Lieutenant Jeanine McIntosh-Menze

Lt.j.g. Jeanine McIntosh becomes the first African American Female in the Coast Guard to get her wings, June 24, 2005, at Naval Air Station Corpus Christi, Texas. U.S. Coast Guard photograph by PA2 Andrew Kendrick

Lieutenant Jeanine McIntosh-Menze

The first African American Female in the Coast Guard to get her wings

Jeanine McIntosh was born in Jamaica in 1979. At an early age, McIntosh had a love for airplanes, watching them soar overhead at her community of Portmore. McIntosh attended Vaz Preparatory School in Kingston before migrating with her family to Canada where they settled before relocating to South Florida. There, she attended high school at Miami Killian High School and graduated from Florida International University where she studied International Business.
After graduating she decided to pursue her love of flying, eventually taking flying lessons at the North Perry Airport in Pembroke Pines and afterward getting a job as a flight instructor at Opa-Locka Airport in North Miami. While she worked there, she was exposed to the careers in the United States Coast Guard because of all the carriers there, and her interest in flying one of the planes. In 2003 McIntosh joined the US Coast Guard after graduating from the Coast Guard Officer Candidate School. McIntosh began her Coast Guard aviation training at Naval Air Station Corpus Christi, Texas in January 2005. In June of the same year, she earned her wings, becoming the first black female to successfully complete flight training and be assigned as a pilot in the US Coast Guard. Lt. Jeanine McIntosh Menze flies the C-130 Hercules aircraft for service-related missions. She flew one of the first military aircraft involved with mission work following the earthquake in Haiti.