Meet the Officers of the 548th RTG Association
President:
Dan Kolcun
Assigned:
Jan 1986–Dec1989
Vice President:
Joe Weller
Assigned:
Aug 1976-Jul 1979
Jan 1986-Dec 1987
Secretary & Treasurer:
Bill Forsyth
Assigned:
Jul 1972- Jul 1981
Jun 1983-July 1991
Historian:
Ben Oakes
Assigned:
Dec1985- Dec 1989
“IT’S Almost Here” the second reunion of the 548th RTG, this year will take place in Hawaii. I really wish I could make this one, But! Just wasn’t in the cards for me this time. I hope everyone enjoys themselves and I will be thinking of you. Take lots of pictures and tell some great stories, then pass them on to our website and send any material that you want me to capture for the history books and DVD for future reunions. Ben
Notes from the President,
It’s been over 8 years since I last lived on the islands, and over 22 since I worked with some of you at the 548th. With our reunion less than a week away, it seems like just yesterday that we walked down the hall to see SMSgt Janssen, or were maybe hoping the “lightning within 5 miles” warning would be lifted so we could get back to work, or perhaps we headed up to Bellows for a day or a weekend to relax and play on the best beach on the planet, or hiked the Pali and then got back to base in time to beat the Comm Sq’s softball team (or at least have a beer and cheer on the team)! It’s all of these great memories, work and play, that keep us so tightly knit and closely tied – just today at NCE (NGA Campus East for those who may not be familiar) I was getting into the elevator and there stood Doug Arnold! Who knew! I am really looking forward to next week and seeing many of you again – until then, Aloha! Dan
Notes from the Vice President,
Like all of us who are attending the reunion in Hawaii, I am very excited to be returning to a place where I had big fun, learned a lot and shared experiences with a tremendous group of people whose dedication, advice and friendship have had a lasting impact on my life. I’ll miss the folks who couldn’t make it this year and will also reflect on those who I worked with, or for, and who have passed on after serving their country so honorably, especially Chief Bobby K. Hubbard, Loren Post, Ike Kilmeier, Willie Flavin, Chief Malcolm and Col. Smuck. I look forward to seeing all of the attendees soon and hope to see the rest of you at our next reunion, take care all and “Aim High”!!
Joe
Upcoming Events:
**548th Reunion Hawaii 2012**
548th Association Update and Reunion Information
We are now less than a month away from our reunion in Hawaii, thus far we have 41 members and 34 family members and guests attending. Everything is tracking for a memorable event, hoping for our normal Hawaiian weather, 80 degrees and sunshine, and the Kona winds not blowing in the VOG from the big island. There are no longer any rooms available at the Hale Koa, but if you decide to come at the last minute and can find a room, the cut-off for the final count for the Officer Club banquet is the 26th of June, late comers are always welcome.
I was able to reserve a pavilion at Bellows for all day Saturday, it is located in picnic area five, where we had our 4th of July picnics. One of the military members I worked with at JPAC secured two tee time (0838 and 0845) at Ft. Shafter, it’s a 9-hole course and has carts. You can try the first 9 holes and then see you like it, then go another round or you can pay for 18 holes up front. I will also put in for the lottery for tee times for the big course on Hickam, the lottery is the Wednesday before the reunion, will let the golfers know Friday if we get them and what times.
Planned Schedule
Thursday June 28th
1800-2400 Reception Hale Koa Kalia Rooms 1-2
Food included, pay as you go bar.
