MCENTIRE JOINT NATIONAL GUARD BASE, S.C. -- Our June Luncheon brought out The Adjutant General and his wife, Barbara. They are quite the team. About 55 of us interested folks listened to what General Livingston had to say. He elaborated on many things, including the plan to appoint The Adjutant General in the future. It will be on the November ballot for us to vote on this issue. There appears to be some thought and credentials into the process, and hopefully this will be good for South Carolina.
Also, I went to my first Chief's Retirement ceremony. I was impressed with all the pomp and circumstance. I also 'discovered' that I did not have all the known retiring chief's, which scares me a bit since I have been relying on information from the SCANG News for this kind of information. Through no fault of theirs, I would guess it is the system, and how things are reported? Anyway it appears we may have more than the 'Missing Link Crew', the folks who retired between the years of 1987-1993. We may not have people's proper rank at the time of retirement, although I haven't recognized this as a problem heretofore until attending and viewing the chief's shrine held by the Chief's Council.
McEntire History: We are now honoring the 2009 retirees. There are 35 or 36 of them. I have conflicting information, but we are starting with the first 'batch' of 2009 retirees, and they are as follows: Lt. Col. Janet Noble and Walter Bogart, Maj. Kathryn Coffman and Scott Cook, Chief Master Sgt. William Delavan Jr., Jack Tedder, Randy Coleman and James Edwards, Senior Master Sgt. Fred Harris, Master Sgt. Thomas Taylor, Larry Walden and Kevin Smith.
A lot of rank in this group of retirees. There are no known major deployments beginning in the month of July. I suspect there were a lot of annual training deployments made to wherever and whenever over the years? I mentioned before. It would be nice to have a list of deployments made by other squadrons such as the 169th Civil Engineer and 169th Security Forces. The 240th Combat Communications Squadron has a list of 'other' deployments that were made due to being part of the Rapid Deployment Force back in the 80's.
I did find a deployment made by the 240th CBCS that started in July 1992, to November of 1993. It was to the Island of Grand Inagua, Bahamas. This lasted for some time, it was supporting drug intervention, and using the Hammer Rick Satellite communications. There were a total of 27 people supporting this mission. If I am not mistaken, these folks rotated duty in small groups of people. The mission did not require a large number of folks to support this piece of communications gear. I don't recall if they experienced any hurricanes while serving in the Bahamas to add some flavor to the deployment?
Please do not forget our July Luncheon. It will not be the first Tuesday, but will be the 2nd Tuesday, which is the 8th of July. Traditionally we have stayed away from the first week in July due to the 4th, etc. So as always, we plan to have the July Luncheon at the NCO Club Tuesday July 8th, beginning at 1200. It is always a good affair. If you haven't been in a while, we sure would like to see you.