 Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen and welcome to today's promotion ceremony honoring Lieutenant Colonel Ashley O. Gellner. I'm Chief Master Sergeant Michael Price, your narrator. Presiding Officer for today's ceremony is Colonel Rusty Ballard, Commander of the 182nd Airlift League. Before we begin, please allow me to extend a special welcome to Lieutenant Colonel Gellner's husband, Colonel Robert Gellner, Commander of the 183rd Airlift League. My parents, Mr. Don Jensen and Mrs. Laura Jensen. Her daughters, Ms. Bronwyn Gellner and Ms. Evelyn Gellner. And their cultural exchange of pair, Ms. Fernando Figueroa. We also give a special welcome to all commanders, chiefs, first sergeants and members of the 182nd Airlift League for being here to share this special occasion with Lieutenant Colonel Gellner and her family. Ladies and gentlemen, please stand for the arrival of our official party. We'll remain standing for the posting of the colors and singing of our National Anthem by Senior Airman Amelia Simonette. Present arms. Say can you see by the dawn's early light What so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming Whose broad stripes and bright stars through the perilous fight O'er the ramparts we watched were so gallantly streaming O say does that star-spangled banner yet wave Ladies and gentlemen, please remain standing for the indication by Chaplain Daniel Woe. Almighty God, thank you for this day and our 182nd community. Thank you for caring to bring us a leader like Colonel Ashley Gellner. We celebrate her promotion and would ask for your continued blessing upon her life and career and family. Please grant her your wisdom as she leads and cares for so many of us in the wing. Please also allow her new rank to open up to her even more opportunities to serve even more airmen. We especially want to thank you for the love and encouragement she's received from her family. May this promotion be experienced by all of them as a shared victory and confirmation of excellence and selfless service. We humbly ask for your continued blessing to rest upon Colonel Gellner's husband, Robert, and their two daughters, Bronwyn and Evelyn. May you also bless Colonel Gellner's parents, Don and Laura, as well as the Gellner family, Nanny, Fernando. God, thank you again for a day to celebrate this very special promotion, made inspire and motivate us as we work together as defenders of freedom. Amen. Ladies and gentlemen, please take your seats. At this time, I'd like to welcome Colonel Rusty Ballant, the commander of the Lending Second Aerial Wing, to make a few comments. Thank you. Hi everybody, thank you for showing up today. Bob, thanks for coming up from the 183rd. Appreciate seeing you. Lynn, Evie, thank you for being here, supporting mom and the family. Thanks again to seeing you again for Family Day yesterday and hopefully you had a good welcome yesterday as well as today as well. And Fernando, thank you for coming as well. Testimony to the crowd, thank you everybody for showing up today. Nobody is here. Forcefully, are they? Yeah, Bob, yeah. I hadn't gotten that line yet, but I appreciate you holding your hand up there. But no, thank you for everybody. Not only supporting the 182nd Aerial Wing, great for your support to Ashley. A lot of you really haven't got to know her all that well yet, but we're going to shortly. And I appreciate you guys being here. First of all, Ashley, back in April, we were at the Air National Guard Senior Leader Conference. And at night, what you would do is your contingent for the state would go out to dinner and so forth, and that's what we did. That was the first time I got to meet Ashley. And we had the whole team together, the Tag Day Tag, the Wing Commanders, the Command Chiefs and everybody else. And we got the opportunity to sit next to Ashley and the whole family. The girls were there that night and immediately I got to know Ashley and it really started to like what I got to hear. The funny thing that I liked about her, she was in War College at the time and she was going to be looking for a job, which I knew. But it was nothing like trying to sell herself. It was actually the complete opposite. That's what I was drawn to her about, because I saw how humble she was. She was telling me a story, and my wife's story as well, about one time she lost one of her children. And she kind of laughed at it, and I know how decorated she is in her careers. And to me, that said a lot about her, and I like to hear that story because it was pretty funny. You have to share a beverage with her, ask that story, and you'll be entertained just as much as I was. So after we left that conference, I encouraged her because she'd mentioned she'd moved back to Illinois to apply for the positions we had when coming over. So then we had candidates for the Biscuit Commanders. We lost seven years of experience pretty much in one day with the last Wing Commander and Biscuit Commanders. It was going to be a lot of restructuring here on base, and I was pretty intimidated. That's a pretty big deal going into a UEI and everything getting ready to happen. But I had six candidates, and to be honest, each one of those candidates would have done perfectly well. All of them brought great things to the table, good people, and I couldn't work with them. And each one of those people, when I talked them through the interview, I opened it up. I said, listen, I'm interviewing for a job that I've never done. To work for me in a job, I have never done. So you tell me what does this job consist of? And everybody came back with their different stories or different iterations about how they would tackle it. And it was good. But I'll say on the hiring board, some of the things I was looking for is what we do currently and what we're getting to. I'm going to talk about her career a little bit, and a lot of those things kind of stood out. And as you meet Ashley in just the last month or so that she's been here, you're seeing that she's stepping up to the challenge. She's a perfect person for the position. So we went through the interviews. She said, gentlemen, Ms. Thomas is retirement. That was back in, I believe, mid-June. And we got to talk, and she was asking me, like, what is it you're looking for? What do you need me to do? And once again, I reintegrated. Listen, I never done your job before. I was just learning my job. I'm two weeks in. So all I want you to do is be you. Be a mom, be a spouse, be an Air Force officer. And if you just show up, I promise you that people will 180-second airlift with me will embrace you. And I hope you've seen that so far. Because it's great people. And you're part of that. So 9-1-1 means something to everybody in this room. It means more so to her family. There's four things that stick out to me with 9-1-1. First of all, 9-1-1 is whenever she had combat mission rated as the air battle manager for AWACS on that day, 9-1-1. So look how much her career changed getting rated on that. But you don't know, or maybe you've read an easy read, is she lost her hand on 9-1-1. On flight 77, in the aircraft hit the Pentagon, she was in the seat of 9-1-1. The third of four things that stand out for 9-1-1 is in 2016, 15 years later to the day, her and her twin sister Whitney were promoted Lieutenant Colonel in the chapel at the Pentagon at the crash site. Pretty significant. 