Friday June 29th
0900-1030 Brief and tour Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command and Central
Identification Laboratory
1100-1220 Lunch Sea Breeze Buffet (near JPAC) or your choice
1230-1245 Dedicate 548th plaque Atterbury Circle at Flag Pole, color guard, Col Benson speaking
1300-1430 Tour Hangar 3 / 613th Air Operations Center
1430-1600 Revisit Hickam
1600-1700 Business Meeting Foster Point (Ewa-Makai of Hickam Harbor)
1700-2100 Cook-out social at Foster Point
Saturday June 30th
0800-0900 “Fun” Run Gym to Hickam Harbor or Waikiki
0830 Golf Fort Shafter or possibly Hickam time TBD
1000-1130Pacific Aviation Museum Pearl Harbor hosted by LtCol (Ret) Steve Alber
All day Bellows Beach, pavilion #5A
***Banquet Dress is Aloha Wear***
1730 Group photo Missing Man Memorial (Behind O’Club)
1745-1845 Social Hour Hickam O’Club Lanai Pay as you go bar
1845-1900 Posting of colors and POW/MIA Table
1900-2100 Dinner and Guest Speaker (1945) Col Patrick Flood, Commander 548th Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance Group, Beale AFB.
2030-2200 USAF Band of the Pacific “Small Kine”
2230-Closing Hale Koa Pool Bar Pay as you go bar.
The dinner menu for the Saturday night banquet is:
CLASSIC CLUB BUFFET
Carved Steamship of Round or
Top Round of Beef with horseradish cream
Sliced smoked ham with rum raisin sauce
Sliced Roast Turkey with pan gravy and stuffing Steamed white rice
Oven Roasted New potatoes
Buttered Peas and carrots
Tossed Green with tomatoes, cucumbers, carrots, sprouts
and choice of dressings
Macaroni Salad
Classic Crispy Coleslaw
Warm Fruit cobbler
Freshly Baked Rolls with butter
548th Cake
Coffee and Tea ServiceAloha
Bill
Special Guest Speaker for the Reunion:
COLONEL PATRICK M. FLOOD
Colonel Patrick Flood is Commander of the 548th Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (ISR) Group at Beale Air Force Base, California. He leads over 1,200 Airmen and civilian personnel operating the AN/ALQ-272 SENTINEL weapon system known as Distributed Ground Station-Two (DGS-2). The Group’s mission includes rapid processing, analysis, fusion and reporting of intelligence information collected by U-2, RQ-4, MC-12, MQ-1 and MQ-9, and reconnaissance aircraft supporting military forces, regional commanders and national priorities world-wide
Prior to his current assignment, Colonel Flood directed the ISR Division of the 603rd Air Operations Center at Ramstein Air Base, Germany. In that capacity, he was responsible for ISR operations and activities supporting strategy development, planning and force employment for US European Command’s Joint Force Air Component Commander and Area Air Defense Commander.
A Distinguished Graduate of the United States Air Force Academy, Colonel Flood is a Master Intelligence Officer with over 19 years of operational experience at squadron, group, wing, and air component levels, including staff experience at Major Command, Headquarters Air Force and the Office of the Secretary of Defense levels. He was the 1995 recipient of the Major General Jack E. Thomas Award presented annually by the National Military Intelligence Association to the outstanding member of Air Force intelligence. Colonel Flood has led expeditionary intelligence operations in the Central Command, European Command and Southern Command areas of responsibility and has served two tours in Korea, including duty as Corridor Control Officer, Eastern Demilitarized Zone, United Nations Command Military Armistice Commission. He and his wife Victoria have two sons, Aidan and Jack.
**548th Reunion Hawaii 2012**
*** Check the website and your emails for all of the details***
In Memory:
Randy Christopher Eyler Sr.
Vandenberg.
February 3, 1953-May 1, 2012 The world will miss you, Randy! Survivors: Amazing husband to wife Annell Bridget Finan Eyler; loving father to Joyce Catalano, Joe Catalano, Renee and Van Culver, Randy and Stacy; fun-loving grandfather to Seth, Hayden, Tori, Kenzie, Kai and forthcoming grandchild; beloved brother of Michael, Suzy and Patti; brother-in-law to Gene, Linda and Bill Finan; and dear family friends Val Rans, Joanne Hackett and Allan Baker; jokester uncle to Michael and Kelli Eyler; Lisa and David Wenerd; Geno, Sean, Josh, Julie, and Megan Finan; and their families. Adventurous child of the late Rita M. and Robert L. Eyler. Loyally served his country for over 40 years, with 24 as an officer in the USAF. World-wide explorer and beachcomber. A computer miracle worker who loved to read, enjoyed Rodney Strong Cabernet and relished sitting on the deck drinking morning coffee and sharing time and stories with his family and friends. The master investigator finally knows all!
