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By Bonnie Bartel Latino

Columnist

Little did Tom and I know at the time, but 1973 proved to be an outstanding year for my husband. He was still stationed at Andersen AFB, Guam. We were among the first tenants in a newly constructed apartment complex at a naval base less than 10 miles from the base. Our two-story apartment with garage felt luxurious compared to our concrete rental, a one-bedroom house in the jungle.
Last week in this column, I mentioned that Tom’s interim commander, Duane Leach, selected Tom as the 1958th Communications Squadron Junior Officer of the Quarter for the period from 1 October – 31 December 1972. The commander then forwarded the nomination to Pacific Communications Area for consideration at Hickam Air Force Base, Hawaii, to compete with other nominated junior officers throughout the Pacific.
No matter how good an officer is, the fate of every career depends enormously upon the writing ability of his “rater.” This is especially true for awards and future promotions. Tom’s commander highlighted his professional skills that coordinated and ensured that communications glitches impacted neither Linebacker II nor crucial services for Apollo 17’s reentry into the earth’s atmosphere. Tom’s commander also wrote eloquently of his leadership traits, job knowledge and devotion to duty, but also his superlative personal interactions within the squadron and on base via the Boy Scouts Leadership Council and the Catholic Church.
Tom and I were thrilled to learn of his selection for the Pacific Communications Area and that his nomination had been forwarded to Air Force Communications Service headquarters at Richards-Gebaur Air Force Base in Kansas City, Mo. Subsequently Capt. Tom Latino received a letter from Major General Paul R. Stoney congratulating him on being named the Outstanding Junior Officer of the Quarter for the entire Air Force Communications Service.
The honor came with gratis round-trip airfare to Kansas City to receive the Air Force Commendation Medal, a $50 U.S. Savings Bond, and an engraved desk set. It also meant Tom could add on, at our expense, a flight to Mississippi to visit his parents, which he did.
As if by serendipity we knew Tom’s first Air Force mentor, Col. John T. Phillips, at March Air Force Base, would retire the following week. Since Tom’s flights from Kansas City to Guam and back were via California, Tom went to Phillips’ retirement – and stayed with the Phillips at their beautiful quarters on base along with their “other two sons,” as they said. After the service, “John T” called Tom, Mike and Terry, all three junior officers, to his side and presented each with a set of silver eagles, the treasured insignia for the rank of colonel. He told them they “… would need them some day.”
Twenty-one years later, Phillips and Pat remained in our lives – and attended Tom’s pinning ceremony, where Col. Ronnie Morrow, then the Wing Commander at Randolph AFB, Texas and I pinned a pair of silver eagles to the epaulets of his Air Force uniform jacket. Tom tightly held in his hands the smaller silver eagles for a uniform shirt collar, which Phillips had given him at March AFB, California. Please forgive my Southern digression.
To fully appreciate how important Tom’s Air Force-wide recognition was to his career, one needs also to know that all military officers who entered the service via R.O.T.C., as did Tom at Mississippi State University, automatically became reserve officers. Before an officer could receive a coveted regular commission meant the officer first had to be chosen by that year’s selection board. Having a regular commission would provide better career stability if the officer hoped to make the military a career.
In 1972 when Tom had first been eligible to receive a regular commission, he had not been selected. While disappointed, he understood why. A junior officer at the four-year point, as Tom had been in1972, should have had twice the number of Officer Effectiveness Reports (OERs) than did Tom.
He had been in pilot training in Texas for a full year, plus an extra six months while the Air Force medical corps tried (to no avail) to find the cause of his debilitating Pericarditis, so he could not fly. Even though he worked for the Wing Commander at Reese AFB during that time, he still received only training reports, rather than the all-powerful OERs. The same held true during the following six months at Keesler AFB when Tom retrained into the communications career field, where the graduates only received Officer Training Reports.
Although the OERs Tom received at his first communications assignment at March AFB were superlative, a majority of the members of the 1972 Reserve Selection Board obviously felt Tom didn’t have enough OERs for them to judge his potential for a regular commission.
By 1973 with his records reflecting the Trifecta of communications awards — the Junior Communications Officer of the Quarter awards for his squadron on Guam, the entire Pacific area, and Air Force Communications worldwide, Capt. Tom Latino must have been an easy choice to offer a regular commission, which he accepted.
Ah, yes, 1973 was an exceptionally fine year for Capt. Tom Latino. As I wrote this column last weekend, it occurred to me that perhaps our beloved Col. John T. Phillips played some part in at least one of the three communications selections. The commander of communications in the Pacific, as well as his aide-de-camp, were both former protégées of “John T.” Having the unofficial “sponsorship” of a senior officer, for whom a lower ranking officer previously worked never hurts.