Captain Maureen Copelof
U.S. Navy – Communications Officer
Commanding Officer NCTAMS LANT
1979 – 2009
U.S. Navy – Communications Officer
Commanding Officer NCTAMS LANT
1979 – 2009
“If suddenly what you thought was going to be your path forward isn’t your path forward, well there’s another path. Learn to go down that path and make a success of it”.
Maureen Copelof was born in the public service hospital on Staten Island in 1954. Her father was in the Coast Guard at the time and stationed nearby. The family moved around while Maureen was young but eventually settled in the small Connecticut town of Granby. When Maureen was a teenager, her father took a position at the Citadel, and she moved to South Carolina. Maureen went on to receive an undergraduate degree in religious studies at the University of South Carolina and earn her master’s degree in business administration in 1979.
As a newly minted MBA Maureen found it very difficult for women to break into the business world in any meaningful role other than perhaps receptionist. “I had specialized in production management, and I had wanted to go into the textile manufacturing industry, which was really big in the Carolinas back then”. Maureen had no luck breaking into the industry. “The good old boy network was just too strong”. Having been immersed in a military environment at the Citadel and seeing her father serve his country in the Coast Guard, Maureen decided she would join the Navy.
After the Vietnam War ended in 1975 the draft was discontinued, and the military was an all-volunteer force. In the 1979 timeframe the military was not making its personnel quotas, and they began recruiting women for a wide variety of careers, beyond the traditional roles such as nursing. Maureen thought she would gain some experience and try to break into the textile industry after her four years was up. “I’ll just do four years, and I’ll come back, go and interview and show all those guys that wouldn’t give me a job…what I could do…”.
The military can transform some people’s lives, and it did for Maureen. “When I got to the Navy, I loved it. I never even thought about going back and trying to use my degrees in the civilian world because I loved what the Navy did. The way they gave you responsibility, you had such an incredible amount of responsibility as a young officer”.
Maureen headed off to Officer Candidate School in Newport Rhode Island. She went through the typical mental and emotional swings of bootcamp. “It was the same shock everybody has when they go in. Oh, my goodness, what did I get myself into? They force you to bond with your company just by making life so miserable”. “That taught me how to be a military person”. By the end of October in ’79 bootcamp was over.
When it came time for Maureen to put in her “Dream Sheet” of choices for her first duty station, it was a time when women were not allowed on ships. Maureen had requested an operational assignment overseas. “They were just thinking about letting us on the non-combatants”. Maureen was assigned to VR24, an aircraft transport squadron at NAF Sigonella, Sicily. Her squadron would be responsible for resupplying the fleet in the Mediterranean Sea. Maureen was one of the first women assigned to an aircraft squadron oversea supporting combatant ships. This was the beginning of removing obstacles for women in the Navy.
At VR24 Maureen was one of the only women in the squadron and “no one had ever told the guys out in the fleet how to deal with suddenly having women as part of their squadron”. As a Junior Ensign she was also the only female officer. “You really had to prove yourself. You really had to figure out how to adapt”.
Maureen was a Communications Officer and was responsible for learning everything about electronic communications. That included learning everything about the radios, communicating with the aircraft, message transmission and delivery. There was a fair amount of interaction with the Italian Navy and Air Force. “I loved it. We had a great squadron, a great group of guys, and I met my husband (also in the Navy) while we were there and got married (1980). I have an Italian wedding license”.
After two and a half years Maureen’s tour ended, and her next duty station was Naval Air Station, Misawa, in northern Japan. Misawa is located on the northern tip of the island of Honshu and was less than 200 miles from Vladivostok, Russia. This was the home to the Russian eastern fleet. The main activity at the Naval base was to intercept electronic communications initiated from Vladivostok. They would forward those messages to a separate crypto analysis group.
