Commander recognizes Airmen in quarterly call

  • Published
  • By Staff Sgt. Mikaley Kline
  • 88th Air Base Wing Public Affairs

WRIGHT-PATTERSON AIR FORCE BASE, Ohio – Col. Patrick Miller and 88th Air Base Wing leadership held the first hybrid commander’s call July 22 at the Wright-Patterson Club to provide base updates and recognize Airmen across Wright-Patterson Air Force Base.

It marked the first time since the COVID-19 pandemic that a commander’s call has been hosted with an in-person audience.

Miller thanked Airmen and civilian personnel, whether attending in person or virtually, before introducing new base leaders.

He went on to highlight some achievements such as the Unit Effectiveness Inspection, Joint Commission survey, COVID vaccination teams and chief master sergeant of the Air Force visit.

“At the beginning of June, we started off with our Unit Effectiveness Inspection, which was the chance for the (Air Force Materiel Command Inspector General) team to come visit us,” Miller said. “I will tell you that we blew them away. We walked away with an effective rating. We had 31 individuals recognized as outstanding performers and 21 teams recognized as well.”

Miller lauded the 88th Medical Group for its combined efforts in support of the COVID vaccination deployment to Detroit, while still operating the day-to-day missions at Wright-Patterson Medical Center.

“We pushed nearly 120 medics up to Detroit to help issue vaccines to the community up there, and over 240,000 vaccines were given during that mission,” the commander said. “While that was going on, we also had the team back here holding down the fort so that we didn’t slip in delivery of trusted care to our patients here at Wright-Patt. We were also issuing vaccines across our installation while continuing to do the COVID-screening process.”  

Miller went on to praise the efforts of Airmen supporting Chief Master Sgt. of the Air Force JoAnne Bass during her recent base visit.

“June was another busy time since we hosted the chief master sergeant of the Air Force,” he added. “We were able to showcase a ton of things to her during the visit and she was super impressed. She walked away from Wright-Patterson with a better appreciation of what this installation does to support the National Defense Strategy.”

Gregory Leingang, 88 ABW vice director, highlighted a brand new organization recently stood up on base.

“We’ve been on a journey the last several months, standing up a brand new organization as part of an AFMC initiative,” Leingang said. “The new organization is a Diversity, Equity and Inclusion office that is connected directly to the wing commander. We are moving Equal Opportunity under this new office.

“This is the new construct that we’re executing for AFMC.”

Kim Watson has been selected to lead the new organization.

Chief Master Sgt. Jason Shaffer, 88 ABW command chief, reminded Airmen that physical fitness tests have resumed. He also stressed the importance of taking leave for morale, well-being and family support.

“PT testing is back again and I encourage everybody to keep up on their fitness,” Shaffer said. “We’re going to get an opportunity probably down the road since they’re looking at our base to test out the new fitness components.”

He also encouraged those who wanted to take leave to do so since there haven’t been many opportunities over the last six months, given the wing’s high operations tempo.

“We need to take leave,” he said. “You’ve earned it so take it. We need you ready to answer the nation’s call.”

Closing out the call, Miller announced numerous quarterly award winners and recognized Airmen for nominations, event leadership, inspiring acts, years of service, recent promotions and other various achievements.

Check back in next week’s Skywrighter for the list of award recipients.