-Caveat Lector- WJPBR Email News List [EMAIL PROTECTED] Peace at any cost is a Prelude to War!
0224. Post office in Kyrgyzstan keeps airmen smiling by Capt. Kristi Beckman 376th Air Expeditionary Wing Public Affairs GANCI AIR BASE, Kyrgyzstan (AFPN) -- More than a ton of long-awaited mail arrived Feb. 9 for the airmen deployed to Kyrgyzstan who are setting up a coalition air base in support of Operation Enduring Freedom. Airman James Risban, a 376th Air Expeditionary Wing postal specialist from Seymour-Johnson Air Force Base, N.C., handed the first package to Senior Airman Tommy Williams, a 376th AEW Civil Engineer Squadron firefighter from Travis AFB, Calif. "I've been waiting about three-and-a-half weeks now for mail," Williams said. "My parents sent me a care package from San Antonio, Texas. This is definitely a real morale booster." It was an exciting day, said Risban, who was the first postal worker to arrive here Jan. 11. "This tent was packed this morning with boxes." Risban arriving by himself was one of the bittersweet stories of this whole deployment, said Brig. Gen. Christopher A. Kelly, 376th AEW commander. "We were all excited, of course, because we heard a postal worker was inbound, and what we got was a one-striper fresh out of (technical) school who thought he was falling in on a full-up operating post office," Kelly said. "There was nothing here and I've never set up a post office before," Risban said. "I just pitched in and did what I could. Help arrived about two weeks later." "J.J. Risban has been one of the great stories of Ganci Air Base," Kelly said. "He immediately volunteered to do all kinds of things while he waited for some expertise and equipment to get here. He and the rest of the team have done great work." It has been quite an experience setting up this post office from scratch, Risban said. "I like doing what I do," he said. "Getting mail is fun for the troops. I love watching everybody come in and get a big smile on their face when they receive a letter or package from their loved ones or friends." It takes planning for equipment, personnel and the most updated supplies to start a post office, said Tech. Sgt. Cedric Palmore, 376th AEW postmaster. "I like what I do because it stays busy," he said. "You'll never find a postal person out there that has nothing to do. Plus, we keep everybody happy. We play an important role in keeping morale up." Kelly said the post office is that human touch that you get from back home. "What famous war movie doesn't have the scene of mail call in it?" Kelly asked. "This is war, and young men and women want to be in touch back home and there's nothing like a letter from a loved one to make you feel like you've got a little piece of what's natural and normal." (Courtesy of U.S. Air Forces in Europe News Service) 0223. Safety day will focus on risk management by Staff Sgt. A.J. Bosker Air Force Print News WASHINGTON -- The Air Force is observing a safety 'down day' because of an increase in mishap rates, the service's top military leader told troops in a Feb. 6 letter. "(We) have witnessed an increase in our mishap rates and it's time to pause and focus on what we can do to reverse this," said Gen. John P. Jumper, Air Force chief of staff. In fiscal 2002, officials said there have been 13 Class A flight mishaps with five fatalities, three on-duty Class A ground mishaps with two fatalities, and 25 off-duty Class A ground mishaps with 27 fatalities. Air Force officials categorize Class A mishaps as any incident that results in more than $1 million in damage to government property or kills a person involved. During the same time in fiscal 2001, there were six Class A flight mishaps with one fatality, three on-duty Class A ground mishaps with one fatality and 23 off-duty Class A ground mishaps with 20 fatalities. Most of 2002 mishaps are the result of people taking unnecessary risks, said Col. Greg Alston, deputy chief of safety at the Pentagon. "There has not been one single factor causing the rise in mishaps and fatalities other than people not using risk management," Alston said. Risk management is balancing the risks against the benefits to be gained in any situation and then choosing the most effective course of action, officials said. "The upcoming safety down day is a great opportunity to refocus attention on and reiterate the importance of risk management," he said. "I am confident that this year can still be one of the safest years in the service's history. "This safety down day is a pre-emptive strike intended to reduce future mishaps," Alston said. "Awareness is the key to safety and mishap prevention," he said. "If this down day can get people to pay attention to what they are doing, both on- and off-duty, and to weigh the associated risks, it will make a difference." 