9-1-1 today. 21 years later, getting promoted to 06. As a vice-win commander, 1-8 second earlier. A lot going on there, her 9-1-1. Really stands out to her family. So, as I mentioned, she has a twin sister named Whitney. She's a brigade commander, 06 currently in Poland for the Army. Pretty significant for two twins. I know that got five successful children, but those two that ranked more than the same. That's pretty impressive. Very impressive number of fact. She graduated from the University of Indiana in 1999. Dual bachelor's in Italian in polite signage. She was foreign exchange student one time, learning Italian. Pretty impressive. She got rated coming out of ROTC as the Air Battle Manager, flying AWACS. First duty station, she went down to Tyndall. She got rated there, like I said, 9-1-1. She was her first day being combat mission rated. She met Bob down there at Tyndall. Got married in 2000. First duty station after that was Tinker. And I think 330 combat hours, she flew for operation during freedom. She was flying missions over D.C., sporting a no-fly zone. A lot going on there in that first duty station. Followed it up in Kadina, flying over the Korean Peninsula. And basically on the missions proving that North Korea had nuclear capability. Pretty significant thing. She made it the captain yet. That's all the things she had done so far. Being a family, constantly moving around, dual status, our dual service, I guess, houses. 2007, decided for the family, let's get off of that to do it. Let's go to the gardeners early, move, and we went to Dover. And that's what I see as a leader, she really started to decline. She was over, she was a DO of Aeroport Squadron, 104-plus people, she became a squadron commander there. She did that for a little while. Then eventually moved to California International Garden. This is another thing, she started adding on to that command experience. She was a F-15 conversion officer. She was the Wing XP, IG branch chief. I mean those three duties right there in that duty cycle go from a commander, XP, branch chief, conversions. That's pretty significant. If you look at any Air National Guard base, trying to stay alive, those are valuable positions to help us go into the future. These are all things that I learned during the interview process. So she took on that experience. Active duty, guard, reserve, part-time, full-time. And then she went to the Stat Tour program. If you ask her anything about the Stat Tour program, she's a phenomenal mentor on that. There's a lot of good things happening there. She's experienced it, so she's a person now. Hey guys, come on and have a seat. Please. Plenty of seats, come on in. So on the Stat Tour program, she started building her resume doing even more good things. She was NGB conversions branch chief. She was NGB A branch chief there over plans and programs of a $1.4 billion budget. She also did work with J5 in a joint position. Those are coveted positions, and they're hard to come by, but it really sends you on that trajectory of really excelling once you get named for that. And that was over Homeland Division Deputy Division Chief. And she was J5 representative to the National Security Council for all Homeland Samples Border Operations for Homeland Security. Following that, I think Bob went to Hawaii as the main district commander, went out there, and she went out there and did great things there too. So still raising a family. She was A5, A over strategic plans, and then a legislative liaison for the Indo-Pakhan Commander. So it's a four-star combatant commander, right? So that's what she was doing representing that area. Once again, look where the world's going right now. Russia and Ukraine and China and Taiwan and Pacific. She has touched just about everything that we're concentrated on right now, not only in the United States military, but at the 182nd Airlift Wing. Most recently, before selecting for this visit, she was at Naval War College. She graduated the top 10% of all Air Force officers in that program. That's where she got her second master's degree. So impressive. Good stuff. I like it. So, like I told you before, when you ask about what you wanted to do for the job, I'm asking, just be a mom, be a wife. Take care of the folks here and they're going to take care of you and we love having you. I'm looking forward to working for you. I guess you're working for me, but we're working together. Like I said in the beginning, you guys are doing really well or you can't keep a job. I'm not sure what it is. But what it is, I support you and your family wherever you're going. My goal is for you to love this place so much. It's really going to hurt if you decide to leave. All right, so congratulations. Thank you. We will now proceed with the promotion portion of today's ceremony. The President of the United States acting upon the recommendation of the Secretary of the Air Force has placed special trust and confidence in the patriotism, integrity and abilities of Lieutenant Colonel Ashley Gelner. In view of these special qualities and her demonstrated potential to serve in the higher grade, Lieutenant Colonel Gelner is authorized to assume the grade of Colonel, United States Air Force, effective 9 August 2022 by the order of the Secretary of the Air Force. Now we invite Mr. and Mrs. Jitzen, Colonel Robert Gelner and their children, women, men and any Gelner to conduct the pity. I thought about it. Oh, you've got it on already. This is theirs. Facing right? No, no, no. There we go. There we go. Don't worry about the way back. All right. I found her