Every Airman, family member is important Published March 4, 2009 By Staff Sgt. James M. Hodgman 55th Wing Public Affairs OFFUTT AIR FORCE BASE, Neb. -- Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Norton Schwartz, delivered one resounding message during a town hall meeting at Lackland Air Force Base, Texas, recently - Every Airman is important. All Airmen are integral to the service's success and no job and no one is more important than another, General Schwartz said. "The fundamental thing is that everybody counts, no specialty is more important than any other. Everyone matters and everyone is an important part of this team." Brig. Gen. James J. Jones, 55th Wing commander, shares the Chief of Staff's view. "The U.S. Air Force is the greatest Air Force in the world and that's because of our Airmen," General Jones said. "Every Airman is incredibly important to mission success. Without our maintenance technicians our planes won't fly, without our security forces Airmen our bases wouldn't be secure and without our civil engineering professionals our infrastructure would collapse." General Schwartz said waging two wars is not easy, but today's Airmen are helping the joint team succeed with the full range of capabilities the Air Force has to offer. "Our folks who are down range are supporting the mission and they should be proud of that," General Schwartz said. However, just because an Airman isn't on the front lines doesn't mean they're not contributing to the fight, he added. "Our Airmen are the reason for our successes. While we have the most sophisticated equipment in the world, without our Airmen we can't meet a single objective and we can't succeed," General Jones said. Family members of Airmen are equally important. It's vital they are taken care of and understand how much they're appreciated. "Our mission requires a fairly high operations tempo. As a result, many spouses are required to handle everything at home while their husband or wife is deployed and every deployment brings a great deal of stress. Our family members feel the stress and impact of the operations tempo as much as our military members--maybe even more so.," General Jones said. Here at Offutt there are numerous programs to help spouses and other family members adapt to military life and cope with the stress a deployment may bring, said Judith J. Davis, a team leader and community readiness consultant from the Offutt Airman and Family Readiness Center. "We offer a program called Heartlink, which is a spouse orientation program designed to familiarize spouses with the Air Force lifestyle, and let them know how important spouses are to the Air Force," Ms. Davis said. The center also offers pre-deployment and reintegration briefings to help family members through the deployment and reintegration process, she said. General Jones said supporting spouses and family members enables deployed Airmen to focus on the mission and worry less about the challenges at home. This equates to mission success. "Supporting our family members in every possible way isn't just something we do on the side--it's part of our mission." said General Jones. (Information courtesy of Staff Sgt. Matthew Bates, Defense Media Activity-San Antonio was used in this article)