Civil Air Patrol hosts award ceremony at Bowling Green Warren County Regional Airport

BOWLING GREEN, Ky. – The Civil Air Patrol made their way to Bowling Green Tuesday for their annual awards ceremony.

“I just want to say thank you to the Civil Air Patrol and to your leadership and to our cadets, go forth and make a difference. Thank you very much,” Mayor Todd Alcott, a former Lieutenant Colonel in the Air Force himself, said during his speech.

The ceremony featured members of the CAP from around the region, but what exactly is the Civil Air Patrol?

“Civil Air Patrol as a whole is a program, the auxiliary of the United States Air Force. We do a lot of community service, a lot of flight training, aerospace education, stuff like that,” Master Sergeant Chase Faust says.

One of the highest honors a member can receive is called the Gil Robb Wilson award, which is a big deal for commanders in the patrol.

“Only a little over 4,500 people have earned it, so it is a prestigious award, and so we were recognizing three individuals from the Kentucky wing that received that this evening,” Major Nicholas Greenman, commander of KY 300, or the Southern Kentucky Cadet Squadron, says.

For Major Greenman, the work he does with Civil Air Patrol helps out in his daily life as well.

“I volunteer at a drug rehab up in Butler County and I’ve been able to use our STEM kits with those guys up there, and they’ve been able to have a lot of therapy and good work from it. So those are just different ways that we as an organization are able to make differences in our community,” Major Greenman says.

For one presenter, it’s a huge honor to continue the legacy of an award he’s won in the past.

“It’s always a pleasure when you’re handing out an award to someone that you’ve earned yourself… and I will tell you, I think it’s more difficult to earn that award now than it was back when I did it. It was a fairly new award, and they had basics. We had basic standards, but the standards have grown and they have improved… and the courses that they’re taking are much more involved and much more thorough than what they were a long time ago,” Colonel Curtis Boehmer, commander of the Great Lakes Region of the Civil Air Patrol, says.