On September 1,1983 the Russians shot down Korean civilian airliner KAL 007 as it drifted off course and over Sakhalin Russia. The wreckage crashed into the ocean approximately 700 miles from the base in Misawa. Immediately the U.S sent unarmed aircraft to the area on a Search and Rescue (SAR) mission. The airwing from the aircraft carrier Midway was on the Misawa base at the time of the incident and was placed on high alert. If the Russians launched their fighters, the U.S. would immediately launch its fighters. This was the height of the Cold War and tensions were high. Ronald Reagan had recently named Russia “The Evil Empire”.
One evening the Misawa base Commanding Officer (CO) and Executive Officer (XO) were leaving the base to attend a function with the Japanese. 1983 was the pre-cell phone era so there would be no way to contact the base leadership in an emergency. That evening they needed someone to stand watch in the Operation Center monitoring the SAR operation. Many of the pilots and mechanics were busy with the mission and unavailable. Maureen volunteered and was selected. “It’s normally very boring. You’re sitting for 12 hours monitoring the radar to see if the Russians are going to launch their aircraft from Vladivostok”. If the Russians did launch fighters heading toward our SAR aircraft our orders were the U.S would immediately launch the Midway’s fighters.
So, with about 30 minutes of training Maureen was left to decide the fate of the world if, in the unlikely event, the Russian were to launch their fighters. As fate would have it the Russians sent their fighters toward the SAR area of operation. Maureen followed orders and “I launched the birds”. A key element of this mission was launching a refueling tanker for the U.S. aircraft to refuel midair. The distance was such they could not complete the mission on one tank of fuel. Maureen launched the tanker, but her job wasn’t complete. She needed to calculate a refueling point based on the type of aircraft, their speed, their fuel consumption and distance travelled. Maureen did the calculations and established a refueling point.
Eventually the CO and XO returned to find an empty flight line. The XO ran into the operations center and asked if she had launched the airwing. “Yes XO. I did”. His only question was, “Did you remember to launch the tanker”? When the Russians saw the U.S. fighters, they quickly left the SAR area of operation, and a crisis was averted.
“I’m one of the few people who that can say I launched attack aircraft against the Russians in a real-world situation”.
After three years Maureen selected San Diego as her next duty station. “I wanted to be co-located with my husband who was going to be on the U.S.S. Tarawa which was home ported in San Diego”. Maureen talked about being a joint military family and having to take a tour of duty that isn’t exactly what you wanted or isn’t the best for your career so you can stay with your spouse. Maureen was assigned to a Command focused on identifying manpower requirements throughout the Navy. They calculated manpower requirements based on specific job duties and the time requirements for each job. Maureen found she was “using a lot of things I had learned with my MBA”. After two years this tour came to a close and she was assigned to Naval Communications Center at Naval Station Roosevelt Roads in Puerto Rico.
Maureen arrived at Roosevelt Roads in 1986 and assumed the role of Operations Officer. She was promoted a year early to Lieutenant Commander during this tour which was otherwise an uneventful tour. After three years, her next duty station was at a Radio Receiver Facility in Japan.
In Japan Maureen was the Officer in Charge of the base. She had a leadership position which required extensive interaction with the Japanese politicians. It was 1989 and the Japanese politicians and military had never had to deal with a woman as an equal. This created quite a dilemma for the Japanese because much of Japanese societal norms are based on seniority. A person’s seniority determines how far a person should bow when greeting another person. As a work around, the Japanese made Maureen an honorary Japanese man and that allowed them to treat her as an equal.
Maureen enjoyed her tour in Japan and enjoyed her colleagues on the base. She was offered the opportunity to be the XO of the Naval Communications Center in Yokosuka, Japan. This was a larger installation and gave her more responsibility. During this tour the base CO ran into some trouble and was relieved of his command and sent back to the states. Maureen stepped in to the CO role and was promoted a year early to Commander.
Maureen’s next duty station was the Air Command and Staff College in Montgomery, Alabama. This one-year tour was full of academics. In addition to her workload at the Air Command and Staff College, Maureen attended Auburn University in the evenings and received her MS in political science.
