Col. Brian Scott Robinson

Commanding presence

SELF

PORTRAIT Date and place of birth: Dec. 7, 1965 in Philadelphia Family: Wife Maureen, sons Shawn and Justin Occupation: Commander of the 19th Airlift Wing My retreat: I love to hike in the “mountains” or sit by on the beach at sunset without a cell phone, BlackBerry or watch.

The song I have to hear once a week: “I Can Only Imagine” by MercyMe One goal I haven’t achieved yet: Planning “chapter two,” life after the Air Force The toughest guy I know: The service members on the front line. They will overcome all odds to fight for each other and survive.

The worst physical pain I’ve ever experienced is having my left knee sprained really bad as a fullback in a high school soccer game. My mother knew it was bad when I asked to go to the hospital.

My personal heroes: My sons and spouse. They have sacrifi ced so much in support of my service to the country.

One thing I can’t stand is lack of common sense, both from a personal and an organizational perspective.

My most humbling experience: When our [then] 4-year-old son told me he was too busy working to talk to me on the phone.

When I’m nervous, my heartbeat feels like it’s in my throat. (Thankfully that’s not very often.) One word to sum me up: HumbleThree uniformed men are walking down a sidewalk at Little Rock Air Force Base, squinting beneath a high afternoon sun, so it takes them a moment to realize whom they’re seeing across the intersection. The driver of the silver sedan making a right. It’s nearly the end of the day - who has time to focus much?

These guys.

They stop short and snap their right arms up in a salute.

Col. Brian S. Robinson isn’t a person who goes unnoticed.

The Commander of the 19th Airlift Wing returns the acknowledgment without braking and continues on for the flight line.

If the men and women saluting him on base haven’t spoken with Robinson directly, they’ve likely waved to him during his weekly runs or been around for one of his trademark drop-ins on their workspace.

“My favorite part of the day is trying to be out around the base and talking to folks,” Robinson says. “I don’t like sitting in meetings.”

It sounds like talk, but when Robinson says he wants to connect with people, believe him. He has an eager expression and a relaxed gait that seem to belie the title. When he talks about his career, the words “privileged,” “fortunate” and “blessed” bubble up like a deferential vocal tic.

“I just enjoy watching the commanders below me succeed and giving them the tools they need to do that and then watch them do the best job they can,” Robinson says.

ON THE LIST

In January, Robinson hung up the phone and immediately called his wife. It was the call they had been waiting for, but trying not to think about.

Word had come down from the promotion board, and it was good.

“I was stunned. It was really surreal,” Robinson says. “My wife just kind of let out this shout, followed by ‘No way!’”

That was just days removed from his first anniversary as base commander in Little Rock. Three months later, his nomination for promotion was confirmed by the Senate and, following a ceremony later this summer, Col. Robinson will take on a new title: brigadier general.

Since 2007, Robinson and his family have been in a rhythm that includes moving every year and a half or so. There was McChord Air Force Base in Washington state, Fort McNair and The Pentagon in Washington, Charleston Air Force Base in South Carolina and Scott Air Force Base in Illinois. Add to this assignments in Turkey and Qatar.

The commander position on the base is a colonel’s position, so now he’s waiting for another phone call, this one bittersweet. This summer, by Robinson’s estimate, the family will be off again, and the question on the base is, who’s the next commander? If Robinson’s youthfulness appears at odds with the standard image of a general, he didn’t get here without being among the first to know answers to key questions. This one, though, is unknown.

He can only speak for himself, and this is what he knows: He’ll gladly take any assignment, but he’s hoping for the Pentagon.

“I’m most anxious to see if it’s a job I can continue to try to make a difference in,” Robinson says. “I like challenges, so I’ll eventually get my hands around whatever it is.”

He has once received the Legion of Merit, twice Bronze Stars, and four times the Meritorious Service Medal. For a man who thought he’d give the Air Force a shot on the way to becoming a commercial pilot - just a shot - it’s some impressive brass.

