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    40 years behind the scenes: Mrs. Jane Brown

    40 years behind the scenes: Mrs. Jane Brown

    Photo By Senior Airman Victoria Nuzzi | Mrs. Jane Brown, RSSII Civil Engineering department work management superintendent,...... read more read more

    CREECH AFB, NEVADA, UNITED STATES

    08.12.2024

    Story by Senior Airman Victoria Nuzzi 

    432nd Wing   

    In the last forty years the United States military has been a part of the Cold War, the Persian Gulf War, Operation Iraqi Freedom, Operation Enduring Freedom and others defending the United States from enemies both foreign and domestic. Some people support the mission without being seen, like Mrs. Jane Brown. In the last forty years, she has supported the Nevada Test and Training Range, Tonopah Test and Training Range, Indian Springs Auxiliary Field and Creech Air Force Base, Nevada.

    Brown is from a little mining town in Northern Nevada and attended High School in Ely, Nevada. She first went into the mining industry and served in a supervisory role for ten years before working with the United States Air Force.

    She started her career with the Air Force in the NTTR as a smokey sam operator, co-located with a radar in 1984. A smokey sam operator is someone who helps operate a GTR-18A which is a small unguided rocket that is commonly used in military exercises as a threat simulator.

    “It was such a proud time of life,” said Brown. “I was able to help train Air Force pilots and that meant a lot to me.”

    She then moved on to become a job controller and maintenance controller in the NTTR, where she continued to provide range threat support for Air Combat Command mission training. As a job controller, she performed tasks such as managing accounting, budgeting and financial reporting. When she became a maintenance controller her duties shifted to ensuring all aircraft that came through the NTTR met quality and safety standards to fly.

    Following her time in the NTTR, she moved on to the TTR where she worked in the Civil Engineering and Services department as the production control/program support manager. Her duties there included things such as providing program support planning and development for the Range Support Services Civil Engineering and Services departments, providing oversight and evaluation of daily safety and quality assurance concerns and completing mishap incident reports when tasked.

    In 2002, she left the TTR and worked in production control at the Indian Spring Auxiliary Field, which would later in 2007 become Creech AFB. After a little while, she became the services manager for the dining facility and lodging on base providing oversight of contractual requirements. She also helped design the Guardian Dining Facility, which is still in operation as of this writing.

    “As the service manager, my supervisor and I were instrumental in helping with the design of the Guardian Dining Facility,” said Brown. “We needed to find the best way to help our Airmen get through so they could go on and support the mission.”

    For the lodging on base, she managed and supervised all lodging operations in the contingency dorms.

    “The reality is that our Airmen needed a safe place to sleep and stay because of the operation requirements of our base,” said Nicholas Dirosario, deputy commander of the 432nd Mission Support Group. “The contingency dorms were a big thing that her team led, developed and created. It is her team that is still in charge of the dorms today.”

    Additionally, Brown helped develop much of the base infrastructure and watched the base grow from an auxiliary field into a full-fledged operational base.

    She is currently the work management superintendent for the RSSII Civil Engineering Departments where she manages work orders and facility maintenance on Creech AFB. She also assists in minor human resources concerns including counseling and disciplinary action.

    “I have been here for forty years and it is actually going to be really hard for me to accept retirement life,” said Brown. “I would tell people coming in after me that doing a good job is what matters and what you do really matters. I want to instill the respect I have in my job into the people who come after me.”

    When Brown retires, her hobbies of gardening, golfing and being with her family will keep her busy as her Air Force legacy ends and a new chapter begins for her.

    “The future is brought on the backs of people like Janie Brown,” said Dirosario. “She found a way to execute projects in resource and manpower-constrained environments and she never quit and got the job done. History remembers the great visionaries of the world, but they don’t necessarily remember the Janie Browns of the world. They should because they are the ones who helped make those visions a reality.”

    NEWS INFO

    Date Taken: 08.12.2024
    Date Posted: 08.20.2024 18:17
    Story ID: 478523
    Location: CREECH AFB, NEVADA, US

    Web Views: 27
    Downloads: 0

    PUBLIC DOMAIN