Sgt, 548 RTG Exploitation and Special Projects, May 1974 – May 1975, when he went to OTS, Captain USAF Retired.
”Life At” and “AFTER” the 548th My wife and I arrived in Honolulu in the final days of August, 1971. We moved into an apartment on Wilder Avenue in Makiki Heights. She was stationed at the motor pool as as Admin. Specialist. I was a Photogrammetric Cartographic Analyst at the 548th. About the first of December my wife’s schedule was changed such that we needed to have two cars as she was on her way to base when I was on my way home. At the Christmas Party, as a buck sergeant, I approached a brigadier general who had oversight of Colonel Fitzgerald. (I’m sure someone will remember his name). To the aghast looks of my senior NCO’s, walked up to him at the puch bowl and asked him if, because the circumstances created a financial hardship for the two of us, he could help us out. The party was on a Friday afternoon. On Monday morning she had orders transferring her to the Admin. Assistant position to Colonel Fitzgerald at the 548th with the same schedule as mine. After our first year on the Island we moved to a condo on Green Street owned by a Marine Corps JAG officer. Standing on our lanai we could see Diamondhead to our left and Honolulu International Airport to our right. It was the Summer of a Cheech & Chong concert at the HIC, as well as the Stones. We were at the 548th during the mining of Haiphong Harbor and were on 24-hour call for over six months. Using COMPASS LINK, we received recon photos of the previous day’s sorties and had to redo the overlays of the air target charts such that they could be bounced back to Ubon Royal Thai Air Force Base in time for the next morning’s pilots briefings. Life was easiest if one was always either at the 548th, at home, or up on the beach at Bellows. Each Summer PACAF allowed me a 90-day TDY to the University of Hawaii – Manoa with the understanding that upon graduation I would go to OCS and thereafter become a career intelligence officer. Unfortunately, upon my return to the 480th in the Fall of 1973, TAC would not let me complete my degree at William & Mary.
Although I had already signed the papers to re-up, I got out, and moved to Lincoln, Nebraska, where I had a job offer, and got my Bachelor’s degree in December of 1975, just 4 years and 6 months after I would have graduated had I not enlisted in 1970. I now live in a home I own on Martha’s Vineyard and am the Health Director for the Native American tribe on the island.
Christopher Allan Knowles, former SSGT, USAF
Christopher Allan Knowles, MPA
P.O. Box 4632
Vineyard Haven, MA 02568
http://www.tiac.net/~cknowles/
Go to the website above and see the books that he has written and available on Amazon.
Here is clip to the book “Murder in Georgetown”
Thomas Moore and John Anderson were Masonic brothers of Georgetown Lodge in Washington, D.C., during the period leading up to the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. Commander Moore worked in naval intelligence at the National Photographic Interpretation Center at the Washington Navy Yard. His responsibilities included the analysis of reconnaissance photography taken by U-2 spy planes overflying Cuba ninety miles off the Florida coast. John Anderson was a translator on the staff of the Soviet Embassy in Washington blocks north of the White House. His responsibility was to turn the ideologically threatening language from the Kremlin into politically neutral language for consumption by the American diplomatic establishment. Between the two of them they had a complete picture of developments at home and abroad. But their shared knowledge, which could have taken the two superpowers back from the brink of Armageddon, proved to be a lethal mix of deceit and murder.