“I never really second-guessed the decision. I knew it was something I wanted to do,” Robinson says. “But I didn’t know how long I would do it. I didn’t step into the job knowing I wanted to do a full 20-year career.”

STRETCHING THE BOUNDS

Stars have a way of catching a boy’s attention, and Brian Robinson was no different. Enamored of all things sci-fi, Robinson wanted to be an astronaut, and his peers and teachers at the Philadelphia High School of Engineering and Science fueled his dreams.

A degree in computer science, he thought, could put him in a prime place to work with aeronautics. College was a given, but he’d have to work hard to get there. His mother, Judy George, was raising Robinson and his three siblings on her own and couldn’t afford the tuition at Philadelphia University.

So he worked, first as a grocery store clerk and customer service agent, then as a bank teller. By senior year he was delivering for UPS on early morning routes before classes. If he was exhausted then, he can’t remember.

He had briefly considered joining ROTC early on in college to help pay tuition but had decided against it. Then in his senior year, the thought crept back. Another kid on Homer Street in the Germantown neighborhood in Philadelphia where he lived had gotten into the Air Force Academy.

“Watching him come home over the summer, talking about the pilot training program, that was motivational,” Robinson says.

His father, William Robinson, was in the Army for 24 years before retiring, so Robinson was familiar with military life. Still, he wasn’t sure it was going to be his permanent career. Robinson took the leap and applied for Air Force Officer Training School. It wasn’t quite the astronaut training he dreamed of as a kid, but it was close. Robinson had been as awed by the revolutionary technologies being developed by the space program as he was by space itself.

The first time Robinson stepped into a C-17, a military transport plane 174 feet long, he was hooked. At that time, Robinson says, the plane’s cockpit was more technologically advanced than the space shuttle.

“All I could do was just to stand there and take it all in and say, ‘Wow.’”

Robinson has gone on to log more than 4,300 flying hours in T-38s, C-130s and C-17s. He has landed cargo planes on so many surfaces he can rank them from coolest (an Antarctic ice shelf) to most difficult (ungraded dirt).

“These seemingly benign-looking airplanes have come a long way in the last several years of conflict, learning how to do things without getting shot down,” Robinson says.

Nighttime random approaches, where the pilot flies using night-vision goggles and tries to land on the first pass, are difficult, but it’s a “random shallow” that Robinson considers the hardest landing to master.

“You’re so low to the ground that you can’t see,” Robinson said. “You have to count on your navigation to be pretty pristine and you keep your speed up until just a few miles away.”

Years ago, two cockpit fires in a five-week span in planes he was piloting over the Pacific earned him the nickname “Smokey.” It’s so popular it’s engraved in the nameplate at his desk, but Robinson rarely discusses the back story, even with Condoleezza Rice. He flew Rice into Afghanistan, and she asked then if the call sign meant Robinson likes to sing.

“He doesn’t sing, but everyone knows that nickname,” says Major Jennie Steldt, who served under Robinson at McChord Air Force Base.

Robinson was there when Steldt commanded her first combat air drop in Afghanistan. It was Robinson’s trust that motivated her the most.

“He brings so much credibility because he’s been a weapons officer and a pilot, and he never really stops teaching,” Steldt said. “He was the best commander I’ve ever had.”

After so many years of intense training, flying commercial with this guy as a passenger must be intimidating. Usually, he’s pretty good about it, but taking a passenger seat can sometimes be achallenge. Coming back from a recent vacation, a flight attendant told Robinson and his fellow passengers that the autopilot wasn’t working and they’d have to keep their seatbelts buckled just to be safe.

“I’m headed back to the bathroom and there’s a standby pilot riding and I say, ‘Hey, is an MD88 really that hard to fly by hand?’” Robinson says.

The pilot, who couldn’t have known Robinson’s background, said it just depends on the guy flying.

How far Robinson has come from his earlier dreams of being a commercial airline pilot.

