Coast Guard Petty Officer Embraces Dangerous Work
Vet Goes From Sea to Skyscraper
Twenty-three-year-old Jesse Romahn doesn't shy away from dangerous work. At a job site, he
straps on 40 pounds of tools and begins his 12-15 hour day high above the ground in a canopy of
iron beams and girders. Ironworkers walk on six-inch wide steel beams with the wind whistling
around them. The beams wobble and shake but Romahn doesn't have any problems keeping his balance.
He has his sea legs after five years in the U.S. Coast Guard.
Romahn's stepfather, an Air Force mechanic, Teamster, and construction worker, was an
important influence on his life. He suggested the military as a path for seventeen-year-old Jesse
Romahn. In his third year of high school, Romahn graduated early and joined the Coast Guard.
Technical school in Yorktown, Virginia followed his first missions, patrolling the waters around
Fort Canaveral and search and rescue in the waters off of New Jersey.
As a 3rd Class Petty Officer, and machinery technician, he was second in command on his boat.
If anything went wrong on the boat – leaks, fire, mechanical failings – Romahn was in charge of
damage control. He stopped leaks and maintained water pumps on sinking boats. "A lot of people
don't understand what [Coast Guard] daily life involves. It's almost like a fire department and a
police station put together. You put the homeland security and the military force on top of that...
it was a lot of responsibility."
After five years, twenty foot seas, and a near-death brush with a tangled helicopter, Jesse
Rohman decided to leave the Coast Guard and try something new. "When you get out of the military
you should be qualified to do a lot of things," says Romahn. However, the transition was more
difficult than he expected. Employers had a hard time transferring military ratings to civilian
business. "When you get out, all that people expect of you is that you're clean cut, you show up on
time, and you follow orders."
In January of 2008 during his exit interview from the Coast Guard, Romahn found out about
Helmets to Hardhats and signed up on the website.
"Helmets to Hardhats helped me out a lot. They answered my questions, helped me prepare for the
test, and helped me purchase testing materials."
He connected with Butch Wade, an ironworker and a veteran who works for the New Jersey
Building Trades. Mr. Wade became a mentor and was present during Romahn's steel walk test. "Butch
came to represent me so I couldn’t let him down. I was definitely nervous but I climbed up that
ladder. I looked down and saw that beam about six inches wide. There's a net set up under the beam
but it's a pretty hard fall, it still hurts." Romahn made it across but it took six months to
complete all the testing and be accepted into the union. He still needed a job.
During the six months it took for him to be admitted into the Ironworkers Apprentice program,
he worked as an armored truck driver in New York's five boroughs. Romahn carried a 38-special side
arm and as much as 4 million dollars in the truck. When he got hired, he heard stories of workers
in the Philadelphia branch of the company who had been robbed and shot. "You go to some pretty
hairy places," says Romahn.
As a Local 11 ironworker, Jesse Romahn sees his union membership as another way to support
America. He likes the vacation pay, the flexibility of being able to work anywhere and the freedom
he has as a civilian to start a family. "In five years," Jesse Romahn says, "I'll probably be on
top of a building connecting beams, or carrying rebar all day, or putting together a bridge" Romahn
just wouldn’t be happy sitting at a desk. "If I can put in a good day's work and get a good day's
pay," he says, "I’ll give it a shot."
