AFA Reaches Out to Europe
Air Force Association Chairman of the Board Robert E. “Bob” Largent in late October visited several US Air Forces in Europe installations as part of a major outreach effort.

In addition to taking briefings on Air Force operations in Europe, Largent listened to the concerns of airmen and commanders, gathering information that will help determine the association’s Statement of Policy and its Top Issues.

Heading first to Kaiserslautern, Germany, he spoke at the Airman Leadership School and went to Landstuhl Regional Medical Center, visiting Air Force, Army, and Marine Corps patients there.

At Ramstein Air Base, Largent met with Gen. William T. Hobbins, USAFE commander; Brig. Gen. Danny K. Gardner, director of installations and mission support; and CMSgt. Gary G. Coleman, the USAFE command chief. He participated in a videoconference between USAFE headquarters and Incirlik AB, Turkey.

The AFA Board Chairman also toured Ramstein flight operations facilities, including the new passenger terminal, and looked into quality of life issues, such as billeting.

At Aviano AB, Italy, he spoke at the First Term Airmen Center, at the Airman Leadership School, and at a company grade officers’ call. He had lunch with the wing’s chiefs and first sergeants and discussed quality of life concerns with the senior staff.

AFA’s top elected official flew from Aviano to RAF Mildenhall, Britain, to learn about 100th Air Refueling Wing operations. The wing’s first sergeants joined Largent for lunch that day.

Largent flew to Spangdahlem AB, Germany, where, at the 52nd Fighter Wing he conducted a question and answer session with wing personnel, including first term airmen. He later focused on housing at Spangdahlem, touring family housing units as well as a dormitory.

Information gathered on this tour helps determine AFA’s focus, Largent told Air Force Print News. “We look at all of the issues that affect the United States Air Force,” he said.

Revitalizing Ramstein
Largent’s week in Europe had an immediate impact on Ramstein’s AFA chapter, reported SMSgt. Kenneth E. Gammons, president of the Lufbery-Campbell Chapter. Gammons, who is superintendent of the Long-Haul Communications Branch in the USAFE Computer Systems Squadron, had a dinner and breakfast meeting with Largent to discuss re-energizing this overseas AFA chapter. Chapter members CMSgt. Mark Gajewski and SMSgt. Steven P. Hartman joined in the strategy sessions.

Largent provided practical guidance, such as leads on where to recruit Community Partners. He gave the chapter a copy of the AFA 60th Anniversary DVD, which recounts the association’s founding and some of its accomplishments. The DVD turned out to be a hot commodity. In an e-mail Gammons wrote, “I had it long enough to show at our monthly AFA meeting, and then I had to hand it off to our public affairs officers to rush it up to Spangdahlem, since that was the only copy in theater.”

Most important, Largent gave the chapter a specific project: During his visits to Landstuhl, with USO volunteers, and with airmen at the Contingency Aeromedical Staging Facility, he had learned that 250 to 400 wounded service members pass through Ramstein each month. They are authorized $250 each to buy civilian clothing to be worn while they’re undergoing evaluation or traveling to a medical facility or home station. But they cannot use the money for toiletries or for something to carry the clothing in.

“I’ve found duffel bags we can purchase for $2 each,” Gammons said, and the chapter is now trying to raise funds to buy them.

Care Packages to Iraq
The Brig. Gen. Harrison R. Thyng Chapter in New Hampshire has been contributing to care packages that are sent to troops in Southwest Asia.

Chapter President Louis A. Emond began the effort a year ago, through a Nashua-based volunteer nonprofit organization called Moore-Mart. The group’s name came about when the family of New Hampshire Guardsman Brian Moore began sending care packages to him in Iraq. They soon began sending packages to other service members—packages filled with so many popular items that Moore’s fellow troops began to joke that the family stocked more than Wal-Mart.

What’s in the packages? Among the gifts are a letter to the service member, candy and other snacks, basic clothing such as socks, and toiletries such as talcum powder, soap, and shaving cream. Some packages go to specific GIs and might include things on their wish list.

What the care packages lacked, though, was Air Force T-shirts. So the Thyng Chapter donated $500 to have some made. Emond wrote about the project in the chapter newsletter and said he received “a tremendous response” from chapter members: offers to help with the project, donations for more T-shirts, donations for care package goodies, and letters to be enclosed in the packages.

Emond heard from the troops on the receiving end, too. A USAF master sergeant e-mailed him from Ali AB, Iraq, “I don’t think there’s anything in the care packages that doesn’t get used.”