In the NEWS:
Interesting story of Ron Boyer, one of the original founders of the Recce Rag, might want to include it in the next edition, be sure to include the link to his Journal, lots of great pictures of him and his family. He had been living here in Hawaii, about 1/2 mile from me (Just found out that close, had PO Box Address), was wondering why his email address kept bouncing back, searched and found out why, he is in Thailand, also got his current email from the article. A picture of him in his 548th days at the top to the People page. Great job on the last edition.
Bill
http://www.hawaiireporter.com/hawaii-family-takes-on-mission-work-in-thailand/123
Thursday, January 6th, 2011 | Posted by Malia Zimmerman | Print This Article
Hawaii Family Takes on Mission Work in Thailand
Boyer family in Thailand
BY MALIA ZIMMERMAN – Many business people and lawmakers in Hawaii know Ron Boyer as the recently retired head of the Department of Commerce and Consumer Affairs. With the transition from Gov. Linda Lingle to Gov. Neil Abercrombie this Demember, Ron, a cabinet appointee, was replaced.
He took the opportunity to move his family from Makakilo on Oahu to Chiang Mai in Thailand. There he and his wife Cissy work on the staff of Zoe International (www.gozoe.org), a Christian group founded in part by Hawaii residents, which rescues kids from human trafficking.
Ron and Cissy, members of the Hope Chapel Kapolei, brought along their son Drake Boyer, a 16-year old junior, and daughter Elli Boyer, a 14-year-old freshman, who have been home schooled until now. The kids are attending traditional school in Thailand and will help out the mission with their parents.
“We visited in 2006 on a short-term mission and fell in love with the mission, the staff, and especially the kids. Just got here on December 30th and will be here, Lord willing, for at least a year. But in our hearts we think it will be longer,” Ron told Hawaii Reporter via email from Thailand.
Ron notes there have been many changes from Hawaii. ” Yesterday was the kids’ first day in ‘traditional’ school. Elli came home and said “Do I have to go back?” Drake came home, got a drink and a snack, and grabbed his basketball and went back to shoot hoops with the guys.”
Today, Elli writes in her online journal: “Ever since that first nerve-racking day at Grace International School I have made many friends and am starting to enjoy my classes. Going to school at Grace will be a good experience for Drake and me as we make friends from around the world (did I mention the awesome accents?) and grow in Christ.”
Cultural changes are major too, Ron says. “Everything here takes two to three times as long as it does in America. Took us 3 hours to open a bank account. And you really have to shop around. My watch broke (the stem pulled all the way out when I went to reset the time). Took it to one guy and he said “No can fix.”
Took it to a second guy and he wanted to charge me 700 baht (about $23) and said it would take 3 days. Took it to another guy about 3 stores down from guy number 2 and the third guy fixed it for me in 45 minutes and charged me $3,” Ron says.
Besides shopping and school challenges, Ron says driving in Thailand is, well, a bit scary.
“That is the one thing that is going to freak me out a bit. Haven’t driven yet but just riding along gives me the willies. And, of course, if you get into an accident: it’s your fault if you’re a farong (foreigner).”
Riding Thai elephants, however, not as scary, according to the photo they sent above.
The Boyers will be keeping an online journal of their adventures in Thailand. Keep in touch with them by email at [email protected] or see their journal entries here: http://withlovefromthailand.wordpress.com/
Enjoy this copy! We will post on the web page, 2nd Quarter of 2012
Ben
Send any articles and information for our next newsletter, we need volunteers for the “Life at and After the 548th” {Please Check out our website}: www.548rtg.org {Facebook}: go to groups; 548 RTG
NEW PLAQUE To Be Dedicated at HICKAM AFB, HAWAII 2012
Contributors: Articles, Photo’s
Dan Kolcun, Joe Weller, Bill Forsyth, Ben Oakes, 548th Website, Brian Solletti, Christopher Allan Knowles.
Contacts: Dan Kolcun- Facebook
Bill Forsyth: Web Page Master
Ben Oakes: Newsletters 
