This year, America turns 250. Across the country, communities are marking the anniversary with celebrations, reflections, and no small amount of civic pride. In Northwest Florida, we have something most places don’t: a living, working, daily reminder of what American defense commitment actually looks like.
It flies overhead every day — training helicopters out of NAS Whiting Field, special operations aircraft out of Hurlburt Field — and it responds at a moment’s notice from installations that have anchored this region for more than 80 years.
Both were born of the same moment. In 1943, with the nation at war, the military carved two airfields out of the Northwest Florida pine woods. Whiting Field was commissioned that July to train the pilots who would carry the fight overseas. Hurlburt stood up the same year as part of the sprawling Eglin complex. Neither ever stopped working. Today, nearly every helicopter pilot in the Navy, Marine Corps, and Coast Guard earns their wings at Whiting. Hurlburt is home to Air Force Special Operations Command — the headquarters for the forces that answer the nation’s hardest calls. The region’s aviation story reaches back further still, but it is these two installations that carry the mission forward in Santa Rosa and Okaloosa counties every single day.
At the Tri-County Military Mission Forum this spring, regional leaders heard directly from the people responsible for that mission — and what they said deserves a wider audience.
Col. Clayton Shuety, commander of Hurlburt’s 1st Special Operations Wing, described a force that measures success in minutes and hours. When the nation calls, his airmen have to get to the base and get airborne. Daily congestion on a state highway is a mission risk. Congressman Jimmy Patronis is working to address it through the Warrior Road Act, which would prioritize federal transportation dollars for corridors serving military installations. That’s the right fight, and it deserves regional support. He also reminded the room that his airmen don’t just work here — their kids attend the same schools, the same churches, the same ballfields as ours.
Captain Ted Elkins at NAS Whiting Field offered what amounted to a blueprint for how civil-military partnership is supposed to work. Santa Rosa County’s commitment to compatible land use — keeping development around the installation in sync with its flight mission — has protected Whiting’s operations and made the surrounding community a better place to live. Randy Roy, Whiting’s community planning officer, told the forum that this region is operating about 25 years ahead of the rest of the nation on this issue. That’s the result of deliberate, sustained partnership between local government and military leadership over many decades.
That partnership pays dividends beyond the fence line. Whiting Aviation Park — 269 acres with direct access to Whiting Field’s runway — exists because the county and the Navy built the trust to make it possible. Protecting the mission is economic development, and economic development protects the mission.
As we mark 250 years of American independence, it’s worth asking what that anniversary means in a place like this. This region has contributed to America’s defense, generation after generation, in ways that don’t always make the history books but absolutely shaped the outcome.
Honoring that legacy means doing the work. The installations that carry it forward face real challenges: housing, infrastructure, encroachment, funding. Meeting those challenges requires the same thing that built this region’s relationship with the military in the first place — broad, sustained, community-wide commitment to the mission.
We are strongest when we are united behind it. That was true in 1943, when those first runways went down in the pine woods. It is true today, and it will determine what we hand to the next generation.
This region defines itself by its military heritage. Protecting that mission is the work — for all of us.
Shannon Ogletree is the Executive Director of the Santa Rosa County Economic Development Office. Learn more at SantaRosaEDO.com.
This article originally appeared on Pensacola News Journal: Military reminds us we are a region. We must protect their mission | Opinion
Reporting by Shannon Ogletree, Guest columnist / Pensacola News Journal
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
By Shannon Ogletree, Guest columnist | USA TODAY Network
