Lynch students learn about the military from an Amsterdam graduate

Members of Lynch Literacy Academy's Learn and Serve America Club learned what it's like to be a solider from Master Sgt. Willie Gizara, an Amsterdam High School graduate.

Sgt. Gizara, who graduated in 1986, is a 21-year veteran of the U.S. military and is currently assigned to the 109th Airlift Wing of the U.S. Air National Guard. He is stationed at Stratton Air National Guard Base in Scotia, where he is the public affairs and multimedia manager.

Sgt. Gizara spoke frankly and with humor with the students, answering their questions and asking his own.

The 109th Airlift Wing is a New York Air National Guard unit from Scotia, NY. They fly the USAF's only ski-equipped C-130s, capable of operating off polar snows and ice as well as from conventional and unimproved runways. The 109th's missions include support of scientific research on the Greenland icecap and in Antarctica and Aeromedical Evacuation from front-line combat zones and remote emergencies, worldwide.

The 109th Airlift Wing's unofficial motto is "From Pole to Pole." Even more unofficially, it's "You call; we haul." The Wing's members make good on both, providing both "routine" transport (to the extent any polar flying can be "routine") and performing such extraordinary missions as the rescue of sick personnel from Scott Base in Antarctica, in temperatures barely above those at which their fuel and hydraulic fluid would gel.