back to the creation of the Revenue Cutter Service shortly after the Revolutionary War.
When Fagan takes her seat among the Joint Chiefs, she will have served roughly the same amount of time as any of those seated around her.