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National Guard Bureau Chief Gen. Daniel R. Hokanson recently tapped Chief Master Sgt. Tony L. Whitehead as the Guard’s newest senior enlisted adviser. Whitehead has nearly 40 years in uniform—more than half of those with the Air National Guard. He most recently pulled double duty as command chief master sergeant for Air Forces Northern and the Continental U.S. NORAD Command Region and holds an associate degree in criminal justice and a bachelor’s degree in criminal justice administration.
The daughter of the Air Force’s first Sikh officer allowed to serve in a turban and beard followed her father into uniform. Now, she’s helping ensure Airmen get to serve under equitable conditions. “The … Reserve [allows] me to both serve my country and invest in my local community,” said 310th Space Wing Director of Equal Opportunity 2nd Lt. Naureen K. Singh. “I am inspired by the opportunity to serve in multitudes without having to give up on any part of me that makes me who I am.”
304th Rescue Squadron Airmen successfully tracked down a father and daughter who went missing and became injured hiking in the Mount Hood wilderness area. Members of the Oregon Air National Guard’s 125th Special Tactics Squadron helped move the injured hikers to the closest service road. “Technical rope systems were used at a number of locations … to transport the two patients off the mountain,” said Capt. Phil, who served as a liaison officer during the scenario.
Seventy-two years after dying in an F-51 training crash, WWII pilot and Ohio ANG Lt. Richard Dale Christman got a headstone befitting his time in uniform. Springfield-Beckley ANGB historian Tech. Sgt. Richard Herron discovered Christman was buried without a grave marker denoting his military service, so a civ-mil fundraising effort raised money to replace it. “I think it important that we honor this young lieutenant because at some point, that could be us,” he said.
AFRL researchers recently secured a patent for a novel design for a tunable radio frequency filter. Their innovation will let USAF create filters that are smaller, weigh and cost less, and demand less power than current alternatives. “If you are on the battlefield, your adversary will likely try to contaminate your signal, something that’s not very hard to do,” said project team leader Michael Page. “We have the ability in place right now to tune the filter to remove undesirable signals”
113th Wing Airmen Maj. Telisha Johnson, Capt. Lauren Sutherland, Chief Master Sgt. Mark Nicholas, Staff Sgt. Emanuel Morales, Staff Sgt. Jacen Vaughan, and Airman 1st Class Santiago Martinez Jr. recently received Meritorious Service Medals for helping save a jogger’s life after they collapsed on the National Mall in Washington. Though only one of the District of Columbia Air National Guard personnel had a medical background, the Airmen—who were honored by both Air Force Secretary Barbara M. Barrett and Army Secretary Ryan D. McCarthy—triaged, performed CPR on, and called in medical backup for the individual while serving on a civil unrest mission in the nation’s capital. “Because of their swift response, an unconscious and injured civilian ultimately returned to their family,” Barrett said. “Their teamwork is an example of the Air Force value of service-before-self.”