By ENS Kiley Provenzano
Public Affairs, USS Gettysburg (CG 64)
MAYPORT, Fla. – This week, the Navy League of the United States’ (NLUS) selected Lt. Lindsey Smith, training officer on the guided missile cruiser USS Gettysburg (CG 64), as the 2014 recipient of the Capt. Winifred Q. Collins Award for Inspirational Leadership.
Smith was selected from among 8,000 female officers serving in the U.S. Navy to receive this prestigious award. Established in 1973 in honor of Capt. Winifred Collins, the award recognizes one female officer and one enlisted female. The message states that it identifies them as someone whose “exceptional leadership and performance in their military duties have been accomplished by outstanding contributions that have brought them recognition and reflected credit on women in the naval service.”
Collins, commissioned in 1942, campaigned in Congress, planning and supporting the integration of women into the Navy through the 1948 Women’s Armed Forces Integration Act. Her career took her around the world, where she set the standard for females in naval service everywhere she went. She retired as the most senior female in the U.S. Navy and continued to promote full integration, serving as the first female director of the Military Officers Association of America in 1964 and the president of the Navy League of the United States the following year.
Onboard Gettysburg, Smith has served with the same spirit, energy and ground-breaking standards as Collins. She simultaneously and without precedent, served as the ship’s training officer and operations officer during a nine-month 5th Fleet area of responsibility deployment with the Harry S. Truman Strike Group supporting Operation Enduring Freedom.
The operations officer position on a guided missile cruiser is historically filled by a senior lieutenant or lieutenant commander, but Smith served while a Lt. j.g. Her diligent efforts assisted in Gettysburg’s recent receipt of the Battenberg Cup – an award given every year to the “best ship in the Fleet” by U.S. Fleet Forces Command.
“It would be enough for her to accomplish the quantifiable things, to do her job as the training officer, but to dual-hat as the operations officer on a deployed cruiser is simply unheard of and her performance was absolutely magnificent,” says Capt. Brad Cooper, commanding officer, USS Gettysburg. “More notably, she accomplishes everything with absolute grace, class, style and an exceptional sense of humility.”
Additionally, Smith was the driving force behind Gettysburg receiving the highest pre-deployment readiness scores in the carrier strike group; she led the planning and execution of a deployed Thanksgiving Day visit by the Chief of Naval Operations and Master Chief Petty Officer of the Navy; she served as the Air and Missile Defense Commander (AMDC) liaison officer onboard the aircraft carrier USS Harry S. Truman (CVN 75) in support of Commander, Task Force (CTF) 50; played a central role in Gettysburg’s establishment of a partnership with the Jacksonville Safe Harbor-Navy Wounded Warrior office; and organized a visit from Operation Gratitude, hosting the NBC news network and the volunteers as they delivered their 1,000,000th care package to service members worldwide since 2003.
All of her achievements were accomplished while managing a $115,000 training budget and ensuring the command was operationally. Among her many successes, Gettysburg returned from deployment with 24 qualified officers of the deck, 145 qualified enlisted surface warfare specialists, and advanced 52 percent of her eligible crew in the last advancement cycle.
“She truly cares about each and every Sailor she works with,” said Chief Cryptologic Technician (Technical) William Cockrell. “She is an absolute joy to work with and for.”
“Lt. Smith has made an incredible impact on the entire ship with her positive attitude and contagious work ethic,” says Quartermaster 2nd Class Brandon Shannon. “I’ve never met anybody like her.”
A St. Louis native, Smith is a graduate of the University of Oklahoma, where she majored in International and Area Studies with a focus on the Middle East. Her first tour in the Navy was aboard guided-missile destroyer USS Stout (DDG 55), where she participated in strike operations against Libya during Operation Odyssey Dawn. She graduated as an honor graduate during training at the Aegis Training and Readiness Center in Dahlgren, Va. Smith is also a recipient of the 2013 Navy and Marine Association Leadership Award.
| Date Taken: | 05.28.2014 |
| Date Posted: | 06.06.2014 15:36 |
| Story ID: | 132356 |
| Location: | MAYPORT, FLORIDA, US |
| Hometown: | ST. LOUIS, MISSOURI, US |
| Web Views: | 129 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
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