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Published: February 15, 2012 3:00 a.m.

Web letter by Chris Greulach: Breaking up fighter wing is breaking up a family

I am a proud wife of a member of the 122nd Fighter Wing in Fort Wayne and very disturbed by the recent news of our fighter wing switching to the MC-12s and becoming an intelligence base. I have never written a letter like this before, but I decided that if I wanted to be part of the solution it was time for me to stand up to be heard.

My husband has been a member of the 122nd Fighter Wing for more than 20 years, and we have been married for 19 of those years. He is also a part of the munitions maintenance shop of that base, along with 80 other members. This is a shop that will be eliminated with the change to the MC-12s, along with another entire shop of 40 members; this does not include the shops that will still work with the MC-12 planes but will not need the personnel that they currently have.

Let me give you a little background of the proud men and women of this shop. They are not just a guard base; they are a family. In the almost 20 years that I have been married to my husband, he has been overseas supporting our country in several missions 11 times. This group has never been forced to go on a mission. In fact the running joke in our house is: Is your name first or second on the volunteer list? Not because my husband enjoys leaving his family to live in tents in war-torn countries to fight for a cause that isn’t necessarily his, but because there was a job that needed to be done and he also had young men and women whom he has trained that he would never think of letting go without him to be there to watch over them. And he is not the only one that feels that way

The men and women of this base would never brag about what they have done or even talk about it much because that is just the way they are, but I feel that as we are about to lose a large amount of members of our family, it is time for someone to speak up. I always felt that if we ever moved back to that area my dream job would be to work on the base, maybe with the Family Readiness Group to help give back to the men and women who work out there and to help their families. You must admit after 11 missions, I might have learned a thing or two.

Recently we lost our F-16s and switched over to the A-10s. I was there for the last flyover of the F-16s. It was a hard day and, yes ,I cried because that is what our base was: an F-16 Fighter Wing. The men and women of that base worked long and hard on the switchover to the A-10s without complaint because again this is what was asked of them to do. But to do completely away with a fighter plane is a very hard blow.

Our base has won several accolades as being one of the best guard bases in the country. Why would we change a base that is one of the best at what it does? Why would we also waste all the time and money that was put in to this base with the recent switch to A-10’s? This makes no sense to me.

Also, in this day and age I do not understand the fact that we are even cutting our military budget. With everything that is going on in today’s world and all the things that are being reported on the news, why would we eliminate a fighter wing to make it an intelligence base? Last I checked, we can have all the intelligence in the world but if we don’t have the men and women to back it up, what is the use? We are already relying heavily on all of our guard bases. As it is, with the conflicts that we are currently in, why would we eliminate the additional source of help? We obviously have already proved that we, as a country, cannot do it with our current active-duty military alone, or my husband and the members of his base would not have served overseas as many times as they have.

I encourage you to fight for our base to keep it as a fighter wing. I encourage you to stop the waste of government time and money that will be thrown away on the recent switch to our A-10s. And I encourage you to stand up for our beloved 122nd Fighter Wing in Fort Wayne, to keep it as a fighter wing that has been a valued part of our community for more than 50 years. Please help us keep our base intact and to reverse the decision to make our base an intelligence base.

CHRIS GREULACH

Middlebury

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