Air Force museum honors local 'Warrior Airman'

[thedrifter]

Air Force museum honors local 'Warrior Airman'
Maj. Steve Raspet, a Fountain Valley native, is honored in exhibit opening today at the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force in Ohio.
By KRISTAL SEEDEN
For The Orange County Register
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Maj. Steve Raspet was an Air Force brat. His father moved his family around the country while serving but settled in Fountain Valley after retiring.

Raspet, a graduate of Fountain Valley High School, says he knew what he wanted to do his whole life.

"My grandpa was a pilot, my dad was a pilot; I guess I couldn't think of anything original to do," he said.

Now, his three-generation legacy is being preserved in history. Raspet and his accomplishments are highlighted in an exhibit that opened Tuesday at the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force in Dayton, Ohio titled "Warrior Airmen."

In June 2007, the 35-year-old was among the first six recipients of the Air Force Combat Action Medal, an award established to commend airmen who engage in combat, including those under direct and hostile fire. He received the award from Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. T. Michael Moseley at the Air Force Memorial in Arlington, Va.

While assisting a joint U.S. Army and Afghan convoy near Kandahar, Afghanistan on Jan. 6, 2006, Raspet, the then-flight leader of two A-10 Thunderbolt II aircraft, responded to a request for air presence when another convoy came under enemy attack. The airmen located the ambush threat and targeted the source of the small-arms gunfire and continued to escort the convoy for nearly an hour.

The Air Force Combat Action Medal "recognizes the changing role of the Air Force in Iraq and Afghanistan," Raspet said. The honor acknowledges airmen in a way that similar medals honor soldiers and Marines for their valor in combat.

Raspet decided he wanted to donate the medal after hearing that two of the other original recipients had given their medals to an enlistment hall. After a discussion with his wife, the father of four came up with the idea of offering it to the museum.

"I wanted to give it to my kids but I thought, 'What would be better than donating it to the Air Force museum?'" he recalled. "'My kids would get a kick out of it.'"

"Warrior Airmen" also features the uniform Raspet wore, complete with a mannequin of Raspet, a 30 mm shell unique to A-10 aircraft and pictures taken the day of the mission.

"Warrior Airmen" is one of the largest exhibits in the museum, officials said.

"It presents the essential role of Air Force people in operations Enduring Freedom and Iraqi Freedom," museum spokesman Rob Bardua said.

The exhibit includes more than 400 artifacts, three dioramas with fully dressed and equipped mannequins, a robot investigating an improvised explosive device, an audio visual presentation on a 15-foot-wide screen, and compelling first-hand accounts, Bardua said.

The exhibit opened after a special ceremony honoring its subjects on Monday. Raspet attended with his wife, children and parents, Dave and Jan Raspet, who still live in Fountain Valley.

Besides coming face to face with a life-size representation of himself, Raspet had hoped to come face to face with the man behind the voice on the other side of the radio: the airman embedded with the Army convoy who helped to coordinate the strike in 2006, Shannon Cruz, who is also featured in the exhibit.

Though both now live in Texas -- Raspet and his family are stationed at Randolph Air Force Base in San Antonio, and Cruz has since joined the Texas Army National Guard -- they hadn't yet met.

The meeting was not to be. Cruz could not attend the exhibit because of Army training.

"We tried to meet up a couple of times," Raspet said, but it never quite worked out. "It's pretty rare that you get to meet the guys from the ground.''

For more information about the exhibit or the museum, visit nationalmuseum.af.mil.

Ellie

[thedrifter]

Museums find depicting current wars difficult
By JAMES HANNAH, The Associated Press

1:47 a.m. January 13, 2009

DAYTON, Ohio — When the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force began looking at ways to depict the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, big obstacles loomed.

Certain missions remain classified and some equipment – like night-vision goggles – was unavailable for display, because it was still being used by troops or might be if they are redeployed.

"We don't want to take things away from the warfighter," said Jeff Duford, a museum historian. "It was pretty challenging."

The museum's struggle underscores the difficulty facing other institutions trying to depict the wars while the conflicts are still under way.

The Air Force museum decided to focus an exhibit opening Tuesday on the experiences of the wars' airmen. It features more than 400 artifacts, 18 fully equipped soldier mannequins, a robot demonstrating how it inspects roadside bombs and a Sikorsky special operations helicopter used to covertly enter enemy territory.

Since the history of the wars has yet to be fully written, the museum honed in on the individual Americans fighting the wars, using artifacts to tell their stories, Duford said.

"The way that people act – the heroism and sacrifice that people have – that really transcends time," he said.

Other museums have faced similar constraints.

The Wisconsin Veterans Museum in Madison plans to open an exhibit this spring portraying the role of Wisconsin soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan. Museum officials interviewed soldiers and collected uniforms, helmets, boots and other items.

But Jeff Kollath, curator of programs and exhibitions, said the Pentagon has become more restrictive about what soldiers can bring home since the Vietnam War, making it more difficult to obtain artifacts that tell important individual stories.

Kollath also said many soldiers who served in Iraq and Afghanistan are in the National Guard and Reserve and return to their civilian lives after deployment, leaving many stories untold.

"They're not spending a lot of time thinking about their place in history," he said.

In 2006, the National Museum of the Marine Corps in Triangle, Va., opened a temporary exhibit that included photographs and artifacts from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Spokeswoman Gwenn Adams said it took a little longer to catalog the artifacts and prepare them for display because of the ongoing nature of the wars.

"And keeping it current," she said. "The challenge is to keep those photographs updated."

Tim Clarke, spokesman for the National Museum of Health and Medicine in Washington, D.C., said the museum had to avoid interfering with military operations while collecting artifacts on military medical care in Iraq.

Last month, the museum opened an exhibit depicting a former Air Force tent hospital in Balad, Iraq. The museum stepped in after learning that the hospital's emergency room and trauma bay, where the most seriously wounded soldiers were taken, were to be demolished. Artifacts from the hospital were shipped to the museum in April.

Museum spokesman Tim Clarke said museum officials took the time to learn all they could about the wounded soldiers who are depicted.

Duford, of the Air Force museum, said his institution benefited from the generosity of the depicted airmen, who donated their artifacts to the museum unconditionally and permanently.

Among them is Ramon Colon-Lopez, who took part in search-and-rescue missions in Afghanistan and provided security to Afghan President Hamid Karzai.

Colon-Lopez, 37, donated a blanket he used to blend in with the Afghan population as well as a pink and purple stuffed Cheshire cat he took on his missions as a good-luck charm.

"I thought about it for awhile. But looking at preserving the history of what we've done, there couldn't be a better place," he said. "As far as the declassified aspect of things, I think it does a great job of depicting what we have done so far. We're not done."

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On the Net:

National Museum of the U.S. Air Force: http://www.nationalmuseum.af.mil

National Museum of the Marine Corps: http://www.usmcmuseum.org


Ellie