First of all I’d like to thank everyone for a fantastic retirement event this past weekend.  You don’t know how much it all meant to me.  I was overwhelmed!  A special thanks to my girls.  My biological ones and my fellow Air Force ones whom I will miss every day.

I’ve been an Operations Group Commander for a really long time.  When you add it all up it comes to nearly ten years.  I’ve worked with many Mission Support Group commanders, but I’ve always thought the most important relationship for an OG was with the Maintenance Group commander.

I think I learned the lesson while watching an old TV show called “Baa Baa Black Sheep”.  It starred Robert Conrad as Pappy Boyington and it only ran from 1976-1978, but it left a lasting impression on me.  There was the crusty old crew chief always complaining about the “flyboys busting up his airplane”, but it was all bluster to cover up the interdependence of flyers with their maintainers and the mutual respect they had.  I’ve always tried to nurture that relationship but, oddly, the three best MXGs I’ve worked with haven’t been crusty at all, they’ve all been women. (Although I’m not implying that women can’t be crusty!)

All three have had completely different leadership styles but this week I’m dedicating my story to Anna.  She was my first……MXG and when she came to Youngstown I thought she was rather, shall I say, stiff.  Let me explain that.  It was in no way a bad thing.  She was all business, and I’m not sure if she got my sense of humor or my whimsical way of looking at life.  As a result, I was determined to “loosen her up’ a bit.  Months went by and I wasn’t really sure I was making headway so when this incident occurred I wasn’t quite sure how to take her .

The AOB or Airfield Operations Board is a meeting held quarterly and chaired by the OG, me.  Every organization that has any part in running an airfield attends so at an active duty base it would be a meeting between a lot of military organizations discussing issues with runway construction, and grass mowing to keep the birds away, and airspace issues around the field, and base operations manning, RAPCON issues, you get the picture.  But at a reserve base, there are many civilian organizations involved since we don’t really own the airport. It makes for a much more interesting and engaging meeting and it helps build a strong relationship between all parties involved.  One meeting ended up being much more interesting than most.

We had all gathered in my conference room.  All told, almost twenty people.  We had folks from the Port Authority, civil engineering, base ops, approach control, safety, airspace manager, tower controllers and, the lone woman, Anna, the Maintenance Group Commander.  We followed the agenda for the meeting and everyone had a chance to discuss their particular area of expertise and how it could affect the flying operations at Youngstown.  We had gone around the room and the last one to speak was Jack.  Jack was “the guy”.  By that, I mean he was the guy that had been at the airport forever.  He worked for the Port Authority and if you wanted to know anything about the history of the airport or how and why decisions had been made about anything, he knew the answer.  He is a very quiet man and unassuming, but if Jack said that there was a problem you’d better believe it was serious.  On this particular day, we had a problem.

I asked, “Do you have anything for us Jack?” and shaking his head slowly from side to side he said, “We have a serious beaver problem here on the airport”.  I was truly surprised.  Finally something interesting to discuss at an AOB!  I never suspected that beavers could be a problem at an airport, but he went on to describe how the diligent critters had built a series of dams along the creek at the southwestern edge of the airport and the water was actually backing up and submerging the end of the small runway.  Who would have thought?  So I asked them how they were dealing with the problem and he said that they had hired a local trapper to kill the beavers and they had already killed three with one weighing in at nearly 75 pounds.  I thought we were finished but then Anna broke in, she calmly turned to me, looked me straight in the eye, and simply asked, “Can you eat beaver?”

Time stood still for an instant while every head in the room turned to me.  I knew what they wanted.  I knew what they expected.  They wanted me to take the slow curve and swing for the fence.  But being the sensitive, politically correct person that I am, I simply paused, turned to her with a straight face and said “I suppose so, if you’re into that sort of thing”.  She seemed satisfied and I asked if there were any other questions or comments. With every eye still fixated on me we finished the meeting. As everyone began to push back from the table, Anna hopped up and announced that she was late for another meeting so she bounded out the door and was gone.  The second her footsteps went silent down the hall, the room erupted into laughter, like I had never heard before.  Grown men with tears streaming down their cheeks.  Faces red as apples, and it went for a good 15 minutes.  We had a million one liners that popped into our heads that day, but not using any of them, in the moment, made it all the funnier.

I never found out the real reason Anna asked the question.  Was she lobbing me the slow pitch so I could hit it out of the park?  Or did she really want to know  what culinary delights could be created from rapacious rodents?

When she transferred from Youngstown we threw her a going away party and I told this story.  After telling it I answered the question by presenting her with a stuffed toy beaver on a platter, apple in its mouth, on a bed of plastic vegetables and lettuce.