though. I'm sorry. All right. We're going to do a picture. Oh, we're going to do a picture. All right, jump down. Ladies and gentlemen, Colonel Ballard will now read Minister of the Oath of Office to Colonel Gelner. Hi, state your name. Hi, Ashley Gelner. Having been appointed a Colonel in the United States Air Force. Have you been appointed a Colonel in the United States Air Force? Do you solemnly swear or affirm? Do you solemnly swear? That I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States. Then I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States. Against all enemies, foreign and domestic. Against all enemies, foreign and domestic. That I bear true faith and allegiance to the same. That I bear true faith and allegiance to the same. That I take this obligation freely. That I take this obligation freely. Without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion. And then I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office discharge the duties of the office upon which I'm about to enter upon which I'm about to enter so help me God. Please be seated. Ladies and gentlemen, Colonel Ashley Gelner. Thank you so much for coming, everyone. I think we need to work on bringing people forward a little bit. We've got to get rid of all these programs. Although I don't know maybe mom wants to take them home. Yeah, your grandmother's home ballard already alluded to this, but I would not be standing here today if it was not for my family and honestly for my husband on Memorial Day weekend of 2021. We were getting ready to go to Kauai. It was the only time that we could get off the island of Hawaii. Everyone we came from, you know, we had to almost two years in Hawaii, but we didn't get to see the island. It was almost the entire time was during COVID and it was not a great tour for us. We're very busy and it was just as traumatic I think for us as it was for everyone else sitting out here. You all have your own stories about it. But we were headed back to DC. We already had a house there. We are renters were leaving and Bob had interviewed for a Winkman position in Illinois and on the plane he accepted the offer of the Winkman position and so we literally changed our entire life in two hours, three hours. We did talk about it was always a possibility but you know, if you were at Lieutenant Colonel Bridget Soren's change of command today or assumption of command today, she talks about your life changing in a moment and that is exactly I think if you look at my career, our careers, that is always how our careers have had gone and the opportunity what do you think I should do? I mean, he's a maintenance officer and he's a Winkman girl a glass breaking ceiling as well on its own as just as much as we stand up here as the first female Vice Winkman or this Wink so I don't have any regrets about that whatsoever but I had already been going out to war college and so we had to change everything and Bob took over a brand new Wink and two kids and a new house and a new community and new schools and everything without me even being there so I can't even I can't even thank you enough it's not easy we had only one of the worst years of his life and I've won the best years of my life and then the kids of course, my kids, so it's because they come up here just real quick they have something for you so my parents have raised all of us to just be confident and just believe that we could do anything and I think we've been pretty successful all of us kids have been pretty successful with it but I have if you think I'm a strong female it's because I had such a great representation in you and being a feminist I didn't even know I didn't even think of it that way because it was just normal and so it was something that we passed on to our kids too so I have these two coins that I got that they belong to those from female officer mentorship group that I'm a part of and the Wonder Woman things you get one of them or I like to call it Wonder Win but this word comes out which I think is pretty cool and it says she wasn't looking for a night she was looking for a sword and so I just think if you guys live your lives that way there's nothing that you guys can't do either so thank you so much for wanting to support I'm also very keenly aware that I am standing between you and leaving for drill weekend so I will keep this very short thank you so much for the kind words for you say all those things and it makes me sound like I'm just this amazing person I did not do it on my own I had a lot of people behind me and my family mostly helping me along my way and I have had nothing but a very warm welcome from everybody at this wing Bridget said this morning and I can't even I can't even do it justice and say it better than what you did this morning because from the moment I came in here and I met people in this wing it's just been amazing and I just think that this wing has so much potential we're already incredibly effective and a wonderful wing and I can't wait to take it to that next level so thank you so much for having the faith in me to come forward and be your partner as we take this wing to the next level and thank you all for coming I know you didn't have to be here so I really appreciate it Chief, thank you so much for narrating Chaplin, thank you Amelia, thank you very much for the beautiful rendition of the National Anthem she's also going to sing a song her four song afterwards thank you very much and Fernanda, thank you very much for coming we're a host family this year she's from Mexico, Monterrey, Mexico and she is a cultural exchange student and also helping with as a nanny for our children this year so she's been instrumental and very very helpful in our families thank you so much thank you very much for coming join us in the deep back afterwards for some cake and some coffee so you can make your drive home a little bit more pleasant thank you so much ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's ceremony please rise for the singing of the Air Force song and the words please join us in nearly following in the dining facility to congratulate Pearl Gelner and provide a small reception and her honor please join me in singing off we go east of the pile moving under climbing high into the summer here they come to clean our thunder and the standing guys fighting our flames from under off with one nothing can stop the US Air Force thank you all for coming please join us in the dining facility drink drink