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  • Tinker man uses painful past to battle against suicides

    When 27-year-old Gordon Joel "Joey" Dunham died, his father wanted to die, too. "I've had every emotion possible," explains Rocky Dunham, a tools and parts attendant with the 552nd Commodities Maintenance Squadron. "I had no idea what suicide was about until it touched me when my son died last year.

  • Logistics Readiness Squadrons load Air Force for deployments

    "We're the first in and the last out," explains Tech. Sgt. David Dries. A member of the 72nd Logistics Readiness Squadron and one of a handful of technicians responsible for loading and unloading aircraft, Sergeant Dries and his team are often involved at the beginning and ending of any deployment.

  • Iron man: Tinker colonel bikes, swims, runs his way to fitness

    He hit the ground hard. Lying on his side, he felt the trickle of liquid. "At first I thought it was blood," said Col. Jerry Thayer. "But it was from the bottle on the handlebars." Waving off help, Colonel Thayer remounted his bike and, before the adrenaline subsided, had passed a number of riders.

  • UPARs help get story out

    It's Friday morning and you've just picked up the latest Tinker Take Off only to see that your unit isn't in the paper, yet again. You know for a fact that Airman Jones just saved a woman from choking at a local restaurant last week or your best friend in the unit designed an aircraft part that will

  • Family’s Tinker legacy stretches four generations

    When she lost her mother two months ago, Retha Lucas, and her sister had the task of clearing out their mother's possessions for her grief-stricken father. It was then that she stumbled upon a family surprise. "We were going through her cedar chest and we found this," Ms. Lucas said, holding up a

  • Down in the desert

    A Tinker Air Force Base employee, who was deployed last year to Iraq as a member of the Oklahoma Army National Guard, unfortunately became all too familiar with a C-130 like the ones he works on here when the aircraft he was flying in suddenly lost power and plunged into the Iraqi desert on June 27

  • 552nd ACW helps tell Air Force story in new movie

    As the premier airborne command and control and battle management platform in the world, the 552nd Air Control Wing's E-3 Airborne Warning and Control System is frequently needed to support various missions around the world. One of the most recent missions was particularly exciting: helping Autobots

  • Operation Air Force educates academy cadets

    It was an image out of Hollywood. All eyes in the room were on the gunman silhouetted in the open doorway. The muzzle of his rifle panned the room while the strains of the "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly" played in the background. "Speed, force and violence are the key," the gunman said. "It's not

  • K-9 cop keeps military safe

    "We've got a bomb threat at the shoppette," the Airman says. "Who do you want to send?" Tech. Sgt. Michael Jones thinks for a second. "I'll go with Blacky," he says. It takes only a few minutes for Sergeant Jones, the kennelmaster for the 72nd Security Forces Squadron to locate his partner, an

  • ADAPT program can help problem drinkers

    Sometimes they don't want to talk. That's when Mildred Fitch, a substance abuse counselor with the 72nd MDOS, puts down her pen and shares her own stories. "Sometimes that opening up makes a change," she says. "I feel really privileged when they feel comfortable enough to share with me." As a