Maureen returned as the Commanding Officer of the Naval Communication Station in Sigonella, Italy 15 years after her initial tour. Now she was responsible for all aspects of communications for the Mediterranean Fleet.
Maureen continued to advance through the ranks of the Navy, and her next assignment was a three-year tour at the Defense Information Service Agency (DISA) in Washington, DC. She arrived in 1999 and had to manage through the Y2K issues. At this time the Navy was focused on using web-based technologies in the fleet. “Everything was now computers and satellites, and you wanted to get up to date data to the fleet”. “It was a fascinating tour”.
Maureen’s next stop was a staff position for the Chief of Naval Operations in the Pentagon. There she was involved with satellite and GPS communications and technologies. She was also involved with upgrading the technology and incorporating it into weapons systems. On September 11th, 2001, Maureen was working at the Pentagon but wasn’t in the building at the time of the terrorist attack. Her boss, a four star Admiral, decided to attend a meeting he typically did not attend and that saved his life. The plane destroyed the section of the Pentagon where his office was located.
After that tour Maureen did a two-year stint with a special task force working for the Vice Chief of the Navy. The task force focused on web technologies for deployed ships.
Maureen’s next assignment was her major command, and she was based in Norfolk, Virginia as Commanding Officer NCTAMS LANT. The Naval Computer and Telecommunications Area Master Station Atlantic is one of two groups that handle message traffic and data communications for all Navy aircraft, ships and submarines. Maureen’s command handled the half of the globe that runs from North Dakota east to Norfolk across the Atlantic Ocean and over to Bahrain. There were 12 commands in that geography that reported into Maureen, making her responsibility very significant. In North Dakota there was an Extremely Low Frequency (ELF) transmitter use to send signals to submarines as they operated at all depths in the ocean. “The type of rock in North Dakota had properties that allowed signals to transmit better…”.
After two years Maureen went to her last tour in Stuttgart, Germany with the U.S. European Command. This involved a lot of work with NATO. They also provided communications into middle east and African locations during the 2005-2009 timeframe.
In 2009 Maureen retired and she and her husband settled in the small mountain town of Brevard, North Carolina. Maureen’s father had been living in Brevard for quite some time. She had been there for visits and really enjoyed the small town feel and the proximity to the mountains in western North Carolina.
After such a successful and demanding career Maureen might have settled into a low-key lifestyle in retirement. That has been far from the truth. Maureen dove into local politics. “I just decided that there were a lot of things I wanted to have happen in my town. What better way than to actually be an elected official”. Maureen was elected to the City Council in 2017 and served for four years. Then she set her sights higher and ran for mayor of Brevard in 2021 and won.
Maureen is now running for re-election and in 2025 the political landscape is challenging at all levels. “It’s gotten really ugly. It’s a shame”. “It’s the local things where you can make a difference. It’s not the big policy issues that rip the country apart”. Brevard is truly small town America and if Maureen’s constituents want to talk to her, they all have her cell phone number, and she answers all of her calls.
When Maureen looks back over her brilliant 30-year career, she fondly recalls the comradery, teamwork and the feeling of being part of something really important. She also remembers what it was like being one of the early women trying to find their way in the Navy. “There was a lot of resentment of women because the Navy leadership did not properly socialize or train people on what was going to happen”. Maureen recalled arriving at one of her commands and the Commanding Officer saying, ‘Washington forced me to take you, but you’re gonna fail’.
“That made me mad”. Undeterred, Maureen decided she was going to do her job better than anybody else and she did. “At the end of two years he actually came and apologized and said he was wrong”.
Maureen, you have had a long and successful career protecting our country and blazing a trail so other women who follow you can, one day, be as successful as you. Now you are continuing the tradition of service to something greater than yourself as the Mayor of Brevard. Thank you for all of the sacrifices you have made and all that you have endured along the way. We all wish you fair winds and following seas.
