Heroes- Isabel Kennon
On the first weekend of every month, the Air National Guard has drill weekend. All Guardsmen and women must report, and after a long weekend of flying, lectures and meetings, they relax with a low-key get-together on Sunday evenings. That’s when I would show up. As a seven-year-old, these Sunday evening parties were my prime time. Not because I was a small party animal, but because all of those Guardsmen and women were hungry, and I was selling Girl Scout cookies. I sold enough boxes to get the patch and the keychain. That was one of the perks of growing up in a military family.
Today I would like to tell you about my experiences with having military parents, and enlighten you about the US Air Force and the Air National Guard.
The military has been part of my family for generations. In a scrapbook at my grandparent’s house is a telegram from World War Two. The Air Force sent it to my great-grandmother to tell her that my great-grandfather was missing. That is followed by the diary entry she wrote a year later, after the Air Force showed up at her doorstep to confirm that he had been killed in action.
He flew off on a mission over the Mediterranean, and was never been seen again. Despite this loss, my grandfather decided to continue the legacy. After attending a military academy in high school, he joined the Marines to fly A-4s. He lived on an aircraft carrier for six months, touring the Pacific during the Cold War.
My paternal grandfather was an electrician and a naval gunner during World War Two, before he was sent home with rheumatic fever. They feared he would die, but, although the effects of this fever stayed with him all his life, he did live another seventy years.
My parents met each other while in Air Force pilot training, and both flew C-130s at the Air National Guard base here in Nashville.
Growing up around the military has given me some unique experiences. I’ve gotten to see Santa flown in from the North Pole for the annual Christmas party, and I first got to fly a plane at the very mature age of eight. [Granted, it was one of those planes with two yokes – but the adult pilot let go for at least a minute and I got to fly all by myself.] These experiences have taught me a lot about the military, specifically the Air Force.
When I was younger, my mom would often come to pick me up from school wearing her flight suit. This would prompt my classmates to ask if my mom was in the Army, and I would have to correct them by saying, “yes, except she’s not in the Army, she’s in the Air Force.” Although the Air Force did originate from the Army Air Corps, today the Air Force is its own branch of the United States military.
The Air Force is also the newest branch of the military. No airplane had successfully taken flight until 1903, when Orville Wright flew for a grand total of 12 seconds, so it wasn’t until after World War Two, in 1947, that the Air Force as we know it today was officially established.
The Air National Guard is what my parents are officially in, which is a part of the Air Force. I know that when many of us think of militias, we think Revolutionary War – with George Washington, bitter cold, and no shoes. But militias are actually still around, and they form what is called the National Guard. Both the Army and the Air Force have one, and most people who are in the Guard have “civilian”, or normal, jobs that they work on top of their military duties. The Guard is part of the military reserves, so usually they don’t have to do much, but when called to action, they’re ready to go. This meant that my family didn’t really have to move around when I was growing up. Although my parents were both deployed when I was little, our whole family only had to move once. We moved to Louisiana for just three weeks, where I got temporarily demoted from kindergarten to preschool, and performed in a dance to “I’m a Barbie Girl.”
Because the military is such a big part of our country’s budget and international policy, it is important for us “civilians” to be knowledgeable about it. Especially concerning many of today’s current issues such as ISIS, Somalia, drones and terrorism, it’s necessary that people know about the military that fights for them.
The majority of my personal military knowledge concerns the Air Force, but the Coast Guard, Marines, Navy and Army are the other four branches, and I encourage you all to learn more about them. As George Orwell was once given credit for saying, “People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf.” No matter what your view on war or violence is, you must remember that freedom is not free, and many people have given all they have for us and for the US.