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| Volume 11, Issue 4 | December 2007 | |
| Inside This Issue | 2008UTA Dates | Board Election Officers | | The Prez Sez - President's Columns | Email Notification Tool | | Officer Nominations | Col Ed Lewis | Retired Pay Adjustments | | Shingles Vaccine for 60+ | Airmen of the Year | Lt Col Spillane Retirement | | New to the Gang | Final Flyby | TRICARE Mail Order Pharmacy's | | Dondi's Mercantile! | Are You Missing in Action? | |
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5-6 January 12-13 July
Board Elections - Officers The President's Column Lt Col Jesse Craddock (Ret.)
‘Tis the season to be jolly… and the Board
would like to take this opportunity to wish you and yours a Merry Christmas
and Happy New Year.
Jay Email Notification and Information Sharing Tool Members of the 129th AHA asked the board if we could find a simple and timely way to communicate information and notifications to our association membership. To that end, we began development in October of an email notification system that our members could utilize. By simply sending a message to all@129aha.org, the message is distributed to all email addresses that have been previously entered in the system. The notification system was a big success with one exception. Many of the email addresses we had on file were no longer active. This caused many email address rejections and returned error messages. In order to fix this challenge and make sure everyone registered receive the messages, we are providing a post card for you to fill out in this publication of the Ol’ Timers’ Noozze. Please provide us with your current email address and CMSgt Jim Badgrow, our Webmaster, will update your email listing. In addition, Jim provided a link on the 129th AHA website to update your email address electronically. Go to www.129aha.org . Click on the “Members” link at the top of the page and click on the “Email address update form” under the “Email List” heading. Fill out the form and submit by clicking on the “Email request to Webmaster” tab. This new notification system is currently operational. All your messages will be initially moderated by our webmaster during the testing phase and forwarded on to the membership the same day. Our future plan is to allow all messages sent to all@129aha.org to go directly to our membership when testing is complete and all the bugs are worked out. My thanks go out to Jim for the tremendous job he's done in providing us with this valuable tool! Any of us can now communicate with our membership at a moment’s notice.
Have some good ideas about things
the 129th AHA should do?
So Click this link and complete,
print, sign and mail the Nominations form | Back to Inside this Issue |
Col Edwin W Lewis, Jr
 Col
Edwin W. Lewis, Jr., a research pilot at NASA's Dryden Flight Research
Center and director of operations for Civil Air Patrol's Pacific Region,
died Thursday November 8, when the CAP Cessna 182 in which he was flying
crashed into a mountain outside Las Vegas. He was 71. The cause of the crash
is under investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board.
Ed was born in New York City and began flight training as a Civil Air Patrol cadet in 1951. He received a bachelor's degree from Hobart College, N.Y., and entered the U.S. Air Force through the ROTC. He served from 1965 through 1966 in Vietnam, where he was a forward air controller, flying more than 1,000 hours in the O-1 "Bird Dog" aircraft. He earned a Bronze Star medal as well as a Distinguished Flying Cross. He then joined Pan American World Airways as a pilot. Col Lewis also served with the California National Guard while working for Pan Am. He retired as commander of the 129th Air Rescue and Recovery Group. He took early retirement from Pan Am in 1989 to join NASA. He flew for eight years at NASA's Ames Research Center in Mountain View and at Dryden since 1997. Lewis had served in the Civil Air Patrol as California Wing commander from 1978 to 1982, Pacific Region commander for four years and was elected national vice commander in August 1993. Ed was preceded in death by his parents and brother John. He is survived by his wife of 37 years, Midge Lewis of Castro Valley and sons Eric of Castro Valley and Steve of Los Angeles; sisters-in-law, Beverly Lewis of Utah, Sheila Conway (Jack) of Petaluma and Beverly Borges (Jeff) of Modesto; nieces, Susan Tsutsumi (Paul) of Palos Verdes, Kathy Lococo (Larry) of San Anselmo and four great- nieces and nephew. A Memorial Service was held Saturday, November 17 at Transfiguration Church, Castro Valley. Additionally, A memorial observance in Southern California was held Friday, November 30, at NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center on Edwards Air Force Base. In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to the CAP Lewis Scholarship Fund, c/o Pacific Region CAP, PO Box 4718, Hayward, CA 94540.
DFAS Announces 2008 Retired & Annuitant
Pay Adjustments CLEVELAND (AFRNS) -- Based on the increase in the U.S. Consumer Price Index, there will be a cost-of-living adjustment increase for retired pay and Survivor Benefit Plan annuities effective Dec. 1, according to Defense Finance and Accounting Service officials. Retirees being paid on an account where the retiree first became a member of the uniformed services before Sept. 8, 1980 and retired before July 1, 2007 will receive a full COLA increase of 2.3 percent. The COLA increase for retirees being paid on an account where the retiree first became a member of the uniformed services on or after Sept. 8, 1980 will be as follows:
Retirees being paid on an account where the retiree first became a member of
the uniformed services on or after Aug. 1, 1986 and retired on or before
Jan. 1, 2007 but elected to receive a Career Status Bonus at 15 years of
active service, will receive a COLA increase of 1.3 percent.
