Seven retired Chief Master Sergeants of the Air Force participated in a panel discussion during the 2016 AFSA Professional Airmen’s Conference and International Convention.
CMSAF #8 Sam Parish — T e key to successfully developing Airmen is mentorship. When I came in the service in 1954, my mentor for the fi rst four years of my Air Force life taught me, and made me do things that I knew damn well I couldn’t do. Yet, he made me do them. But he never let me fail while I was doing them.
If you talk about mentorship, that’s what’s it all about. It’s all about developing an Airman, and my mentor developed Air- men. And, I have tried to be that type of leader my entire Air Force career. Helping those that need the help. And, I’ve also been known for crashing those that didn’t take the help.
CMSAF #5 Bob Gaylor — Each generation has diff erent chal- lenges to face and the best way to face them is through education. When I served in 1977–79, the challenges we faced were quite distinct; the image of the mili- tary had to be repaired from the Southeast Asia Campaign, the racial scene was quite turbulent.
Black Airmen were telling me that they heard about black opportunity but felt they were not seeing it live and in action. We had increased the number of women tremendously and we were trying to determine eff ective utilization. And, as a result of these conglomerate issues we were facing, drug and alcohol abuse were on the serious rise. Now, any one of these issues would have kept us busy, but we had those plates to juggle. And the only way you can address these issues is through education. You can’t send a letter out to the troops saying, “as of now, you will...” You have to educate, and that takes time to make
real changes. T at’s when we opened the Senior Academy at Gunter, as well as Leadership Schools all over the Air Force, and we increased the numbers of NCO Academies we had. And, when we began to educate the enlisted force on repair- ing and restoring these issues, things began to change. And you don’t know how well you did until you look back.
While you’re doing them, it’s hard to measure your prog- ress. I would ask you to look back on those issues—image of the Air Force—what do you think today? Probably higher than it’s ever been since WWII. T e racial scene, with some exceptions, we’ve worked that issue and are providing equal opportunities. Utilization of women? My goodness, women proved very quickly that they could do the job. And, drug and alcohol abuse, I think we have reduced the large majority of this issue. I feel very good about how we handled the issues faced in the ’70s. We had some visionary leaders who brought us to the ‘80s, where new leaders were able to move forward and concentrate on their issues at hand. In order to face any challenge, education is the key to success.
CMSAF #5 Bob Gaylor shares wisdom and autographs with Airmen at the AFSA International Convention special event.
AFSA • WINTER 2017 13
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