One-on-one with 8th CMSAF

  • Published
  • By Staff Sgt. Andrea Thacker and Senior Airman Frances Kriss
  • 23rd Wing Public Affairs
MOODY AIR FORCE BASE, Ga. (ACCNS) --  The eighth Chief Master Sgt. of the Air Force Sam Parish recently paid a visit to Moody Air Force Base, Ga.

During his visit, we were supposed to provide the chief a windshield tour of Moody, but as we were loading the bus, he jokingly said he should be the one giving us the tour.

The chief has visited Moody more than 10 times during his 32-year career in the Air Force and several more times since his retirement.

So instead of the tour, the chief invited us for coffee because he wanted to talk and get to know the both of us. That's when we took the opportunity to ask him some questions and learn from the eighth CMSAF.

What's the purpose of your visit?
"I'm going to sing for my supper," he said jokingly. "But really, I was invited to speak at the 23rd Wing and 93rd Air Ground Operations Wing Annual Awards banquet."

What have you been doing since you retired 24 years ago?
"I laughingly tell people that I do what I want to do, when I want to do it and how I want to do it because I'm fully retired," he said. "If I'm invited to visit bases, that's what I'll do, but only if my wife allows me and wants to get rid of me for a while.

"Since I retired from the Air Force, I had a second career," he added. "I went to work for a major insurance company and retired from there. Now, I travel for the Air Force."

Why do you stay involved in the Air Force since you retired?
"There are many things happening in the Air Force, and I think our Airmen want to hear it from a source other than those who are trying to achieve it," he said. "You need to know about your past if you want to know where to go in the future.

"I did not realize when I got this job that it was basically for life," he added. "My wife is a great supporter and I've raised three sons in the Air Force. It has been my entire life even when I worked for the corporation because I still travelled for the Air Force."

What's your relationship with John Levitow?
"I was the one who put the John Levitow award on the map, just so our enlisted Airmen would know who he was," said the chief. "When I became the Chief Master Sergeant of the Air Force, I wanted to bring all the former CMSAFs up-to-date with what was going on with the Air Force.

"One of those days, I invited John as my guest with the former chiefs," he added. "I asked John if I could use his name and at that time, I honestly did not know what to do with it. He agreed to do it the next day but said, 'None of this hero stuff.'

"After that, all the former chiefs and I sat down to decide how to utilize John Levitow's name. At that time, professional military education was the one thing that all enlisted members equally participated in so we came up with the honor graduate and decided to name it after John Levitow."

What is your most memorable experience in the Air Force?
"I don't have any idea, there have been so many highs and equally as many lows," he said lightheartedly. "I couldn't even come close to choosing one because there's been so many and it's hard to find one."

Then, he said, "Let me turn it around on you and ask you the same thing. Each of you tell me right now your most memorable experience in the Air Force." (Neither one of us could come up with one defining moment.)

Chief Parish laughed at us and said, "I'm just like you. I put my pants on one leg at a time unless you're sitting down and you can do both at the same time."

Since you retired, what are the biggest changes you've seen?
Again the chief answered our question with his own question, "Tell me one thing other than the name, United States Air Force, that hasn't changed?" he asked us. "Everything has changed from chevrons and uniforms to the way we perform the mission. Most of the changes are for the better, but the one change I don't necessary agree with is how our senior noncommissioned officers are teaching you the ways of political correctness. Because one thing that an NCO has always done is tell it how it is. Tell people what they don't want to necessarily hear, but what they need to hear."

What do you wish someone would've told you progressing in the Air Force?
"I wish the young Airmen of today could have had my supervisor, (Capt.) Eugene Blanton," said the chief. "I want them to spend a week or two with him. He made me do things that I knew darn well that I could not do and he gave me the job anyway, but he never let me fail. When he saw me starting to slide down the wall, he would reach in and recover me.

"I would get to the point of tears and it was frustrating, but he never stopped and kept giving me jobs," he added. "He was the one who created the 'monster' that you see today. After that, I've never been afraid to tackle a job that was given to me by the Air Force, whether it was an assignment or specific task because of him. He taught me the things I needed to know and gave me confidence. He even taught me how to drink martinis.

"During my pinning ceremony for chief, he was there," said Chief Parish. "I didn't invite him, but he had found out about it and Colonel Blanton came."

What can you say to the young Airmen who are just coming in and will be deploying all the time?
"There's more to the Air Force than deploying," he said. "We're using our people in ways we could not have imagined in my time. There's a job to do and training to prepare to go to war and fight. The young Airmen aren't the problem because they want to go and they are enlisting to go."

For supervisors, how do we deal with hard issues like suicide?
"I think that we overstep a little bit because instead of developing Airmen, we end up coddling them," Chief Parish said. "They know the rules. First-line supervisors should be the ones to stress these issues because chiefs like me, first sergeants and commanders -- we're not real to them. For staff sergeants and younger technical sergeants, they haven't been away from that age long.

"If we are around people and we see issues like this happening, we're not helping if we don't do anything about it," he added. "We can't be afraid to say something to someone that you know and see behaving differently because it's not our business or can affect their career."

Chief Parish then spoke about an NCO close to him, who called him one night three years ago.

"He called me and said, 'Chief, I'm up here on the top of the mountain with my bike and boy, what a beautiful sight,'" he said. "I began thinking that this isn't his normal behavior, so I said to him, 'You're not thinking about riding that bike off the side that darn mountain."

The chief said the individual started crying and said he was at his wit's end and felt like he couldn't go to Air Force sources to deal with his problems because it would ruin his career.

Putting it into perspective, Chief Parish replied, "Are you out of your freaking mind?! If you jump off that darn mountain, you won't have a career!"

Then going into chief-mode and knowing that the individual didn't feel comfortable using official Air Force channels, Chief Parish told him to call the counseling place on-base and ask, "If someone needed counseling and didn't want Air Force assistance, what would you recommend?"

Because of the chief's swift actions, the NCO is now three courses away from a Ph.D.

Chief Parish joined the Air Force in 1954 as a ground weather equipment operator. His first assignment at Wiesbaden Air Base, Germany, brought him into an experimental program to cross train as a weather observer. That experiment led to a career. In 1960, he became the youngest seven-level in his career field and continued to excel. While the chief observer for the 7th Weather Squadron in Heidelberg, Germany, he was quickly promoted to senior master sergeant, and at age 31, Parish made chief. He retired on June 30, 1986.