0227. Assistance fund campaign starts Feb. 25 RANDOLPH AIR FORCE BASE, Texas (AFPN) -- "Commitment to Caring" is the theme of the 29th annual Air Force Assistance Fund campaign running Feb. 25 through March 29. The AFAF campaign raises money for four charities benefiting active-duty, Reserve, Guard and retired Air Force people and their families, including surviving spouses and their families. In 2001, Air Force people contributed more than $4.5 million to the AFAF. The Secretary of the Air Force and Air Force Chief of Staff will soon announce a goal for the 2002 campaign. The organizations are: -- The Air Force Aid Society, which is the official charitable organization of the Air Force. It provides airmen and their families with worldwide emergency financial assistance, education assistance and an array of base level community-enhancement programs. Local family support centers have full details on programs and eligibility. Information is also available online at http://www.afas.org. -- The Air Force Enlisted Foundation in Fort Walton Beach, Fla., near Eglin Air Force Base, providing rent subsidy and other support to indigent widows and widowers of retired enlisted people 55 and older. The foundation was formerly the Enlisted Men's Widows and Dependents Home Foundation Inc. For more information, e-mail [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- The Air Force Village Indigent Widow's Fund in San Antonio, a life-care community for retired officers, spouses, widows or widowers and family members; includes indigent widows fund for widows and widowers of Air Force officers. For more information visit www.airforcevillages.com. -- The General and Mrs. Curtis E. LeMay Foundation. Since not all indigent widows or widowers want, or are able to move to one of the retirement homes, the LeMay foundation provides rent and financial assistance to indigent officer and enlisted widows or widowers in their own homes and communities. For more information, visit www.afvw.com/lemay.html. Donations to the AFAF can be made through cash, check or payroll deduction. Contributors may designate their contributions to one or more of the four charities. Chosen charities receive 100 percent of AFAF contributions. Contributions to the AFAF are tax deductible as an itemized federal deduction. For more information on the AFAF campaign, visit www.afpc.randolph.af.mil/votefund, then click on "Fundraising." For local goals and contribution procedures, contact a local project officer. (Courtesy of AFPC News Service) 0226. Officials announcing E-9 supplemental results RANDOLPH AIR FORCE BASE, Texas (AFPN) -- Air Force Personnel Center officials here plan to release the results of the chief master sergeant supplemental promotion board Feb. 13. The board was held Jan. 14. The complete list of those selected for promotion will be available on the AFPC Web site at www.afpc.randolph.af.mil Feb. 15. (Courtesy of AFPC News Service) 0222. Pentagon construction ahead of schedule by Rudi Williams American Forces Press Service WASHINGTON (AFPN) -- Workers are ahead of schedule in repairing the huge hole sliced out of the Pentagon on Sept. 11 by a terrorist-hijacked airliner. Brett D. Eaton, communications director of the Pentagon Renovation Program, said 100 to 200 employees a week have been able to return to the building as fast as workers rebuild sections. More than 1,000 employees so far are back from leased office space in surrounding communities, he said. More than 24,000 military and civilian employees fill the Pentagon every workday. Thousands were displaced when the airliner slammed into the building, killing 125 people on the ground, Eaton said. "By the one-year anniversary, Sept. 11, 2002, people will be able to look out of their office windows on the E Ring deck to watch...a dedication ceremony that the Army Corps of Engineers are planning for a memorial," Eaton said. Until about a month ago, crews were working around-the-clock, seven-days-a-week, slowly knitting and weaving together the Pentagon's broken wings. "This is fast-track-type work. We're [now] working two 10-hour shifts, six days a week," said Keith Curtin, a construction superintendent. "We have many more people than you normally have on a job this size trying to get the work done as quickly as possible." About 700 workers are on site during the day and 300 at night, he said. Curtin and other workers started renovating the 60-year-old Pentagon wedge by wedge in 1997. They no sooner stepped back to admire their first rebuilt wedge when the airliner demolished it. The building withstood the attack as designed -- strength and security features added to the renovated section are credited with saving many Pentagon workers' lives, he said. "The goal now is to rebuild the wedge as quickly as possible," Curtin said. Their deadline is Sept. 11, the first anniversary of the terrorist attack. "I think I speak for the entire renovation program and all the contractors when I say how great a feeling it is to be a small part of rebuilding the nation's military headquarters," Eaton said. "It's a feeling of pride we all have for being able to contribute any way we can. Everyone here realizes they're a part of history. They're helping to rebuild a national icon." Congress recently provided additional money to speed the entire Pentagon renovation project. The scheduled completion has moved up four years to 2010, Eaton said. When the outermost wall of the destroyed wedge is replaced, the Pentagon's exterior will look almost exactly as it did before the terrorist attack, Eaton said. The interior, once again, is being rebuilt with reinforced concrete and other safety and security measures that will make it stronger and more modern than the rest of the building. The Pentagon cost $50 million to build in the early 1940s. The total renovation cost now, including rebuilding the damaged area a second time, is about $3 billion. Once completely renovated, the Pentagon will have all new mechanical, electrical and plumbing systems, elevators and escalators, cable management systems, improved fire and life safety systems and flexible ceiling, lighting and partition systems. A large sign is being erected at the crash site that reads: "'Terrorist attacks can shake the foundations of our biggest buildings, but they cannot touch the foundation of America.' President George W. Bush, Sept. 11, 2001." 