Her two children, high school students ages 14 and 17, had asked to skip final exams Monday to be with Gladney for her big day. “But I said, ‘no dice,’ ” Gladney told reporters, insisting that academics came first.
She said she felt “a little bit nervous, very humbled. It’s a little bit intimidating, but that’s OK.”
Minutes after she was installed as the 88th Air Base Wing’s commander, Gladney told reporters she was being briefed Monday afternoon on one of the controversies Spacy left her: whether the base should close off a section of Ohio 444 through Fairborn’s business district to improve the security perimeter around the base. The road is on federal property, but the proposal upset some Fairborn officials and owners of businesses there.
Gladney said she plans no changes soon while she gets to know the wing and her new base, which is the center of Air Force logistics and acquisition and Ohio’s largest single-site employer. Her background is in communications and information systems.
Spacy was awarded the Legion of Merit medal for his two years of service as commander of one of the Air Force’s largest air base wings, which has more than 5,000 military, civilian and contractor employees. During his watch, about 2,000 airmen were deployed to war zones or other assignments in support of the war on terror. He started up a cross-training program to improve physical fitness for those deploying.
“It’s been a wonderful, wonderful two years,” Spacy, a career security forces officer, told a crowd during the change of command ceremony in an operations hangar. “But, unfortunately, it’s time to go.”
Several airmen among those who stood throughout the hour-long ceremony appeared to be overcome by the heat and humidity, and they had to be helped from the ranks. The cross-building ventilation was reduced after the hangar’s main doors were rolled shut with a thunderstorm approaching.
Gladney is the second woman to serve as Wright-Patterson’s base commander and the second black person in the job. The base itself is older than the Air Force.
Gladney was born in Tuskegee, Ala., the home city of the famed black aviators who served during World War II.
The only prior female officer to serve as base commander, Colleen Ryan, was in the audience Monday with other officials of the Dayton Development Coalition, the private-public organization she now serves as a vice president. Ryan, who was a colonel, retired from the Air Force after leaving the Wright-Patterson command in 2008.
Contact this reporter at (937) 225-2242 or jnolan@DaytonDailyNews.com.
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