LANGLEY CHAPTER (LANGLEY AFB, VIRGINIA)
The Langley LOA started the year by reluctantly saying "Godspeed" and "best wishes" upon the retirement of long-time LOA member and former LOA National President Col Jim Hass. I am sure many of you have worked for, with, met, or at least have heard of the legendary Col Hass. He was an inspiration to the Langley Loggies and a guiding light for our LOA Chapter during his few years here on the staff. His mentoring and enthusiasm for the Air Force will be missed by all of us. Visit our web page at the National LOA website for photos from his retirement ceremony. Col Hass has also graciously allowed us to include the text of his retirement speech. It's a great one and I highly encourage you to take the time to read it! We have almost all new officers this year. You can check out our web page to see who they are. (Are you getting the impression yet that we really want you to check out our web page?) We're working hard to provide quality briefings at our meetings so we can meet the needs of both a seasoned HQ ACC staff and the up-and-coming company graders in the 1st Fighter Wing. It's a beehive of activity over in the 1st Fighter Wing as those young loggies lead the charge every day to generate sorties. It is an awe-inspiring sight to see! Our first Langley LOA chapter meeting was in February. We hosted LTC Tarek Mekhail (USA) who spoke on the subject "What is the Arab Perspective on the History of the Middle East?" LTC Mekhail is an Egyptian-American, Foreign Area Officer (FAO) and the Branch Chief of the Middle East/North Africa Branch for International Policy on the Army Staff G-3 at the Pentagon. He has spent many years living in the Middle East and working directly with several of the Armies in the region. LTC Mekhail speaks fluent Arabic and is intimately familiar with the culture, beliefs, and point of view of this Muslim-dominated area of the world. Although this was not a "logistics" briefing we found it very useful for those of us who may deploy or PCS to this hot spot in the world. We are going to try to put that presentation on the web page. So look for it there. We also squeezed in a tour of DLA Richmond the last week of February. This area of the country is target-rich with lots of opportunities for tours of logistics operations in the Army, Navy and contractors. Fortunately we have some energetic officers who are jumping at the chance to set up tours. We're looking forward to a great year. If you are in the area when we have one of our meetings please don't hesitate to drop on by!