Capt. Jason Ingram will end his Coast Guard career of 30-plus years at the same place he started — Station Key West. It was his first choice in 1992, when Ingram finished at the top of his U.S. Coast Guard boot camp class in Cape May, New Jersey — and it was once again his first choice for his last assignment back in 2022.
“I finished No. 2 in my boot camp class, so I got to pick second when it came to where I wanted to be assigned,” Ingram said on one of his final Fridays as commander of Sector Key West, which oversees Coast Guard Stations Key West, Marathon and Islamorada.
“There’s 700 men and women who work for me, but it’s not me,” Ingram said. “I make recommendations and watch those people make the magic happen. This has been the perfect bookend to my career. The Florida Keys are special because the people make it so.”
Ingram has been assigned to eight places in a Coast Guard career that started right after high school.
He grew up in Virginia, and “had planned to come into the Coast Guard, do my four years and get my education money for college,” he said. “So I did nearly four years here in Key West, then went to Virginia Tech and worked at Circuit City throughout college.”
In Key West, Ingram, who had grown up on and around private boats, worked as a boatswain’s mate, “driving all the small boats the Coast Guard had. In fact, my first boss down here was none other than Todd Stoughton.”
The two would reunite down here decades later, after Stoughton had retired from the Coast Guard and was working as the city of Key West’s assistant city manager, where he still is.
When Ingram graduated Virginia Tech in 1998, he once again considered the Coast Guard, this time as an officer.
“I went back to the same recruiting office in Virginia that I had visited after high school, and the same guy who had recruited me back then was still there. This time, he recruited me as an officer,” Ingram recalled from his office overlooking Sector Key West and the water below, where three Coast Guard cutters and several smaller boats were docked bearing the unmistakable orange logo.
After Officer Candidate School, Ingram was commissioned and assigned to Group Cape Hatteras, where he learned quickly about disaster response after being pelted by several, rapid-fire hurricanes off the North Carolina coast.
“I’ve been so blessed with my career,” he said, adding that before his final assignment as commander of Sector Key West, he headed up Sector Virginia. “The Coast Guard has a ton of opportunities, from search and rescue, to aids to navigation, drug interdictions.”
And then came the migrants.
“I came back to Key West as commander in May 2022, and landed here in the thick of all the migration from Cuba and Haiti,” he said. “There was a lot going on down here, but one of the features that makes this place special is the relationships we have with our law enforcement, military and civilian partners. We honestly do work together, and it’s just not like that in most other places.”
Ingram will leave the helm of Sector Key West on June 20 in the capable hands of incoming commander Capt. Josh Empen, who’s coming to Key West from an entirely different island Hawaii.
A change-of-command and retirement ceremony for Ingram takes place Friday, June 20 at 9:30 a.m. at Sector Key West on Trumbo Point.
Ingram will spend his first three to four weeks of retirement at the home he owns in Islamorada with Tonya, his wife of 25 years; their son Mason, 22; and daughter Mackenzi, who turns 21 this month.
