We’re pleased to announce our March 21st guest speaker will be Captain Nori Ann Reed, US Navy, retired. The following is her biography.
As the daughter of a Marine, Nori Ann Reed moved multiple times, with her family finally settling on Sanibel when she was a teenager. She graduated from Cypress Lake Senior High School in Fort Myers and Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton, FL, before entering the Navy through Officer Candidate School. After being commissioned as an officer in 1978, she initially served on Guam.
Nori Ann was accepted into the Women at Sea program in 1980. One of the first women assigned onboard Navy ships; Nori Ann served on six ships. She was the first woman to have the honor of being Commanding Officer of three ships in the US Navy, the USS KISKA, USS WILLAMETTE, and USS DETROIT.
The other 3 ships on which she served were the USS FULTON, USS YELLOWSTONE and USS PLATTE. Additionally, she commanded Naval Logistics Command, US Naval Forces, Central Command (Commander Task Force 53), operating personnel, ships and aircraft over 10 countries and 2.5 million square miles of water, including the Arabian Gulf, Indian Ocean and Red Sea in support of US military forces during Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom.
Nori Ann’s last duty in the Navy was the Commanding Officer of the Naval Reserve Officer’s Training Corps (NROTC) at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, NM, training young men and women to become Navy and Marine Corps officers. After 30 years in the Navy, she retired and returned to Sanibel. She volunteers for multiple organizations on Sanibel and was the primary caregiver for her Mom, a former Navy nurse-which was a much harder job than commanding ships and aircraft over 2.5 square million miles of ocean.