The Air and Space Forces Association is working hard for the Airmen of the Minot Air Base, and we are looking for new members and new community sponsors for the David C. Jones 135 chapter in Minot.
Membership in the AFA is easy to accomplish. You can go to our site, jones.afa.org and click on the “Join” link at the top of the page. This will take you to the national AFA membership link and give you a choice of many levels of membership.
Why should you join AFA? I probably asked that question a couple of years ago. I joined the AFA because of their commitment to sponsoring the Commander’s Choice Awards at Minot Air Force Base. These awards are truly a Commander’s choice. Each squadron will submit a name for one of these awards. The recipient is invited to a special Commander’s Choice banquet and given a plaque to commemorate their accomplishment. It is often explained throughout the banquet that the recipients of these awards are often the Airmen, or civilian, that goes above and beyond…takes on a task that no one else would…or helps out above and beyond what is expected of them. Although not entirely unique to Minot AFB, not all bases and not all AFA chapters have the Commander’s Awards banquet. It is a great experience to be in the audience and watch as 46 recipients walk to center stage and receive their plaque.
Beyond the Commander’s Choice Awards, our local AFA stays quite active in supporting our active duty and retired Airmen in a lot of different way. We helped sponsor an MSU Military Bowl by handing out free popcorn and soda tickets to the first 50 military folks who asked. We were in downtown Minot sponsoring the pony rides and stage during the Downtown Fall Festival. As our goal as an AFA chapter is to advocate, educate and support our Air Force, we spent an afternoon in Washington, D.C. in September visiting with our congressional offices and advocating for the military in general, and more specifically to garner support for continuing to fund the Wedgetail program and asking for support for additional F-135 aircraft.
In the education arena the AFA has 2 exciting programs that support STEM in our school systems. They are Cyberpatriots and Stellarxplorers. The goal of our chapter is to fund these 2 great programs in area schools. But in order to accomplish that goal we need volunteers and funding resources.
Community Partners Create Opportunity
In January we will embark on retaining and recruiting new Community Partners. There are several levels of involvement, and we will visit and discuss these levels with businesses in and around Minot. The partnerships help us to fund programs like the Commanders Choice Awards, and events like the MSU Military Bowl. The community of Minot benefits from the Minot Air Force Base in numerous ways. Most recently the Commanders of the 5th BW and 91st MW, Col’s Lamarand and Schlabach, reported that once again the Minot Air Force Base contributed over 650 million dollars to the region’s economy. We look at the AFA as a way to give back and support those who served, and continue to serve, their country.
Civil Air Patrol
The AFA is also very supportive of the Civil Air Patrol, and we were able to arrange for a group of their cadets to present the colors at a recent Military Affairs Committee meeting. These young people work hard and are proud to be part of the Civil Air Patrol and someday may serve their country as a member of the U.S. Air Force or other military branch.
In closing, I would like to encourage you to visit the Air & Space Forces web site at afa.org, or the Jones Chapter web site at jones.afa.org, and learn about the AFA, and hopefully you will click on the link to join. Our meetings are the 3rd Tuesday of every month at Rocker’s on MAFB. We look forward to seeing many new members as we continue to Advocate, Educate and Support our Air Force.