By mid-November, the Moore-Mart group already packed off 1,600 packages that month, Emond said, and he was organizing chapter members to help prepare more over the Thanksgiving weekend. Chapter members Stephen J. Chimelski and Wayne E. Balcom joined him in manning a booth that drummed up more than $500 in donations during Nashua’s annual holiday parade and festival Nov 25.

Worked for Them
The Gold Coast Chapter (Fla.) sponsored its first aerospace education workshop in October, with assistance from the Miami Chapter, the John W. DeMilly Jr. Chapter, the Coast Guard, and the Civil Air Patrol.

The workshop took place at US Coast Guard Air Station Miami in Opa Locka, thus giving the 22 teachers (from three counties) an opportunity to examine Coast Guard and CAP rescue airplanes and helicopters on static display.

The teachers proved to be typical students: The highlight of their day, according to the evaluation sheets filled out at the end of the workshop, was a hands-on outdoor activity—building and launching model rockets fashioned from plastic soda bottles.

A $1,000 AFA matching grant funded the workshop, with other funds coming from Community Partners, the Miami Chapter, chapter members MDM Group and Shirley Uricho, and other businesses.

Gold Coast Chapter President Ransom Meriam credits member Fran C. Shaw with organizing the workshop. Shaw, in turn, was inspired by a workshop conducted by Kathleen A. Foy, a seventh-grade teacher recently named AFA State Teacher of the Year. Shaw recruited Foy to become a chapter member and persuaded her to help plan the workshop.

Meriam said Region President E. Max Friedauer attended the event and was so impressed that he invited the organizers to the AFA state meeting in Orlando next month, to conduct a seminar on how to conduct a successful workshop.

Partners With Industry
In October, Utah’s three chapters—Northern Utah, Salt Lake, and Ute-Rocky Mountain—held a luncheon to commemorate the 25th anniversary of a partnership with companies that support Hill Air Force Base.

Utah AFA’s Industrial Associates program was established in 1981 by Nuel Sanders, now a member of the Frank Luke Chapter (Ariz.). The program aimed to improve communication between the Air Force and industry, provide a forum specifically for the Ogden Air Logistics Center at Hill to get together with businesses, and to support USAF personnel and programs.

Grant Hicinbothem, Utah state president, pointed out another merit: The program gets defense contractors involved in AFA activities.

Utah’s IA group sponsors luncheons, the annual Focus on Defense symposium and its fund-raising golf tournament, and a biennial Requirements Symposium, where businesses learn what ALC needs they could fill. Today the IA consortium numbers 51 members, representing 38 aerospace and local companies. Some two dozen of them attended the anniversary luncheon, held at a hotel in Layton.

Walter Saeger leads the IA program.

Idaho Teachers
When the Snake River Valley Chapter (Idaho) honored its Teachers of the Year, it received coverage in the local newspaper and on Web sites for the school district and one that promotes city businesses.

Angela Fish, a special education teacher from Hacker Middle School in Mountain Home, received the State Teacher of the Year award, while Bruce Bedell, from Glenns Ferry High School, was selected as Chapter Teacher of the Year. The chapter recognized the two educators at its annual TOY banquet at the Gunfighter Club on Mountain Home Air Force Base in November.

The state superintendent of public instruction, Marilyn Howard, was guest speaker for the meeting. She noted that Bedell just about covered the waterfront when it came to science education, teaching anatomy, biology, chemistry, earth science, and physics. She and Chapter President Roger B. Fogleman presented Bedell with $250.

They presented Fish, the State Teacher of the Year, with $1,000. Starting as a science teacher eight years ago, Fish was asked to become a special education teacher and brought dedication, energy, and enthusiasm to the assignment, the Mountain Home News weekly reported.

The newspaper quoted Fogleman as saying, “AFA chapters nationwide work very hard to ensure our youth receive education in math and the sciences and that those who teach and support the educators are recognized.”

Florida Honors
On Oct. 19, the Hurlburt Chapter (Fla.) hosted its annual awards banquet, with President James B. Connors welcoming 100 guests, including US Rep. Jeff Miller (R-Fla.) and Lt. Gen. Michael W. Wooley, commander of Air Force Special Operations Command.

Also on hand were Col. Norman J. Brozenick Jr., the 16th Special Operations Wing commander, Raymond Turczynski Jr., who is an AFA national director, and E. Max Friedauer, Florida region president.

Guest speaker Wooley described AFSOC operations and the delivery to Hurlburt of the Air Force’s first CV-22 Osprey tilt-rotor. He joined Miller in presenting Teacher of the Year awards to Robert Smith, of Gulf Breeze Middle School, Jacque Whittle of Longwood Elementary School in Shalimar, and Cherie Chrisco of Pensacola High School.

