Pat Jobe
Wednesday, September 8, 2021 12:58 pm
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Hometown girl makes good.
Or maybe better we should say, distinguished retiring Air Force Colonel is ending her career and speaking to community 9/11 remembrance at the POPS. The park will open at 8 that morning with a number of emergency vehicles on hand and information available from local veterans groups. The program with get underway at 10.
Not to spoil her 9/11 speech, but Christy Haynes's best story is about sitting at a computer screen and judging the legality of air strikes to avoid civilian casualties.
Yes.
While the rest of us were plowing our assigned rows during 2011, Col. Haynes worked eight-hour shifts figuring out if specific air strikes could be carried out without killing civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan.
As part of the JAG corps, she served Air Force personnel with legal help all over the world, but that tour in The Combined Air Operations Center was as dramatic and engaging as anything in her 20-years of service.
She called that tour, "Very stressful and emotional. Kudos to the people who served in those places."
As she prepares to speak at the POPS in Forest City on September 11 this year, she feels a heart tug toward all the people in Rutherford County who taught her integrity and service above self, which are among the core values of The U.S. Air Force.
"Everything I learned growing up matched perfectly with the core values of the Air Force. I feel like I owe everything to the people of Rutherford County," she said.
"She has a great story to tell," Retired Forest City Fire Chief Mark McCurry said of the retiring Colonel.
She has vivid memories of being a new lawyer on base when word came of the 9/11 attacks 20 years ago.
She'll share that memory at the POPS.
Her mom, Glenda Hill, is recently retired from many years of childcare through organizations like the Sunshine Christian Preschool.
Her Uncle Herman Haynes was the Haynes in Haynes Jones Furniture and her grandfather Ernest ran the TV repair shop in Spindale.
Having done legal work for many who served, she also had high praise for the spouses and children of deployed personnel.
"When somebody deploys, truly the whole family deploys," she said.
She is currently the Chief, Air Force Material Command Administrative and General Law Division, Wright-Patterson AFB, Ohio. Colonel Haynes assists the Command Counsel in providing legal services to an organization with some 80,000 personnel who manage $54 billion annually in research, development, test and evaluation while providing the acquisition management services and logistics support required to develop, procure, and sustain Air Forceweapon systems.
She accepted a direct commission into the United States Air Force in August 2000 after graduating from The University of Tulsa, College of Law, Tulsa, Oklahoma. She has spent most of her career in the Southeastern United States. She has previously served as Staff Judge Advocate, Deputy Staff Judge Advocate, COCOM Judge Advocate, Area Defense Counsel, and Assistant Staff Judge Advocate.
She deployed in 2006 as the Staff Judge Advocate for Al Dhafra Air Base and in 2011 at Al Udeid Air Base as the Deputy Legal Advisor, Combined Air and Space Operations Center.
She is a member of the state bars of Oklahoma and Kentucky.