First Same-Sex Marriage Announcement At The Coast Guard Academy
It’s a tradition at the United States Coast Guard Academy in New London, Conn., that when a cadet becomes engaged to be married, the lucky man or woman’s friends will announce the engagement to the entire corps in the wardroom at lunchtime, the one meal that all four years of students eat together. On Thursday, Dec. 5, the announcement was a little different. “Over the weekend, Cadet First Class Kaitlin Ward got down on one knee and proposed to her longtime girlfriend, Lauren Bloch. This is the first announcement of its type.”
There was a brief moment of silence as the room realized the significance of the announcement — the first in the school’s 137-year history — before the corps of cadets started cheering and whooping for their classmate and her fiancée, the latest couple who had met and fallen in love at the academy.
“We started out as friends, then became best friends as we developed more of a connection over time, and it just kind of just happened,” Ward said. They started dating in September 2011, the same month that DADT was repealed.
Both plan to marry in 2015
