Following decorated Coast Guard career, new leader settles in at The Alliance

The teenage Jonathan Theel knew he’d end up in the military. He just didn’t know which branch.

The Air Force, to pursue a dream of soaring high in the sky? Maybe as a pilot, maybe as an astronaut?

The Navy, although that might mean being in “the middle of a can, hundreds of feet under the water”?

The Coast Guard, where Theel could – wait, why would a native of landlocked South Dakota already uneasy about the ocean consider the Coast Guard?

“I thought I’d be on small boats on the lakes and rivers. I thought I’d be on the Mississippi,” Theel said. “I’d tasted saltwater, and I didn’t like it at all. It took me two years to come to terms with the fact that I wasn’t going to be on a small boat but going on a ship in the middle of the ocean.”

Turns out, the Coast Guard was exactly where Theel needed and wanted to be. He made a career of it, spending 31 years ascending the ranks. When he retired, he was captain of the port in Philadelphia. Other operational roles he had filled included search and rescue, emergency and crisis management, and law enforcement.

Theel also served as the assistant commandant of cadets at the U.S. Coast Guard Academy and a military fellow at Rand Corp.

Now, after several years of retirement, he’s the new executive director of the South Dakota Military Heritage Alliance, which defines itself as a place for veterans, active military service members and the community to come together to celebrate, unify and support others.

Stacy Kooistra chairs The Alliance board. He spent more than a quarter-century in the military and serves as state staff judge advocate for air – South Dakota Air National Guard. He listened when veterans groups and local veterans he knew through The Alliance recommended Theel when the search for an executive director began earlier this year.

“It starts with his heart for the mission of The Alliance, his grasp of it through the research he’d done,” Kooistra said. “He knew what its vision was. He has a heart for his fellow veterans, for active-duty members and their families and the civilian community. He gets it.”

As a military attorney, Kooistra has learned that the Coast Guard is sometimes viewed differently by people and rightly so. The Coast Guard has law enforcement authority, while the military forces do not. The Coast Guard may not project the same power as the Army, Navy or Marine Corps, but it has the same leadership training and hierarchal structure.

“From a domestic understanding and domestic security point of view, Jon found himself in very stressful, very high-stakes circumstances, literally where there were lives on the line,” Kooistra said. “The number of lifesaving missions he’s been on, it’s astonishing.”

What has impressed The Alliance’s event coordinator, Nicole Ryan, the most is that Theel immediately jumped in to offer his assistance. If an event runs until 8 or 9 at night, Theel is there until the end, she said. If help is needed in the kitchen or with the audiovisual equipment, Theel doesn’t hesitate.

The week Theel started, The Alliance was hosting a concert, and that means it’s always a crazy time, Ryan said. The Alliance board suggested that Theel just come in, sit back and watch what would happen. Instead, Theel jumped in to assist.

“In the first couple of weeks, he had to leave for his daughter’s birthday party,” Ryan said. “I was in the kitchen doing dishes, when he came back in and said, ‘How can I help?’ I said: ‘What in hell are you doing here? It’s not your job,’ and he said, ‘I’m here to help.’”

“It’s integral to the community. I mean that in the sense that The Alliance, it’s a unique organization,” Kooistra said. “It’s not a veterans organization but a nonprofit created to support other organizations so they can accomplish their missions.”

The Alliance doesn’t serve individual veterans, but the success of the American Legion, Veterans of Foreign Wars, Vietnam Veterans and Disabled American Veterans is The Alliance’s success, Kooistra said.

“And it’s broader than that because it’s a place where people can come and have a good time,” he said. “We have concerts and host other events. We’re a community asset, and you don’t have to be a veteran to walk through the door. Jon correctly identifies that branding is a key role.”

The Alliance is a manifestation of Sioux Falls’ commitment to veterans, Theel said. It’s not a place where things happen, but everything that is done is geared toward taking care of those who raised their hands and swore an oath to the Constitution.

It also is a place with a devoted and overworked staff who need assistance, Theel said. Financial donations are always welcome, but he wants to build out the volunteer base, bringing in people to donate their time to help veterans.

When Theel returned to Sioux Falls in 2023 with his wife, Anne, and their children, Alexandria and Orion, he hadn’t been here for anything but yearly visits for three decades. He left shortly after his high school graduation.

“I turned 18 in June, and in July I got my hair shaved,” Theel recalled. “I had no idea what I was getting into. I was getting yelled at, and I did so many pushups. We have sponsor families out there, and I got real lucky with my sponsor family.”

