Submitted by Col. Larry Trick, Civil Air Patrol
Recently the St Mary’s Composite Squadron set a unit record for cadet achievements. C/Lt. Col. Diane Mattingly recently completed all the requirements for promotion to Cadet Lieutenant Colonel. Thus, the squadron now has in its ranks four Cadet Lieutenant Colonels.
It is a record for the squadron to have that number at one time. The previous record for the unit was three set in the late 1980s. Cadet Mattingly attends Carnegie Mellon University in Pennsylvania where she has a 4.0 average in Chemical Engineering. She hopes to go on to a Master’s Degree.
Other leaders in this record setting group are C/Lt Col Haley Blevins who attends Mount St Mary’s in northern Maryland; C/Lt Col David Trick who is headed to Penn State and C/Lt Col Victor Traven who plans to attend Norwich. All are former cadet commanders of the St Mary’s Squadron. Cadet Blevins is a private pilot working on her instrument rating and was the National AFA Aerospace Education Cadet of the Year in 2006.
Cadet Trick was the AFA National Aerospace Education Cadet of the year in 2008 and the National Brewer Award winner in the Cadet Category in 2007. The squadron also has two more cadets headed to the US Air Force Academy, C/2d Lt Stephen Gast and C/2d Lt Andrew Svecz. They will join two St Mary’s Cadets already there, C/Capt Daniel Brand and former C/2d Lt Andrew Miller.
The squadron also has one former cadet at the Naval Academy, setting yet another record. Cadet Brand recently had a chance to visit with US Airways Captain Sully Sullenberger when the Captain visited the Air Force Academy.
The cadets and senior members of the squadron were recently the guest of Nalls Aviation, located at the St. Mary’s Regional Airport. During their visit, they were given a tour of the Nalls hangar which houses the only civilian Harrier jump-jet in the United States.
Civil Air Patrol, the official auxiliary of the U.S. Air Force, is a nonprofit organization with more than 56,000 members nationwide. CAP performs 90 percent of continental U.S. inland search and rescue missions as tasked by the Air Force Rescue Coordination Center and was credited by the AFRCC with saving 90 lives in fiscal year 2008.
Its volunteers also perform homeland security, disaster relief and counter-drug missions at the request of federal, state and local agencies. The members play a leading role in aerospace education and serve as mentors to the nearly 22,000 young people currently participating in CAP cadet programs. CAP has been performing missions for America for more than 67 years.
There are approximately 1,300 members of CAP in Maryland. Last fiscal year wing members flew 34 search and rescue missions and were credited with 23 finds. For information about the Maryland Wing of CAP, visit http://mdcap.org/ or listen to weekly episodes of “Civil Air Patrol Today” broadcast every Sunday morning on the following radio stations: • Annapolis, MD – WYRE-AM 810, 8:00-8:30AM ET • Baltimore, MD – WFBR AM 1590, 8:00-8:30AM ET • Ocean City, MD – WKHZ-AM 1590, 7:00-7:30AM ET • Potomac, MD – WCTN 950 AM, 6:00-6:30AM ET • Rockville, MD – WLXE-AM 1600, 7:00-7:30AM ET • Washington, DC – WZHF-AM 1390, 7:00-7:30AM ET
In addition, programs may be listened to at the Maryland Wing web site at http://mdcap.org/radio/ and can also be subscribed to as a podcast. The St. Mary’s Composite Squadron meets Wednesday evenings from 7-9 p.m. at the St. Mary’s County Regional Airport, in the Capt. Walter Francis Duke terminal building, 44200 Airport Road, in California, MD. The squadron is commanded by 1st Lt. David Webster. For information, go the squadron’s web site at http://www.capstmarys.com/.
