For retiring XLer, 36 years of change

  • Published
  • By 2d Lt Seth Pate
  • 47th Flying Training Wing public affairs
LAUGHLIN AIR FORCE BASE, Texas --  Walking through the second floor of Laughlin's simulator building as it undergoes extensive renovations, it appears that life has come full circle for retired Tech. Sgt. Richard Weyer. Eyeing the sawdust on the floor, the bare walls and the contractors tearing off strips of masking tape, he casually observes, "This looks a lot like it did when I got here." He's referring to 1977--32 years ago. Mr. Weyer has only just retired, and it seems fitting that as he leaves, the building has the same flurry of construction as it did when he oversaw its opening.

First stationed at Laughlin in 1973, Mr. Weyer has worked in the simulator facility since it was first erected, and seems to have bonded deeply with the building. Giving a tour that he has given hundreds of times, he remarks on the progress of the building like a proud father. Each nook and cranny holds a story or memory. The tour goes slowly.

Pinning down Mr. Weyer's labyrinthine history is hard, because the man seems to have held every job possible in the simulator building. Though he currently maintains the T-38 simulators, he has also worked as an enlisted flight instructor, performed quality assurance for both the military and the civil service and even did a short stint as a maintainer for T-38s on the flight line. He chuckled as he recalled the latter, saying that doing flight line maintenance in a Texas summer is a job for young men.

Mr. Weyer himself was the real attraction of the tour. His most compelling topic was neither hydraulics nor electronics, but his memories of Laughlin and Del Rio. When he retired from the Air Force in 1985, he could have lived anywhere he wanted to. He chose Del Rio. Mr. Weyer grinned as he remembered when he came here in the early seventies and he and a friend went out to the lake one beautiful Easter weekend. They caught two bass and said, "This is good enough for us!"

The Laughlin that Mr. Weyer knew in the seventies is gone. As he tells the story, a friend of his recently came back to the base for the first time in 25 years. As he drove through the front gate, he looked around, wild-eyed and said, "Where am I?" Much has changed. Mr. Weyer remembers seeing dust devils rise in the summer heat where the BX and simulator building now sit. He remembers the tower we had before this one, and the tower before that one, too. And he remembers when Del Rio was without chain stores, remarking, "We were here P.M., Pre-McDonalds."

For all the changes, Mr. Weyer reflected that there was a common theme running throughout Laughlin's history, "The mission has always been training pilots." Whether we do it with massive hydraulic simulators as in the seventies, or the sleek electronic units of today, Laughlin has always been the start of America's Airpower. Mr. Weyer has seen to that.