0228. Progress made by a people, a nation by Senior Airman LaVonne Johnson 459th Airlift Wing Public Affairs ANDREWS AIR FORCE BASE, Md. (AFPN) -- Master Sgt. Donna Galmore, a training technician with the 459th Mission Support Squadron here, comes from a family of military influences. She realizes that her opportunities in the military were made possible because of those who came before her. Galmore is a 45-year-old black American who joined the Air Force Reserve in 1978 for a chance to do something different and earn extra income. "I wanted to fly, but back in the late 70s, there wasn't much opportunity in the military for women to do that, so I said if I can't fly planes, I'll fix them," she said. She became a jet mechanic and fixed planes for 10 years before changing her career specialty. The Baltimore native had not experienced any racial discrimination in the military. She feels very fortunate because she knows her predecessors have. Her uncle, retired Master Sgt. Morris Henson Sr., joined the Army Air Corps in 1946 when blacks and whites were segregated. "We trained separate, we had no service clubs, and mess halls were separate," he said. "At basic training, in Texas, some white guys took one of our boys into the service club and beat him severely," Henson said. "This was on a Thursday night. This was as much as we could take and a race riot started. It got to the point that by Sunday morning, troop trains were brought in and they took all of us out of there by orders of Washington. We ended up in the Illinois train yard, where we were kept for a week. We were then sent to a base in Illinois where we were taught to climb poles and build communication lines." Henson, 73, remembers his most embarrassing moment in Illinois. "We were all made to fall out, in formation, and take off our tops, while a white woman walked through the ranks, looking at everyone's backs." Henson never found out why. Blacks were segregated on troop ships, at the bottom of the hold, said Henson, who was an automatic missile check-out technician. When the Air Force became independent in 1947, Henson signed over. He said that at his next duty station in New York, blacks lived in a separate area off base although they worked on base. After President Harry S. Truman integrated the military in 1948, Henson was one of the first troops sent to one of the first integrated squadrons. "I, with one other guy, was shipped to Fort. Slogon, New York, where we were sort of mascots since there were only two of us," he said. "We had no problems." Henson retired after 27 years of active duty. Galmore thanks her uncle for his endurance and also thanks her mother-in-law, Mattie Galmore, for making a difference. "I always tell my mother-in-law, 'You just don't know what you have done,'" Galmore said. "'If it weren't for you, possibly me, possibly your son, and thousands of other people would not be afforded some of the opportunities that we take for granted in the military.'" Mattie received her commission in the Army in 1945. The Army was not her first choice of employment, but it was the organization that hired her because of her skill and did not reject her because of her skin color. After Mattie graduated from Freedman's School of Nursing (now Howard University in Washington D.C.), she went back home to Vassar, Mich., thinking that she would get a job at the hospital located 21 miles north of her home. When she arrived at the hospital for her interview, she was turned away. "The woman told me that she was sorry because they weren't integrated yet," Mattie said. The Army was not integrated either but commissioned Mattie as a second lieutenant. The 80-year-old said she was young and adventurous and wanted to go overseas. Although she did not make it overseas because World War II was ending and the Army was no longer sending nurses overseas, she did survive basic training. According to the small town native, boot camp was a piece of cake. She spent six weeks at Camp McCoy, Wis., doing calisthenics and road marches. "I was raised in the country so that didn't hurt me at all," she said. "I am thankful for my mother and father because they said that whatever you want to be, regardless, you can be," the mother of four said. "Even though at that particular time, when you think about it, wasn't true, but at least they instilled the spirit in me that I can be what I want to be." She had not experienced racial segregation until