For 99 years, the rescue of nine people on the schooner E.S. Newman by seven men from the all-black Pea Island Station during a six-hour struggle against Hurricane Five received no official acknowledgment. Although the Coast Guard christened the Cutter Pea Island in 1992, the government ignored a comprehensive recommendation for a posthumous Gold Lifesaving Medal submitted by a Coast Guard officer and two graduate students. That changed after Katie Burkart, an eighth-grader in Washington, North Carolina, wrote to President Clinton and her Congressional delegation in 1995 protesting the injustice. The following year, the Pea Island lifesavers finally received recognition, and Burkart spoke at the ceremony. The black crewmen of Pea Island Lifesaving Service Station risked their lives almost daily from 1880 to 1947, but decades passed before their heroism was officially recognized.