The President of the Coast Guard Aviation Association takes pleasure in presenting the President’s Award to Sikorsky Aircraft, in recognition of their 100-year anniversary and their extraordinary role and enduring partnership with the U.S. Coast Guard’s 80-years of rotary-wing aviation.  A flight demonstration of Igor Sikorsky’s VS-300A helicopter at Bridgeport, Connecticut on April 20, 1942, started an air-sea rescue revolution in the U.S. Coast Guard.  Coast Guard CDR William J. Kossler, a member of the Inter Agency Board established to research and incentivize rotary-wing aviation development, attended a very impressive flight demonstration and was convinced that the helicopter was the rescue vehicle of the future and would fulfill the Coast Guard’s future needs.  In June 1943, LCDR Frank Erickson began helicopter flight training in the XR-4 at the Sikorsky Plant. On June 16, 1943, he soloed after three hours of dual flight training with Sikorsky’s chief test pilot Les Morris, thus becoming Naval Aviation’s first designated helicopter pilot and Coast Guard Helicopter Pilot Number 1.  A few months later, on January 6, 1944, LCDR Frank Erickson and AMM1c Gus Jablonski took off in a Sikorsky HNS-1 helicopter to complete the first helicopter lifesaving mission delivering blood plasma from Manhattan, New York to Sandy Hook, New Jersey for victims of the USS TURNER explosion in challenging Nor’easter conditions.  VADM Howard Thorsen once wrote “To those in peril on the sea, the sight and sound of a helicopter approaching – surely the answer to fervent prayer – is often the first sign of help.” More often than not over the last 80 years that helicopter has been a Sikorsky product.  From the fragile HNS-1 to the venerable HH-52A and HH-3F to the modern MH-60T – from the USS TURNER to Hurricane KATRINA rescue efforts and beyond, the Sikorsky Aircraft and Coast Guard team has pioneered the use of the helicopter as a rescue vehicle. The Sikorsky Aircraft and Coast Guard partnership has proven time and time again, Igor Sikorsky’s prediction that the helicopter would prove to be a unique instrument for the saving of human lives. The innovation, pride and professionalism displayed by Sikorsky Aircraft over the last century had a tremendous impact on U.S. Coast Guard Aviation and earned the grateful appreciation of the Coast Guard Aviation Association.”