Military Archive

Randy Roy is paid, in part, to think about a war that hasn’t happened yet and the pilots who’ll fly it.

Every helicopter pilot in the Navy, Marine Corps and Coast Guard earns their wings in Santa Rosa County. Not most of them. All of them.
That single fact sits at the center of NAS Whiting Field, and it hints at a scale most locals never realize.

It has been more than 10 years since Eglin Air Force Base opened its gates to the public for an air show. In April 2027, that will change.

Local base commanders and Rep. Jimmy Patronis (R-FL1) made the case on May 27 that the area’s congested roadways are not just a quality-of-life problem, it is also a threat to national security.

While heavy rain may have forced event organizers to change the venue to the Gracey Community Center on Memorial Day, the City of Milton still showed up to honor those who made the ultimate sacrifice.

Memorial Day will be held Monday, May 25, this year. In recognition of the holiday, there are multiple ceremonies planned in Santa Rosa County.

For retired Marine Corps Gunnery Sgt. David Post, getting from the bedroom to the bathroom used to mean crawling on his hand and knees.
Post lost his left foot to a roadside bomb in Afghanistan in 2011. A recent ankle fusion has made him rely more on a wheelchair to get around. In a regular home, that meant narrow doorways his chair couldn’t clear and a bathroom that felt more of an obstacle course than a relaxing getaway.
“I’ve crawled on my hands and knees to safely transition into a shower and then crawled back on the same floor to exit, in situations more than I’d like to admit,” Post said in a presentation outside his new home.
With help from a national nonprofit, those instances are now a memory.

A career fair targeting military members, veterans and their families will be held from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Wednesday, May 20, at the Santa Rosa County Auditorium, 4530 Spikes Way.

Naval Air Station Pensacola reopened its areas of public interest to daily visitation Friday, including the National Naval Aviation Museum, the Pensacola Lighthouse and Maritime Museum and Fort Barrancas.

The office inside Whiting Field Naval Air Station’s chapel is not what you might expect from a military chaplain. Pokemon cards line a shelf of Lt. j.g. James Ferguson, the base’s newest chaplain and, as it turns out, one of its most unlikely ones.