2025 AFA Florida State Convention

The Waterman- Twining Chapter hosted the 2025 AFA Florida State Convention at MacDill AFB on July 18-19. Members arrived from around the state, and nationally, on Friday, July 18, and checked into the MacDill Inn. Burt Field, AFA President and CEO, was attending the Convention and on Friday morning, Bill Yucuis and Emily Farkas from the Chapter accompanied him to meet with Col. Ed Szczepanik, the 6 ARW Commander. We met for about 45 minutes to talk about AFA’s presence at MacDill AFB.

Friday night, we held a No-Host Social at SeaScapes Bar and Grill, which is located on the base right on Tampa Bay. AFA members attending the Convention, including Burt Field and Chris Canada, the Vice Chair of the Board, Field Operations, met for dinner and an opportunity to meet in a relaxing atmosphere. Joining us were Col. Szczepanik and CMSgt. Ottenwess, the 6 ARW Command Chief.

The Convention was held at the MacDill Golf Course, which has a large room for such events, on Saturday from 8:00 – 3:30. In attendance were 17 representatives from 7 Florida Chapters, plus 4 members participated virtually through Zoom, including representatives from two other Florida Chapters. The Convention, as always, resolved all the State and Chapter AFA issues and problems (Ha, Ha). In addition to the usual State Business, Burt gave a briefing on the State of the Air Force and Space Force and Chris Canada talk about the state of the “Field”.

At lunch, Dwyer Dennis, the Florida State President, handed out State Awards, and we honored the AFA Florida State Teacher of the Year, Brian Noe, from West Orange high School in Orlando, who told us about his accomplishments.

To find out all the details about what was accomplished at the Convention, you can read the Convention Minutes when they come out. I will post them on the Website when I get them. For those who stayed overnight, we had a no-host dinner at the Columbia restaurant in Ybor City. It was a successful State Convention.

You can go to the following link to see photos from both Friday and Saturday, plus some of the PowerPoint briefings, including the one given by Burt Field. https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1tSNS8WqZprxyUsJ-weUvGYeoM-KGi0iw?usp=drive_link