she got to her duty station at Fort Meade, Md., where blacks had sleeping quarters farther from the hospital than whites, she said. Officers had only one dining hall, so blacks and whites ate at the same facility. "When a group of us went to the mess hall, they were so surprised to see us that some of them had their food on the fork taking it to their mouth and that's where it stayed," Mattie said. "They were so shocked at seeing blacks there." Although they were shocked, they did not say anything disrespectful, she said. The retired nurse said she did not have any racial problems at the hospital at Fort Meade. She saw President Franklin Roosevelt's wife, Eleanor, give flowers to Mary McLeod Bethune, who was a patient at the time, she said. Bethune, a distinguished black educator, founded the Daytona Industrial Institute for the Training of Negro Girls in 1904, which later evolved into the Bethune-Cookman College in Florida. She also served as a special adviser to President Roosevelt. Mattie said one of her best moments in the Army was when she worked with Dr. Charles Drew, the hospital's chief of staff. Drew, a black physician and surgeon, discovered the process for separating plasma from blood and storing it until needed. After 14 months of serving, Mattie got out of the Army. The Army had a surplus of nurses and offered an honorable discharge to those who wanted it. Mattie left because she wanted to go home. Galmore had another military predecessor who influenced her military career. Her father, Calvin Boone Sr., was drafted into the Army on Feb. 24, 1953. By the time he finished 16 weeks of basic training and arrived at his duty station, the Korean War was over. Boone's military experience was different from Henson's and Galmore's. Whites and blacks were integrated. Boone slept next to whites, trained with whites, ate with whites, and played sports with whites; however, racism took place off base. "The first time I had experienced racism was when we went in a restaurant in Kentucky to get a meal and the owner of the restaurant separated the blacks from the whites," the 69-year-old said. "I figure you're in the Army, in the military, you're as good as anybody else," Boone said. "You're fighting for your country. But, it was different." Upon arrival at Fort Knox, Ky., at the newcomers' orientation, Boone said an officer warned the soldiers about the discriminatory practices off base. "'All you boys from up North, I want to let you know that there is no discrimination on this base; however, we are not responsible for what happens in Louisville.'" After Boone was refused entry into the United Service Organizations club, he decided to stay on base. "The military was a good experience," Boone said. "I would have stayed in but I wanted to go home and raise my kids." Boone received an honorable discharge after two years of service. Boone, Mattie and Henson's military experiences reflect progress made by black Americans from one generation to the next. Their descendent, Donna Galmore, remains untouched by racial discrimination. "I feel I've been blessed," the 23-year Air Force veteran said. 4010. Commentary: I didn't know that! by Brig. Gen. Chip Utterback Former 366th Air Expeditionary Wing commander OPERATION ENDURING FREEDOM (AFPN) -- I saw an e-mail that one of our warriors sent to his family and friends recently. I didn't spy on the guy; I simply read the private e-mail to his family in a nationally syndicated newspaper column. >From that e-mail and some Web sites several of our folks have established to keep family members updated -- to find them, just search for the base's name -- I learned a lot that the bad guys can learn, too. In 20 minutes I learned how many people are here, exactly where our base is located, what time we eat and how many people are in what tent at a given time. I learned what kind of airplanes we have, much about our mission, and a lot about our security. I can go on and on. We have rules on communications for a reason. Your innocent letter, e-mail or Web site can end up on the front page. You might make us an easy target and our families won't appreciate it. Our friends and family don't understand operational security and communications security the way we do, or should. We are at war, we have been attacked, people want to hurt us. Let's not give the bad guys a how-to manual. *COPYRIGHT NOTICE** In accordance with Title 17 U. S. C. Section 107, any copyrighted work in this message is distributed under fair use without profit or payment to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for nonprofit research and educational purposes only.[Ref. http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml ] Want to be on our lists? Write at [EMAIL PROTECTED] for a menu of our lists! Write to same address to be off lists! <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/";>www.ctrl.org</A> DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substance—not soap-boxing—please! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'—with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright frauds—is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. 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