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But the home of the 145th Airlift Wing isn’t just about the aircraft; the base has always relied on a long list of names.
“I’m looking through the maintenance group, historical pictures,” says Jim Hallman, who spent 37 years as an aircraft mechanic.
“Dennis Duncan,” pointing at pictures of people he worked with. “Rick Silvestri.”
“I’m just here to identify names,” said Hallman.
“Jim Kennedy,” he says, flipping through an album. “Bill Goodwin.”
The North Carolina Air National Guard Heritage Program relies on the institutional knowledge of vets like Hallman to remember unsung heroes.
“James Porter, called him ‘Sugar Bear,’” he continued. “There’s old Archie with that smile.”
The volunteer-driven effort is led by David Thrams.
“Go to any museum, you see nice big pictures of a whole group of people but there’s no name of any person in that photograph and I just didn’t want that to happen,” Thrams tells Queen City News.
“It generally is keeping our history alive,” says Col. Lisa Kirk, the outgoing deputy commander for the 145th Wing.
“We need the folks that are retired and have been around a really long time to go out and say, ‘Hey I remember, I served with that person. Oh, let me think of their name!’” she said.
Along with names, volunteers go through seemingly endless archives, including hundreds of thousands of slides and negatives.
“That’s a C-121 Constellation,” says Thrams holding a negative up to the light.
On the second and fourth Thursdays of each month, the Heritage Program volunteers gather to preserve 77 years of images taken by the audio-visual department. Some also work from home.
“First official air medical mission,” Thrams said, showing us one pic on a monitor.
“It can get a little confusing. But there’s our ramp when we were transitioning from the 121s to the 124s,” he says, looking at another photo that’s been digitized.
“A lot of things were in cardboard boxes, black-and-white photos and cardboard boxes, so we just started digging through them and sorting them,” he explained. “And then we would scan them and we’re trying to get them digital so that they can be kept forever.”
Retired Gen. Iwan Clontz was there scanning pictures on the day we were there.
Along with stills, there’s lots of old video that was shot in just about every format you can think of. Our Queen City News photographer for this story, Brian Christiansen, served at the base. He volunteered to help digitize all that footage.
“So now this is an opportunity to get them out, get them digitized,” said Thrams. “Get them off of whatever, Beta tapes, VHS, Super 8s, whatever else.”
The grand vision is to someday make everything searchable online.
“Every person has got a place in history,” Thrams says. “I’m a parent and a grandparent and I would love for my grandchildren or great-grandchildren, if they’re curious, type my name somewhere and my uniform photograph comes up.”
“I think it’s critical for everyone that is currently serving, especially the new kids, to remember those who came before them,” said Col. Kirk. “Because whether it’s Brian [Christiansen] who served for years in Public Affairs or whether it’s myself, who served in a multitude of careers, we didn’t do it for this reason, but we did leave a legacy for you.”
Keeping the legacy alive is the name of game.
“Dennis Duncan,” says Hallman, leafing through the books.
He temporarily places a sticky note on the people he knows from the photographs, before writing their name on a form so that it’s not forgotten.
“A lot accomplished here today,” Hallman said. “It’s helpful in case someone sees the picture and they can’t identify the person.”
The task is daunting, but important.
“We’ve been compiling a list of all our retirees,” Thrams says. “That list is almost to 10,000 names, and we’re missing almost a decade of names. We still haven’t found a roster for the mid-80s.”
“Putting those names to faces is so important,” says Kirk. “Everybody wants to be remembered, and this is just a great way to do that.”
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