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Colonel Hirka retires after 26-year career

  • Published
  • By Brandice J.Armstrong
  • Tinker Public Affairs
TINKER AIR FORCE BASE --  Colonel Michael Hirka retired from the Air Force on June 2. 
   Standing before about 100 friends and colleagues in the Tinker Club ballroom, the former 327th Aircraft Sustainment Group commander participated in several traditional rituals and listened to kind words from guest speaker and personal friend, The Honorable Sue Payton. Ms. Payton is the Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Acquisition. 
   "There's a big new chapter in Colonel Hirka's book," Ms. Payton said. "It's beginning today and in the life of the Hirka family, I look on this as a great commencement because wherever it takes Mike, his wife and sons, I know that he will continue to lead with the one ultimatum that mission success is really what matters." 
   Colonel Hirka's Air Force career began 26 years ago when he was commissioned from Norwich University's Reserve Officer Training Corps program in Vermont. Armed with a Bachelor of Science degree in electrical engineering, the then-second lieutenant embarked on his first assignment as a satellite systems engineering analysis officer at the Air Force Satellite Control Facility at Onizuka Air Force Base in California.
   Within four years, he was promoted to first lieutenant and then to captain when he was stationed in the office of the Chief of the Communications Systems Division for the Secretary of the Air Force for Special Projects at Los Angeles AFB, Calif. It was here that then-Captain Hirka met and befriended a new contractor employee, Ms. Payton.
   "I met Mike Hirka 22 years ago, as he was beginning just his fourth year in the Air Force and I was beginning my first year as a contractor on the east coast representing his program office," Ms. Payton said. "He was my boss.
   "I thank you for being a boss who held the standards high," Ms. Payton said. "When I go to the product centers out and about in the Air Force, I tell the folks there, 'Be a demanding customer,' and I think of Mike Hirka because you wanted to do your best for Mike Hirka, as a contractor."
   After his assignment with Ms. Payton, then-Captain Hirka and Ms. Payton followed different paths but their friendship remained intact.
   Captain Hirka reached the rank of Colonel in December 2004. In his 26-year career, he completed 17 assignments, many of which had an emphasis on engineering, program management, acquisitions, space, communications and logistics.
Colonel Hirka's final assignment brought him to Tinker in June 2006.
   "Whether it's in space, aircraft communications or information systems, he has supported and solved some of the most complex problems at both the national and strategic level, as well as the tactical level," said Ms. Payton. "I see him as a change agent. I see him as someone who knows how to take on resistance to change no matter what area of a lifecycle of a weapons system he finds himself working in."
   Colonel Hirka was honored with the Legion of Merit award, the presidential certificate of appreciation, and participated in a flag folding presentation and received several gifts from colleagues. Colonel Hirka's wife, Julie, was also honored with a certificate of public appreciation.
   "When I started in 1982, I figured I'd be punching out my path, my course at the time, and in four years, I'd be on my way as an engineer doing engineering projects," Colonel Hirka said. "(But) as long as it was fun, as long as I was contributing and as long as I was still learning, (I'd) keep doing it.
   "Twenty six years later, and we're still here and we're still doing it and it's been a blast," Colonel Hirka said. "I'm not thinking of this as a retirement, more as a transition to more things and different things."