News

Maintenance officer wins Leo Marquez Award

  • Published
  • By Tech. Sgt. Kevin Wallace
  • 436th Airlift Wing Public Affairs
DOVER AIR FORCE BASE, Del. --  The 436th Maintenance Group deputy commander was named the Air Force-level Lt. Gen. Leo Marquez Award winner in a ceremony at Bolling Air Force Base, Washington D.C.

General Marquez personally presented Lt. Col. Leif Johnson the award.

"It was inspiring to meet an icon within aircraft maintenance," said the 'humbled' colonel. "But, he made it even more memorable because he was a true gentleman. His focus was on the award recipients; while he has seen and done just about everything within logistics, he was still interested in hearing the viewpoints and opinions of the troops. He was very gracious."

There's no wonder why an Air Force colonel and winner of a prestigious Air Force-level award would be humbled by the general. For it was General Marquez that revolutionized Air Force maintenance and spearheaded the practices of cutting-edge aircraft, like the F-111, of his day.

"He's a Vietnam veteran and a hero," continued the colonel. "In his day, he was responsible for all logistics programs across the Air Force and held a variety of maintenance positions, including commander of an air logistics center. He has always been a staunch supporter of the flightline maintainer."

With the general's accomplishments put on the table, there's no wonder, either, why the colonel would choose to follow in his footsteps.

Though Colonel Johnson is credited with directing the generation of 1,187 missions and 2,548 sorties, which carried 21,835 personnel and 60,368 tons of cargo to the fight, he believes the honors belong to his unit, and his unit has been busy.

If the colonel had to name 'the biggest' of all tasks his unit accomplished, he believes it was leading the Dover AFB charge for process improvements.

He said positive change should be identified and initiated within his unit and that "while it is easy to say we don't have time to tackle new projects or to lament that if 'those other guys' would do their job better, yours would become easier, we know we have plenty of room for improvement in our own house.

"We have built a culture that strives for improvement," said the colonel. "We know that there is no more manpower coming, funding is getting tighter, our aircraft are getting older and the mission isn't slowing down. To provide the warfighter the supplies they need, we have to find smarter, more efficient ways to do business. We've applied Lean and other tools to cut waste from our processes and eliminate bottlenecks."

In addition to their work with Air Force Smart Operations for the 21st Century, the colonel's unit made the largest field-level C-5 upgrades in history, completely modifying 14 Galaxy airframes.

"For the C-5 to operate in the prime airspace between the United States and Europe, we needed to modernize its avionics suite," said Colonel Johnson. "In addition to meeting our day-to-day operational requirements, we validated over 17,000 pages of technical data to make the $856 million program sustainable."

The colonel has won many awards in his career including the Marquez Award at a previous base, three Air Mobility Squadron Maintenance Daedalian Awards, an Air Force Association Citation of Honor and a multitude of others.

Still, of all the awards he's won, his single proudest accomplishment is commanding Airmen.

"I remember coming on board to command the 660th Aircraft Generation Squadron at Travis Air Force Base, (Calif.)," said the colonel. "They had just won the DoD Maintenance Award when I took command, so it would have been very easy for them to have had the attitude that they had all the answers. Instead, we had a hunger to get better - and we did. It was fun coming to work every day." 

Commanding Airmen can be difficult and rewarding, he said. But good senior staff members in his unit make the job at Dover much easier.

With the proper mix of a hard-working staff of Airmen under him, and the unwavering contributions of Colonel Johnson, the mission is accomplished in a manner that even makes the legendary General Marquez proud.