GENERAL RUNNING

Chief Master Sgt. Margarita Overton will rearrange herweekly exercise time for one person, and that’s Robinson.

“I plan my PT [physical training] along with his PT,” Overton says. “Fitness is a part of our culture, and as a leader he really sets the example.”

Go into the fitness center on base, and the staff will tell you they typically see Col. Robinson between 10:30 a.m. and noon, three days a week. He’s so consistent that staff at the center will walk airmen having trouble passing their PT tests past where Robinson is working out.

“They’ll say, ‘Well, the wing commander is in here working out,’” Robinson says. “I have the privilege to set my own schedule, but when I’m working out, that’s an hourothers don’t have to be doing something with me or for me.”

When the weather is nice, Robinson prefers to be out running. Right after his morning meeting is prime time for a break, and Robinson uses the run time to clear his mind.

“I wear a brightly colored shirt so I don’t get hit, but also so it draws their attention,” Robinson says.

He wants to motivate, even passively. Fitting in an afternoon workout is easy for a guy who is up at 4:45 a.m. The early hour gives him enough time for a cup of coffee and time to get a few easy administrative tasks out of the way before spending time with his wife, Maureen, and teenage sons Shawn and Justin beforeschool.

Robinson first met Maureen in the late ’80s at Vance Air Force Base, where they were both stationed. Robinson bought her a Diet Coke at the snack bar, and they’ve been going strong since. Though she retired from the military and entered the reserves several years ago, Maureen is still a sounding board for everything Robinson does. It can be a blessing and a curse.

“We could talk work all day,” Robinson says. “We have a code word we use to say, ‘Knock off the work talk.’ It’s the first one who says, ‘OK, love you.’ [Then] we go watch TV or go to the movies. Enough Air Force talk. That’s the agreed-upon ruleset in the house.”

Mornings at the house also mean getting caught up on news. For Robinson, it’s the Wall Street Journal first, followed by the Washington Post, USA Today and the Financial Times.

“He’s very in tune, super articulate and an extremely critical thinker,” Overton says. “He can see three chess moves ahead.”

Being in tune also means maintaining open lines of communication on the base. One of Robinson’s guiding philosophies is that his airmen should never be afraid to tell the chain of command above or below them how they really feel and what they see happening on the base.

“Leaders are going to make decisions with the facts they have or don’t have,” Robinson says. And he’d rather have the facts, even if they’re coming from someone several ranks below.

“They owe their leader their best input, so that those leaders can make a decision with the best data available.”

To make that happen - and it can be tricky within the rigid traditions of military rank - Robinson tries to be out around the base as much as possible, scheduling time to meet with younger airmen.

“My secretary hates this, but I like to steal away sometimes with my command chief and do walk-ins to work areas just to have conversations,” Robinson says. “I’m not there to see anything special, just to hear what’s on their mind if they’ve got something they want to share.” NEXT STEPS

Driving toward the flightline, Robinson has to pause several more times to salute before parking next to a towering C-130, the cargo plane the base is known for.

“Generally, people don’t understand how big the base is and what we do,” Robinson says. “This base is a crossroads for anyone with experience with C-130s.”

Robinson had been to the base for training many times before returning as its commander.

The Little Rock base is the largest C-130 base in the world and home to more than 5,500 airmen.

Of those, 400 to 600 are in Afghanistan at any one time, while others are constantly preparing to leave. It’s a pattern that has been in place for more than a decade now. As the Air Force is needed less and less in Afghanistan, leading up to complete troop withdrawal in 2014, Robinson is thinking ahead.

“In terms of a military career, there’s about a generation’s worth of airmen who have only experienced Afghanistan and Iraq,” Robinson says. “They have no experience in what it’s like to just train and be ready for what may come. No prolonged absences from home, not flyingall the time, just training to be ready for what’s next. How do we get them ready for that reality?”

Robinson wants to be part of the team that comes up with the answer.

Northwest Profile, Pages 31 on 05/26/2013

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