Last Saturday was our annual reunion of folks who were stationed with the Air Force in Berlin - I often post on the topic of my time in Germany under the label tagged below. I'm always amazed at the crowd that shows up for these events, and I'm very happy when someone makes the effort to show up from afar. This year, we had folks in from Oregon, Upstate NY, NC, Los Angeles, and downstate VA, and those were just the ones I heard about.
Now my group photo above (actually borrowed from Russ Janecka) was taken late in the evening...we always do that, and so we don't get everybody in! But you can see that everyone is having a great time.
This is a group of people that I'm proud to be part of, and I do look forward to seeing them all each year. The surprise of who shows up randomly from year to year just makes it that much more interesting. There's never enough time to catch up with everyone - that would be my only complaint!
It was great to catch up with Russ after all these years. We overlapped for about 18 months in Berlin, and he trained me on some equipment - I ended up replacing him when his enlistment ended and he returned to the States. He actually went back to Texas and has had a great life raising a family there. He brought along some excellent photos from the day - I'd forgotten about the play "Norman, Is That You?" that he and others performed in, for example! Being qualified on that particular system opened quite a few doors for me, in Berlin and after I left the service.
The event is held annually on the last Saturday in February at Blobs Park in Jessup, MD - right next to Fort Meade. So if you haven't made it to one yet, consider joining us next year.
A last photo here of the seal of the "Electronic Security Command" - a legacy major command in the USAF. It's called something else now, of course. But the plaque that showed up at the reunion was a nice touch and made its way into a ton of photos.
Here's to you all.
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