October 2006 Issue

In our October 2006 issue...

LIVE! focuses on Laughlin Air Force Base, its heritage, its future, and its impact on Southwest Texas.

Laughlin Air Force Base’s annual tribute to Hispanic people, their achievements, their culture and customs was highlighted by entrepreneur Richard A. Castro’s speech during the Hispanic Heritage luncheon earlier this month. The banquet got underway after Hispanic Heritage Committee President Joe Mejia read President George W. Bush’s proclamation of Hispanic Heritage Month, set for Sept. 15 through Oct. 15, 2006. Mejia then introduced guest speaker Castro, owner/operator of 27 McDonald’s restaurants in West Texas. Castro is the Hispanic owner/operator with the most McDonald’s franchises nation-wide.

Almost five months after this Temple, Texas, air show, where Jeff “Stiffy” Stift had rolled and curved his trusty T-6A Texan II to his crew member’s narration, Stift sat down to recount the great stint he had as a pilot for the T-6A Texan II Aerial Demonstration Team—A stint that has met an abrupt end, with the military-wide budgetary cuts that funding the never-ending global war on terrorism demands.

An Air Force-wide initiative to improve housing quality on bases within the Air Education and Training Command is coming to Laughlin Air Force Base, and it will mean significant changes in how allowances are allocated to all military personnel. Moreover, the thrust will put base housing in the hands of private developers selected by rigorous contracting procedures.

Before men walked on the moon’s surface, other men peered into space from the very edge of the earth’s atmosphere, and often had to fight for their lives to survive the honor. One of these is Del Rioan Col. Vic Milam (USAF, retired). As a pilot of one of the nation’s top-secret spy planes, Milam chose adventure, combat determination, patriotism, technical skills and a keen sense of aesthetic appreciation as touchstones in his career as a high flyer.

Laughlin’s maintenance chief, Bob Wood, will retire from nearly 40 years of working around aircraft of the U.S. Air Force. He looks back at how he rose to the position of caring for the largest fleet of aircraft in the Air Force, overhauls of the base’s fleet of T-38C jet trainers, and, briefly, his plans for retirement.

This week marks the 44th anniversary of the Cuban Missile Crisis, an event that Laughlin AFB was deeply involved. In October of 1962, the United States and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics stood on the brink of nuclear war. Disturbed by a previous deployment of U.S. nuclear-tipped missiles in Turkey, and buoyed by the failed attempt of the John F. Kennedy administration to overthrow the Communist government of Castro’s Cuba two years prior in a proxy, covert operation called the Bay of Pigs, Soviet Premier Nikita Kruschev gambled by placing nuclear missiles in Cuba. (From the October 2006 Print Issue hitting mailboxes across Southwest Texas now!)

Laughlin Air Force Base announced today (Wednesday, Oct. 4) that the first two T-38C “Talon” jet trainers arrived on the flightline in anticipation of the advent of “Introduction to Fighter Fundamentals,” a new course in the prized airspace above Val Verde County. Pilots from the 49th Fighter Training Squadron, Moody Air Force Base, delivered the jets to 47th Flying Training Wing Commander Col. Mike Minahan at about 2 p.m. Last week, Vice Wing Commander Laro Clark took time with LIVE! to explain the impacts on both training and local economy as a result of this dramatic increase to Laughlin mission responsibilities