“It’s really that sense of being part of a group…really caring about one another…and that the mission you’re doing is important”.
Maureen Copelof was born in the public service hospital on Staten Island in 1954. Her father was in the Coast Guard at the time and stationed nearby. The family moved around while Maureen was young but eventually settled in the small Connecticut town of Granby. When Maureen was a teenager, her father took a position at the Citadel, and she moved to South Carolina. Maureen went on to receive an undergraduate degree in religious studies at the University of South Carolina and earn her master’s degree in business administration in 1979.
As a newly minted MBA Maureen found it very difficult for women to break into the business world in any meaningful role other than perhaps receptionist. “I had specialized in production management, and I had wanted to go into the textile manufacturing industry, which was really big in the Carolinas back then”. Maureen had no luck breaking into the industry. “The good old boy network was just too strong”. Having been immersed in a military environment at the Citadel and seeing her father serve his country in the Coast Guard, Maureen decided she would join the Navy.
After the Vietnam War ended in 1975 the draft was discontinued, and the military was an all-volunteer force. In the 1979 timeframe the military was not making its personnel quotas, and they began recruiting women for a wide variety of careers, beyond the traditional roles such as nursing. Maureen thought she would gain some experience and try to break into the textile industry after her four years was up. “I’ll just do four years, and I’ll come back, go and interview and show all those guys that wouldn’t give me a job…what I could do…”.
The military can transform some people’s lives, and it did for Maureen. “When I got to the Navy, I loved it. I never even thought about going back and trying to use my degrees in the civilian world because I loved what the Navy did. The way they gave you responsibility, you had such an incredible amount of responsibility as a young officer”.
Maureen headed off to Officer Candidate School in Newport Rhode Island. She went through the typical mental and emotional swings of bootcamp. “It was the same shock everybody has when they go in. Oh, my goodness, what did I get myself into? They force you to bond with your company just by making life so miserable”. “That taught me how to be a military person”. By the end of October in ’79 bootcamp was over.
When it came time for Maureen to put in her “Dream Sheet” of choices for her first duty station, it was a time when women were not allowed on ships. Maureen had requested an operational assignment overseas. “They were just thinking about letting us on the non-combatants”. Maureen was assigned to VR24, an aircraft transport squadron at NAF Sigonella, Sicily. Her squadron would be responsible for resupplying the fleet in the Mediterranean Sea. Maureen was one of the first women assigned to an aircraft squadron oversea supporting combatant ships. This was the beginning of removing obstacles for women in the Navy.
At VR24 Maureen was one of the only women in the squadron and “no one had ever told the guys out in the fleet how to deal with suddenly having women as part of their squadron”. As a Junior Ensign she was also the only female officer. “You really had to prove yourself. You really had to figure out how to adapt”.
Maureen was a Communications Officer and was responsible for learning everything about electronic communications. That included learning everything about the radios, communicating with the aircraft, message transmission and delivery. There was a fair amount of interaction with the Italian Navy and Air Force. “I loved it. We had a great squadron, a great group of guys, and I met my husband (also in the Navy) while we were there and got married (1980). I have an Italian wedding license”.
After two and a half years Maureen’s tour ended, and her next duty station was Naval Air Station, Misawa, in northern Japan. Misawa is located on the northern tip of the island of Honshu and was less than 200 miles from Vladivostok, Russia. This was the home to the Russian eastern fleet. The main activity at the Naval base was to intercept electronic communications initiated from Vladivostok. They would forward those messages to a separate crypto analysis group.
On September 1,1983 the Russians shot down Korean civilian airliner KAL 007 as it drifted off course and over Sakhalin Russia. The wreckage crashed into the ocean approximately 700 miles from the base in Misawa. Immediately the U.S sent unarmed aircraft to the area on a Search and Rescue (SAR) mission. The airwing from the aircraft carrier Midway was on the Misawa base at the time of the incident and was placed on high alert. If the Russians launched their fighters, the U.S. would immediately launch its fighters. This was the height of the Cold War and tensions were high. Ronald Reagan had recently named Russia “The Evil Empire”.
