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COMMENTARIES

  • Airman-to-Airman, this is for you

    When I first came to Charleston, I had no idea what to expect. I had just returned from leave, and all I really knew about my job was what I learned from tech school. So was I nervous? Heck yeah, I was! But during the next few hours, the butterflies in my stomach quickly died away. I was introduced

  • Earn This

    In the summer of 1998, there was a lot of discussion in the media about the opening 10 minutes of the film "Saving Private Ryan" and how traumatic it might be for our greatest generation, those who actually stormed the beaches at Normandy and lived to tell us their tales. As I sat in a very cold

  • Are you ready?

    Seriously, are you ready? The Air Force of today is significantly different than the Air Force I joined 18 years ago. I can't imagine how different it is for our Senior Leaders. Part of that difference is that we are a more expeditionary force, a more fit force and a more intelligent force. Today I

  • Flexibility really is the key to airpower

    It's Friday afternoon, and all seems quiet around Charleston AFB. A staff sergeant is in the protocol office planning her weekend. The phone rings and it's the command post, and they're telling her a distinguished visitor is on board a C-21 set to arrive on base in 30 minutes. She has the

  • First sergeant thanks you for serving

    When I enlisted in 1983, the world was a very different place. Russia was our enemy, the one computer our unit had was large enough to fill an entire room and Michael Jackson's "Thriller" created a new form of entertainment called the music video. "Back in the day," many of us joined the Air Force

  • Message to our enlisted force

    Wow! That's the first word that comes to mind when I reflect on my first few months as the 436th Airlift Wing command chief. My wife Terri and our family are so honored to be a part of this winning team. During our time here, we've been simply amazed by the amount of buzz generated by Team Dover.

  • Leadership from the 'heart'

    I was sitting in the front row of the auditorium in my son Jackson's school waiting for the spelling bee to start. I was anxious to see how Jackson would do amongst the best spellers in school. Once it started, he was the fifth person they called. His word was, "intermediate." He replies,

  • Seatbelts save lives: A firsthand account

     It was a beautiful afternoon, the sun was beginning to set behind the Blue Ridge mountain range and the air was crisp with a February cold on this Valentine's Day. I had worked a full 10-hour day at my primary job, visited my girlfriend for an hour and then was heading to my second job which was

  • If I only had one minute with each of them

    In the spring of 2001, I made my first visit to Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia. I was attending some training at Fort Meade, Md., at the time and during one of the weekends I was there, I went with a classmate to see this famed cemetery of heroes. It's a big place where you can see rows