Photo By Senior Airman Kadielle Shaw | U.S. Space Force Col. Rob Long, Space Launch Delta 30 commander, and Joyce Hicks,...... read more read more
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The Vandenberg Space Force Base Airman Leadership School was renamed during a ceremony here March 1, 2023, in honor of Chief Master Sergeant Arthur Hicks, a Tuskegee Airman who served during World War II.
Hicks served in the military for 28 years. He retired following his final assignment at Vandenberg Air Force Base in 1971.
During the ceremony, base leadership officiated the school’s renaming and spoke alongside Hicks’ family members about his contributions.
“Chief Hicks is a prime example of many enlisted professional military education leadership concepts that are taught to the next generation of non-commissioned officers and front-line supervisors while they attend Airman Leadership School,” said Col. Rob Long, Space Launch Delta 30 commander. “Chief Hicks' tremendous contributions to the U.S. Air Force make him a great candidate to honor by way of naming Vandenberg Airman Leadership School after him.”
During World War II, a brave group of fighter pilots came together and would be known as the Tuskegee Airmen. Tuskegee Airmen were African American fighter pilots who fought during World War II. Hicks was one of those brave men. He was commissioned in the U.S. Army Air Corps as a lieutenant in 1941 and began his career as an aircraft mechanic at the Alabama Tuskegee Institute, where the first African American fighter pilots trained.
Hicks became a Tuskegee Airman after the attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941. During the war, he fought endlessly to defend his country. Due to an overage of pilots at the end of the war, a number of them, including Hicks, were honorably discharged. However, in 1947, he returned to the Army Air Corps under a regulation that allowed honorably discharged lieutenants to return as master sergeants.
After retirement from the Air Force, Hicks furthered his education and worked at local schools such as Cabrillo High School, Allan Hancock Community College, and Chapman University. Hicks was admired by the Lompoc community, being a resident there for 44 years.
Although Hicks passed away in 2017, his words of wisdom live on. His daughter, Joyce Hicks, spoke about her father during the ceremony.
“My father’s advice was, ‘Find it in yourself to contribute to the whole. We can most effectively do that by first making the best possible contribution to our own selves; through education, through questioning, through personal growth and to look toward the goal that is so far out of reach you cannot even imagine what it is at this point in your life’” she said.
| Date Taken: | 03.01.2023 |
| Date Posted: | 03.01.2023 19:33 |
| Story ID: | 439531 |
| Location: | VANDENBERG SPACE FORCE BASE, CALIFORNIA, US |
| Web Views: | 421 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
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