One evening the Misawa base Commanding Officer (CO) and Executive Officer (XO) were leaving the base to attend a function with the Japanese. 1983 was the pre-cell phone era so there would be no way to contact the base leadership in an emergency. That evening they needed someone to stand watch in the Operation Center monitoring the SAR operation. Many of the pilots and mechanics were busy with the mission and unavailable. Maureen volunteered and was selected. “It’s normally very boring. You’re sitting for 12 hours monitoring the radar to see if the Russians are going to launch their aircraft from Vladivostok”. If the Russians did launch fighters heading toward our SAR aircraft our orders were the U.S would immediately launch the Midway’s fighters.
So, with about 30 minutes of training Maureen was left to decide the fate of the world if, in the unlikely event, the Russian were to launch their fighters. As fate would have it the Russians sent their fighters toward the SAR area of operation. Maureen followed orders and “I launched the birds”. A key element of this mission was launching a refueling tanker for the U.S. aircraft to refuel midair. The distance was such they could not complete the mission on one tank of fuel. Maureen launched the tanker, but her job wasn’t complete. She needed to calculate a refueling point based on the type of aircraft, their speed, their fuel consumption and distance travelled. Maureen did the calculations and established a refueling point.
Eventually the CO and XO returned to find an empty flight line. The XO ran into the operations center and asked if she had launched the airwing. “Yes XO. I did”. His only question was, “Did you remember to launch the tanker”? When the Russians saw the U.S. fighters, they quickly left the SAR area of operation, and a crisis was averted.
“I’m one of the few people who that can say I launched attack aircraft against the Russians in a real-world situation”.
After three years Maureen selected San Diego as her next duty station. “I wanted to be co-located with my husband who was going to be on the U.S.S. Tarawa which was home ported in San Diego”. Maureen talked about being a joint military family and having to take a tour of duty that isn’t exactly what you wanted or isn’t the best for your career so you can stay with your spouse. Maureen was assigned to a Command focused on identifying manpower requirements throughout the Navy. They calculated manpower requirements based on specific job duties and the time requirements for each job. Maureen found she was “using a lot of things I had learned with my MBA”. After two years this tour came to a close and she was assigned to Naval Communications Center at Naval Station Roosevelt Roads in Puerto Rico.
Maureen arrived at Roosevelt Roads in 1986 and assumed the role of Operations Officer. She was promoted a year early to Lieutenant Commander during this tour which was otherwise an uneventful tour. After three years, her next duty station was at a Radio Receiver Facility in Japan.
In Japan Maureen was the Officer in Charge of the base. She had a leadership position which required extensive interaction with the Japanese politicians. It was 1989 and the Japanese politicians and military had never had to deal with a woman as an equal. This created quite a dilemma for the Japanese because much of Japanese societal norms are based on seniority. A person’s seniority determines how far a person should bow when greeting another person. As a work around, the Japanese made Maureen an honorary Japanese man and that allowed them to treat her as an equal.
Maureen enjoyed her tour in Japan and enjoyed her colleagues on the base. She was offered the opportunity to be the XO of the Naval Communications Center in Yokosuka, Japan. This was a larger installation and gave her more responsibility. During this tour the base CO ran into some trouble and was relieved of his command and sent back to the states. Maureen stepped in to the CO role and was promoted a year early to Commander.
Maureen’s next duty station was the Air Command and Staff College in Montgomery, Alabama. This one-year tour was full of academics. In addition to her workload at the Air Command and Staff College, Maureen attended Auburn University in the evenings and received her MS in political science.