Other awards that evening went to Richard Schaller, David A. Schantz, Danny Webb, chapter treasurer, Frederick Gross, Col. Lida D. Dahnke, Glenn Rutland, Kenneth Poole, Monty D. Sexton, and Dann D. Mattiza, chapter VP.

In Arlington, Va., the next night, physical science teacher Jeri Ann Martin—who is also the chapter’s aerospace education VP—received the Crown Circle leadership award from the National Conference on Aviation and Space Education. Martin had been nominated for the honor by Connors, who highlighted her efforts to improve the aerospace education curriculum at Thomas L. Sims Middle School in Pace and, through teacher workshops, in northwest Florida.

At the same NCASE gathering, chapter member Ricardo V. Soria received the A. Scott Crossfield Aerospace Education Teacher of the Year award. He teaches at Choctawhatchee Senior High School in Fort Walton Beach and has been conducting student aviation summer camps, supported in part by the chapter. Chapter member Schaller, whose company has cosponsored the camps, accompanied the award winners to the event. AFA was among the sponsors of the NCASE conference.

Middle East Experience
In Newport, R.I., faculty and students at the Naval War College were in the audience when USAF Col. Kevin S.C. Darnell spoke at the September Newport Blue & Gold Chapter meeting.

Former president of the chapter and now the senior Air Force advisor at the NWC, Darnell had just returned from 31 months in the Middle East—19 as an attaché in Saudi Arabia and the last 12 as a multinational force division chief.

In his presentation, Darnell spoke about stabilization efforts, the challenge presented by the Shiite militia, and the contributions of Air Force augmentees filling staff positions. His PowerPoint presentation included photos of the Green Zone in Baghdad, a Kurdish palace, and other sites.

Chapter President Lt. Col. Mark Harysch said the audience asked Darnell some straightforward—and difficult—questions: Are we succeeding? What are the major obstacles?

More Chapter News

In October, the Brig. Gen. James R. McCarthy Chapter (Fla.) hosted a dinner for Arnold Air Society cadets from Embry Riddle Aeronautical University, Daytona Beach. It was one of the many ways that the chapter enhances its partnership with the school and with AAS, an affiliate of AFA. The chapter has also teamed up with the local Experimental Aircraft Association chapter for projects that include orientation and incentive flights for these cadets and other students. In October, for example, Chapter Vice President David R. Cummock flew his SIAI Marchetti with cadet Katrina M. Morgan on board, while he was taking part in a photo shoot for an EAA calendar. Another McCarthy Chapter member, Keith Phillips, flew his homebuilt SX300 as the photographer’s chase airplane.

The office of the mayor of Orlando, Fla., turned to Central Florida Chapter’s aerospace education VP, Richard A. Ortega, when it needed a protocol advisor for its Veterans Day parade. Ortega, a retired chief master sergeant, provided the office with information on the proper sequence of events and correct display of the American flag and on parade day served as master of ceremonies.

In October, the Tucson Chapter visited the boneyard—the Aerospace Maintenance and Regeneration Center at Davis-Monthan AFB, Ariz. More than 50 chapter members began their tour with an in-depth briefing on the facility’s mission. Nicknamed the “boneyard,” it stores some 4,500 aircraft and covers 2,600 acres. The chapter members observed operations of a fabrication and a rehabilitation shop and looked into the A-10 service life extension program. Chapter President Karen Halstead says that the group learned that the SLEP adds 20 years to the life of the attack aircraft.

Nathan H. Mazer, 1911-2006
Retired Col. Nathan H. Mazer of Roy, Utah, died Dec. 6, 2006. He was a former AFA National Secretary (1970-72), the 2002 recipient of the prestigious AFA Gold Card, and at the time of his death an AFA National Director Emeritus. At age 95, he was also the oldest known charter member of the association, according to Bob Largent, AFA Chairman of the Board.

Born in Philadelphia, Colonel Mazer joined the Army in July 1941 and flew 52 missions as a machine gunner on B-26 anti-submarine patrols. After Officer Candidate School, he served with the 544th Bomb Squadron, 384th Bomb Group, Eighth Air Force, based at Grafton Underwood, Britain. The Salt Lake City Tribune newspaper reported that Colonel Mazer was an armament officer but “stowed away” on 17 missions over Germany and received a Bronze Star for defusing a live bomb that fell onto the flight line.

Before retiring from the Air Force in 1964, Colonel Mazer also served in Japan, Turkey, and Norway and with Strategic Air Command at Ellsworth AFB, S.D., and Malmstrom AFB, Mont.

His AFA leadership positions included National Vice President (now called Region President).

He is to be buried at Arlington National Cemetery on Jan. 16.

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