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Training leader ends 54 years of federal service

  • Published
  • By Susan Griggs
  • 81st Training Wing Public Affairs
KEESLER AFB, Miss. --  Tracking the career of Werner Lamm is a trip through the last 54 years of Air Force history.

Mr. Lamm, training support chief for the 338th Training Squadron, retires next week with 30 years of military service and 24 years of civilian employment. His retirement ceremony, 2 p.m. June 9 at the Bay Breeze Event Center, falls on a special day for him and his wife, Barbara Ann -- their 49th wedding anniversary.

"As a training expert and mentor, Mr. Lamm has touched literally thousands, including many former subordinates who now hold key civilian leadership positions at the 81st Training Wing and 2nd Air Force," said his commander, Lt. Col. Dan Gottrich. "One of them, Deb Sterling, told me the other day, 'Mr. Lamm has probably forgotten more about technical training than any of us could ever dream of knowing.' But while he was focused on the mission and improving technical training, he always took the time to provide career guidance to the people in his squadron, military and civilian, from the commander to the newest Airman or summer hire."

As an Airman, Mr. Lamm spent three years of joint service with the Marine Corps, along with various communications and engineering assignments including Keesler, Washington and New York air defense sectors, distant early warning line systems in Canada, north warning systems in Alaska and engineering and installation locations throughout Europe and Asia, from Scotland to India and many nations in between.

Mr. Lamm began his civilian career in 1987 as an engineering/installation quality assurance evaluator, followed by jobs as a technical adviser for the 1872nd  Development Squadron from 1989-92, radar systems and weather training manager from 1992-96, air operations courses flight chief from 1996-97 and 334th TRS training support flight chief from 1997-99, when he assumed his current position.

The New Jersey native joined the Air Force after his high school graduation, but his academic pursuits didn't end there. In addition to technical training and professional military education, he earned two Community College of the Air Force degrees on his way to a bachelor's degree in industrial vocational education and graduate work in  telecommunication/computer systems technology at the University of Southern Mississippi.

Mr. Lamm says he joined the Air Force at the end of the Korean War "to avoid the draft and to see the world. I never really thought of the military as a career until I volunteered to become an instructor at Keesler in 1965 and support the Vietnam conflict.

"Keesler in the mid 1960s was a unique challenge," he recalled. "With the Vietnam War in full swing, we were teaching on all four shifts -- school ran around the clock six days a week. I built a tutoring program for foreign students that had difficulty with mastering both the English language and electronics to avoid repeating blocks of instruction.

"During the 1965-68 timeframe, the military began a big push to migrate electronic  training to state-of-the-art systems," he continued. "I volunteered to teach a special instructor in-service vacuum tube to solid state transformation course, the beginning of a new era for us.

"I'll be retiring as part of the Keesler team that moved the Air Force into another new era with the 81st Training Group bringing on cyber training over the past two years," he pointed out. "Our squadron began graduating students from each of our four new Air Force specialty code initial skills courses in 2010."

He had multiple instructor assignments to Keesler through 1976 in both electronic principles and specialized radar and communication-electronic equipment systems.

In 1980 while stationed in Wiesbaden, Germany, the Lamms were intimately involved with the return of the American hostages after 444 days of captivity in Iran.

"Barbara was a nurse at the hospital where the hostages were processed for medical care prior to returning to the U.S.," Mr. Lamm remarked. "I was part of the team assigned to the state department for installation communications and supported a need for photojournalists dealing with 55 nationalities in public releases of data and documents, since I'm bilingual in German." He was credited with having the first military photo releases for the Air Force Communications Command's newspaper and the Air Force Times.

Other highlights of Mr. Lamm's career were his involvement with the development of upgraded air traffic control training with simulators in the 1990s and building a 9-level airfield systems training course and getting it online in a record time of 120 days.

"I've been a part of another 9-level course coming online this year, a cyberspace superintendent course that supports all of the new 3D0XX and 3D1XX cyberspace operations and systems career fields," he noted.

Mr. Lamm says his proudest personal accomplishment is raising a successful Christian family and watching his five children and nine grandchildren "succeed in unbelievable challenges." He and his wife have mentored young people for more than 40 years through active involvement in Scouting programs around the world.

The Lamms didn't wait until retirement to begin traveling to visit family and friends all over the country and plan to continue volunteering with their extended church family.

His advice to military members and civilian employees who follow in his footsteps?

"If you select people and they're good people, provide them the necessary tools of their trade, trust them to do the things they need to do and let them run their business," he urged.