First sergeant, charter member retires

  • Published
  • By Tech. Sgt. Jason Schaap
  • 931st Air Refueling Group Public Affairs
MCCONNELL AIR FORCE BASE, Kan. --  Master Sgt. Robert Livingston, an Airman who witnessed the birth of the 931st Air Refueling Group, has retired from the Air Force.

Fellow Airmen, family, friends and even some of his former Titan II Missile Wingmates attended a ceremony here Sunday to celebrate a military career that spanned all the way back to the draft days of the Vietnam War.

Fittingly, McConnell AFB is also where it all really started for Sergeant Livingston. He was stationed here after finishing Air Force basic training and the Titan II Missile Maintenance Technical School in 1970.

He helped maintain the intercontinental ballistic missiles stored in underground silos around Wichita, Kan., before advancing through staff jobs and honorably discharging from active duty in 1980.

He joined the Air Force Reserve in 1986 and soon became the noncommissioned officer in charge of production control for the 921st Civil Engineer Squadron. The squadron would later be reassigned to the newly-established 931st Air Refueling Group in 1995. Sergeant Livingston was the second chartered member of the 931st ARG.

"Bob was one of the first to say, 'We have a squadron patch and squadron flag,'" Lt. Col. Kimberly Thompson, 931st CES commander, said during the ceremony.

Colonel Thompson was the third 931st CES commander Sergeant Livingston had worked for as the squadron's first sergeant. In 2005, he volunteered for a position that made him the first sergeant of three 931st ARG units simultaneously. It was a job he thrived at, Colonel Thompson said.

"Bob is the type of person you could reach out to like a cousin, or, for some of you, an uncle," Colonel Thompson said. "Yet he always maintained (his professionalism) ... I always had the greatest confidence in First Sergeant Livingston."

Senior Master Sgt. Sheila Croninger, who narrated Sergeant Livingston's retirement ceremony, succeeded him as first sergeant for the 931st's engineers. She went into the job thinking it looked "easy," she said between speakers Sunday, but "it wasn't ... it was just that Bob was just that good at it."

It was God, not Sergeant Livingston, who deserved credit for all his success, he said at the start of his own time to speak. "He carried me every step of the way," Sergeant Livingston said, not surprising anyone who knew how important his faith was to his life.

He was then quick to thank his family for "just for letting me do what I knew I needed to do ... to serve my country.

"It was never just a job or something to do," he went on to say, "It was a way of life."