Maureen returned as the Commanding Officer of the Naval Communication Station in Sigonella, Italy 15 years after her initial tour. Now she was responsible for all aspects of communications for the Mediterranean Fleet.
Maureen continued to advance through the ranks of the Navy, and her next assignment was a three-year tour at the Defense Information Service Agency (DISA) in Washington, DC. She arrived in 1999 and had to manage through the Y2K issues. At this time the Navy was focused on using web-based technologies in the fleet. “Everything was now computers and satellites, and you wanted to get up to date data to the fleet”. “It was a fascinating tour”.
Maureen’s next stop was a staff position for the Chief of Naval Operations in the Pentagon. There she was involved with satellite and GPS communications and technologies. She was also involved with upgrading the technology and incorporating it into weapons systems. On September 11th, 2001, Maureen was working at the Pentagon but wasn’t in the building at the time of the terrorist attack. Her boss, a four star Admiral, decided to attend a meeting he typically did not attend and that saved his life. The plane destroyed the section of the Pentagon where his office was located.
After that tour Maureen did a two-year stint with a special task force working for the Vice Chief of the Navy. The task force focused on web technologies for deployed ships.
Maureen’s next assignment was her major command, and she was based in Norfolk, Virginia as Commanding Officer NCTAMS LANT. The Naval Computer and Telecommunications Area Master Station Atlantic is one of two groups that handle message traffic and data communications for all Navy aircraft, ships and submarines. Maureen’s command handled the half of the globe that runs from North Dakota east to Norfolk across the Atlantic Ocean and over to Bahrain. There were 12 commands in that geography that reported into Maureen, making her responsibility very significant. In North Dakota there was an Extremely Low Frequency (ELF) transmitter use to send signals to submarines as they operated at all depths in the ocean. “The type of rock in North Dakota had properties that allowed signals to transmit better…”.
After two years Maureen went to her last tour in Stuttgart, Germany with the U.S. European Command. This involved a lot of work with NATO. They also provided communications into middle east and African locations during the 2005-2009 timeframe.
In 2009 Maureen retired and she and her husband settled in the small mountain town of Brevard, North Carolina. Maureen’s father had been living in Brevard for quite some time. She had been there for visits and really enjoyed the small town feel and the proximity to the mountains in western North Carolina.
After such a successful and demanding career Maureen might have settled into a low-key lifestyle in retirement. That has been far from the truth. Maureen dove into local politics. “I just decided that there were a lot of things I wanted to have happen in my town. What better way than to actually be an elected official”. Maureen was elected to the City Council in 2017 and served for four years. Then she set her sights higher and ran for mayor of Brevard in 2021 and won.
Maureen is now running for re-election and in 2025 the political landscape is challenging at all levels. “It’s gotten really ugly. It’s a shame”. “It’s the local things where you can make a difference. It’s not the big policy issues that rip the country apart”. Brevard is truly small town America and if Maureen’s constituents want to talk to her, they all have her cell phone number, and she answers all of her calls.
When Maureen looks back over her brilliant 30-year career, she fondly recalls the comradery, teamwork and the feeling of being part of something really important. She also remembers what it was like being one of the early women trying to find their way in the Navy. “There was a lot of resentment of women because the Navy leadership did not properly socialize or train people on what was going to happen”. Maureen recalled arriving at one of her commands and the Commanding Officer saying, ‘Washington forced me to take you, but you’re gonna fail’.
“That made me mad”. Undeterred, Maureen decided she was going to do her job better than anybody else and she did. “At the end of two years he actually came and apologized and said he was wrong”.
Maureen, you have had a long and successful career protecting our country and blazing a trail so other women who follow you can, one day, be as successful as you. Now you are continuing the tradition of service to something greater than yourself as the Mayor of Brevard. Thank you for all of the sacrifices you have made and all that you have endured along the way. We all wish you fair winds and following seas.
“It’s really that sense of being part of a group…really caring about one another…and that the mission you’re doing is important”.