Maintenance problem leads to family history lesson

  • Published
  • By Capt. Joel Stark
  • 36th Wing Public Affairs
ANDERSEN AIR FORCE BASE, Guam --  When the MC-130H Combat Talon II carrying Capt. Michael Muscato and his crew left Kadena Air Base, Okinawa, one day in January this year, he hadn't planned on landing anywhere close to family or home. 

However, a mechanical problem on the aircraft would provide him a rare opportunity to uncover some family history. 

On Aug. 2, 1984, another young officer, 1st Lt. Michael Lafferty, lost his life in a tragic crime on Guam. 

According to Captain Muscato, Lieutenant Lafferty, a B-52 navigator, was leaving a movie theater when he was shot in a robbery attempt. 

Although the exact details of the crime may never be fully understood due to the age or availability of records, Captain Muscato had always wanted to know more, not simply because Lieutenant Lafferty was his older cousin but because he had been an early influence in Muscato entering the Air Force. 

Having landed on Guam for only brief stops, Muscato had many occasions to think about the incident in his family's past but insufficient time to delve into it. 

The most significant fact he knew was a building or part of a building had been memorialized on Andersen with his cousin's name. 

This type of quest was tailor made for Dr. John Treiber, the 36th Wing Historian, who noticed immediately there was no visible evidence of a memorial with Lieutenant Lafferty's name. 

Through some research, Dr. Treiber determined the former alert facility on base was dedicated in 1984 and formally named "Lafferty Hall." 

Furthermore a base newspaper photo confirmed as much, showing Lieutenant Lafferty's parents and the then-wing commander unveiling the plaque. 

A history buff, Captain Muscato had also been interested in learning about Guam in addition to learning more about his cousin's death and memorial on Andersen. 

Although the murder did not go unsolved, he said, it was important to him to see how Guam was associated with his family and what the tragic event-was actually like. 

Captain Muscato said the thing he least expected, due to the judgments he associated with the crime, was the hospitality and warmth of Guam's people. 

Walking on Guam at length for the first time also gave Captain Muscato a chance to put himself in his cousin's shoes and environment. He also found it interesting to think about how the world views today's Guam servicemembers compared with that of his cousin in the same theater of operations two decades prior. 

The 36th Wing Historian, Dr. John Treiber, guided the captain through archived newspapers from the period his late cousin had served here, giving him an invaluable glimpse into the past, Muscato said. 

Dr. Treiber also saw the value of uncovering anything the two could, particularly the dedicated location, which from the photo of Lieutenant Lafferty's parents he deduced clearly had an impact on the family. 

Unfortunately their search for the memorial proved frustrating. Despite a thorough search of the current 36th Contingency Response Group building, the Airman and historian found no trace of the original plaque. 

Captain Muscato still said he considered the search time well spent despite his disappointment. 

"I like the history of seeing what was going on when [Lieutenant Lafferty] was here. As opposed to the modern Global War on Terror, during the Cold War what would he have been doing? Like sitting alerts and that kind of thing," Captain. Muscato said.
Dr. Treiber agreed that observing the significance of the lives of Andersen's Airmen seemed to have been partially lost in this case. 

"The combat aspect [of the the wing's history] is extremely important, and the Air Force records that history meticulously. But how often is the Air Force actually engaged in combat? Out of Andersen's 62-year history only eight years have been directly combat-related, and even that number is debatable." 

"Did nothing happen here during the remaining 54 years? On the contrary, for much of its history Andersen was a frontline Cold War base that served the country well without ever dropping a bomb." 

Although the pilot and historian didn't reach the exact closure they were seeking, Dr. Treiber said the search contains an important lesson for all of us as stewards of Air Force history. 

"The loss of Lafferty Hall is a perfect example of what happens when we don't make a conscious effort to sustain our memorials and to remember the past," said Dr. Treiber.
"Without that effort we unfortunately do begin to forget. This is especially true at a base like Andersen where there has traditionally been a rapid turnover of personnel, and a constant shuffling of units corresponding to changes in mission." 

"The Air Force has its own unique culture which I view as historical, and thanks to this culture Airmen and dependants become part of something like an enormous tribe, or family. Taking that analogy a step further, do families forget what happened to their kin ten, twenty, or forty years ago? Of course not, and neither should the Air Force."