Years later, when Theel was promoted to lieutenant commander, someone who had followed him from the beginning said, “We never thought you’d make it past your five years.”

Twice, Theel considered leaving the Coast Guard. The first time was at that five-year mark. He was assigned to the Coast Guard’s personnel command, a department that was filled with what he described as “high-flyers.” With typical self-depreciation, he said, he was not one of them.

“Most of the people who went to that went on to become flag officers,” he said. “To work in that shop, you have to be the creme de la creme. At the last minute, they had this opening. I was not creme de la creme. I squeaked in there. And when I was surrounded by high-flyers, all I could do was want to be like them.”

Because of that honor, he felt he owed the Coast Guard, and when his 10 years came up, aware of how many of his fellow Coast Guard officers were what he describes as servant leaders, he decided to continue.

“I had to go to 20 years to get retirement,” Theel said. “If I was going to get out, 10 years was the time to get out, and I was too scared to get out. I understood the Coast Guard, and I knew what I wanted to do. Everything outside the Coast Guard seemed scary and risky.”

Then why didn’t Theel leave at 20 years, when he’d earned that retirement? A devotee of spreadsheets, he did the math and knew financially it was the best time. But personally, he was assigned to the Coast Guard Academy, leading 1,000 18- and 20-year-olds, and he found it exhilarating.

“It was leadership and discipline in a college environment, and I loved it, watching them grow,” Theel said. “We would take cadets who would show up on report day, we’d shave their heads, they’d march, and it was the first time they’d ever done that. … Then, we graduated them four years later, and I look at all the young men and women we graduate from the Coast Guard Academy as phenomenal. Most of them are fresh out of high school, and we transition them into these supervisors who are going to go on to do great things.”

At the 30-year mark, however, Theel began to look back to Sioux Falls. For years, he said he had told his mother he would return. His parents, David and Karen Theel, had remained in Sioux Falls, and he had met Anne in Sioux Falls when he was home from the Academy and needed a date for a dance.

His parents were in their mid-60s. If they lived the average lifespan, and he visited annually, he might see his father 10 more times, his mother 12 or 13. That wasn’t enough, he decided.

“It just changes your perspective,” Theel said. “I decided I was coming home, and we spent almost every day going over to my parents’ house and my wife’s. I’m so glad we did. Just this year, we lost my dad, but I had two years where about every day I was seeing them. Instead of 10 times, I saw them hundreds of times.”

When Theel first returned to Sioux Falls, he used the time to decompress, then started job hunting. It was difficult transitioning the leadership skills he had developed in the Coast Guard to a company willing to take a risk on a military officer. When he said he had been captain of a port, people unfamiliar with the Coast Guard didn’t understand the immensity of that position.

He and Orion started an agricultural drone-spraying business that will continue under the younger Theel’s direction. Orion also is studying aviation at South Dakota State University, while Alexandria, or Lexi, is a social worker.

Theel’s path to a career started when he was a ninth grader at what was then Edison Junior High School and took tests to determine the areas in which he was interested.

“I took tests, and it popped out that I should be an astronaut,” Theel said. “The best way to be an astronaut was to go to the Air Force Academy, and the best chance to get into the Air Force Academy was to attend an academy day where they talked about it. A cadet in a Coast Guard uniform was talking about the Coast Guard, and all I hear was small boats, lakes and rivers.”

While the Air Force Academy turned Theel down, the Coast Guard Academy welcomed him. He was, he joked, part of a Coast Guard diversity program.

“Back at the academy much later, they had trimmed down on recruiting but said ‘unless they are from North Dakota, South Dakota or Wyoming because we never get anybody from those states,” Theel said. “I don’t care how I got into the academy; it worked.”

Early in the transition process, Theel sat with a recruiter and took a personality test. The recruiter told Theel it would be difficult for him because he would need to find something he could believe in, something that he could devote himself to knowing he was part of a greater mission.

So often in the Coast Guard, a problem would surface and there was no playbook to address how to fix it. Hurricane Katrina, oil spills, 9/11 — Theel was there for them all, taking an ugly situation and bringing people together to fix it.

“When this popped up at The Alliance, it was an opportunity where everything is geared to military heritage and taking care of veterans. The position, the job opportunity, it’s like it was created for me,” Theel said. “If I could create something, that would be it.”