Please consider making a donation to one of the more than 300 nonprofit organizations dedicated to helping our troops and their families listed on the "America Supports You" website, www.americasupportsyou.mil Shingles Vaccine Available to Tricare Beneficiaries 60 and Older FALLS CHURCH, Va. (AFRNS) -- Following a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Oct. 19 recommendation, Tricare now covers Zostavax, the vaccine designed to prevent shingles for beneficiaries 60 and older. Shingles is a painful viral disease that affects more than 1 million Americans every year. More than half of those cases happen in people age 60 or older. The CDC recommends a single dose of shingles vaccine for everyone within this age range. In a shingles prevention study done by the Veterans Administration Cooperative Trial, run by Dr. Michael Oxman of the University of California in San Diego, Zostavax was more than 50 percent effective in reducing the incidence of shingles and more than 60 percent effective in reducing some of its associated symptoms. Even in people who suffer from the disease, most of those who were vaccinated experienced less pain. Shingles is caused by the varicella-zoster virus, the same virus that causes chickenpox in children. It remains in the body for decades, sleeping in nerve cells along the spinal column. A shingles rash usually appears on one side of the face or body and lasts between two and four weeks. It is painful and can be accompanied by fever, headache, chills and upset stomach, said Tricare officials. “We cover all immunizations recommended by the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices and formally endorsed and adopted by the CDC,” said Army Maj. Gen. Elder Granger, deputy director of the Tricare Management Activity. Beneficiaries who receive the shingles vaccine must have vaccinations administered in a provider’s office. Zostavax is covered under the Tricare medical benefit and is not reimbursable under the pharmacy benefit. Beneficiaries with coverage or claims questions should contact the Tricare regional claims processor found on their beneficiary explanation of benefits notice, or if living overseas contact the local Tricare Service Center or the Tricare area office for the area in which they live. (Courtesy of Tricare) TRICARE Debuts New
Web Service
Airman of the Year NCO of the Year 2008 Airmen of the Year 129th Rescue Wing 
 Master Sergeant Steven Beaulieu Master Sergeant Dave Burkhalter Senior NCO of the Year 1st Sergeant of the Year
New to the Gang Our Newest Members CMSgt Ray Estrella Welcome ! Do you know someone who has been affiliated with the 129th RQW or its predecessor organizations - and is not a member of the Association? Let's get them signed up! Final Flyby In Memoriam We bid farewell to our members who have departed on their final journey. Col Edwin W. Lewis Jr
TRICARE Beneficiaries Saving Time and Money Switching to Mail Order Pharmacy Nearly 20,000 TRICARE beneficiaries are saving money on their prescriptions after making the switch to mail order through the new Member Choice Center (MCC). After only two months of operation, beneficiaries saved approximately $600,000 on prescriptions by switching from retail to the TRICARE Mail Order Pharmacy's (TMOP). In all, individual beneficiary's savings through TMOP could range from $24 a year for each regular formulary generic drug to as much as $176 a year for each non-formulary brand-name drug. The savings increase with each additional prescription. Beneficiaries that do not have other health insurance and are currently using a retail pharmacy can go now go online to www.express-scripts.com/TRICARE to complete the registration, without downloading or mailing forms, and request that their prescription be converted to mail order from retail. A toll free number is also an option in the United States. A patient care advocate at the MCC at 1-877-363-1433 can initiate the process to obtain a new prescription from the beneficiary’s provider to be filled by the TMOP. TMOP also notifies beneficiaries by letter when one of their medications is switching to the third tier, which has the most expensive co-pay. This gives beneficiaries time to ask their doctor to switch them to the formulary drug at a lower co-pay before they need a refill. For more information about the new Member Choice Center and filling
Have you moved recently - or not so recently? Do we have your correct mail and e-mail addresses & phone number? Please let us know when you move. The newsletter is mailed out with a request for address correction. The post office does not forward the newsletter to you. They return it to us - and charge us 41¢. Then we update your file, put your newsletter in an envelope, put a 41¢ stamp on the packet, and mail it out to you. Total additional cost to the association is nearly $1.00 per returned newsletter. Please take a moment to remember the 129th AHA when you notify your correspondents of your new address. A member information change form is included in every issue. Col. John L.
Ruppel, Jr. (Ret.) E-mail: J-L.RUPPEL@WORLDNET.ATT.NET | Membership Information Change Form | Back to Inside this Issue | |
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© 2008 129th Alumni and Heritage Association