Emergency Management Awards Ceremony Finds CAP Front and Center

Theodore Roosevelt reminded us that critics — the bleacher bums who boo and razz and find fault at every turn — don’t count. Instead, it’s the person on the field, bloodied and weary but unbowed, who strives through trials and triumph, success and failure, who matters.

So it is for Civil Air Patrol’s historic group of recipients at the International Association of Emergency Management USA’s 2024 awards ceremony.

Collectively, CAP members and the organization received five awards, one for the U.S. Air Force auxiliary as Voluntary Organization of the Year and another for CAP’s partnership with the ReadyOp communications system, as well as three individual awards.

It’s the most ever for an organization.

“The five awards earned by Civil Air Patrol, our members, and our partners at the IAEM conference are powerful examples of our core value of excellence,” said Maj. Gen. Regena Aye, CAP’s national commander/CEO. The Voluntary Organization of the Year award was presented to CAP for its volunteers’ emergency services efforts in 2023, which included:

In 2023, 19,463 CAP volunteers provided 156,232 volunteer days — in the air and on the ground — contributing to emergency management activities in 47 continental states and Alaska, Hawaii, and Puerto Rico.

“I am grateful to our members, employees, and CAP-USAF partners for their selfless service and tireless work executing and supporting our emergency services mission,” Aye said.

“Their dedication, hard work, and unwavering commitment to serving our communities is a testament to the difference we can make.”

Leading the individual CAP honorees at the IAEM awards ceremony was Lt. Col. Robert “Dr. Bob” Ditch, who received IAEM’s highest honor, the Career Excellence Award — the greatest career achievement honor in American emergency services.

Other IAEM awards went to:

Ditch’s career — half in the U.S. Air Force and also in CAP, academia, and federal and municipal government — has seen him earn a chest full of medals and ribbons, awards, and honors.

He has served in some of the globe’s most dangerous hot zones — Southeast Asia, Korea, Africa, Europe, throughout the Pacific, Central and South America and Caribbean, the Middle East, and at Ground Zero on 9/11 to name a few — and earned him a Bronze Star for Heroism in Somalia.

In the civilian world, Ditch has served 45 years as a volunteer firefighter/paramedic and has been in the torrent of over three dozen natural disasters, like hurricanes Katrina and Sandy, Haiti and Puerto Rico earthquakes, and the Zika virus.

In CAP, it seems if you can name it, he’s done it, from search and rescue and disaster relief to logistics and planning.

But Ditch’s greatest achievement, the creation and growth of Operation Pulse Lift, aimed at bolstering the nation’s blood supply, has wrought something more lasting than ribbons and medals, plaques, and academic degrees. He’s even served in response support roles at a number of presidential State of the Union addresses and inaugurations.

Operation Pulse Lift blood donations have potentially saved more than 132,000 lives over the past 4½ years.

The IAEM award, Ditch said, triggered mixed emotions after 50 years in emergency services, a career that began after he served two tours in Southeast Asia during the Vietnam conflict.

“It’s been a life,” he said. “I hope they’re not telling me it’s time to retire, because I still think I’ve still got a lot to do.”

“I’m still kicking. I’m not going anywhere; I’ve still got plenty more to do,” said Ditch, honored last year with the Arizona Governor’s Lifetime Achievement Award.

Born into an Air Force family, he followed tradition, working first as a mechanic on propeller-driven aircraft.

But after an injury, Ditch went into the medical field. He returned to college, eventually earning his doctorate and also receiving a commission in the Air Force Medical Service Corps, retiring as a full colonel.

Even while serving in the Air Force, Ditch — a fifth-generation firefighter — worked as a civilian volunteer firefighter/paramedic.

“It was kind of a pilot light that had been lit when I was a young boy,” he said. “I always enjoyed being at the fire station.”

Wherever his nearly 32-year military career took him, he served as a volunteer firefighter/paramedic-Air Force by day and rode ambulances and fire trucks by night.

He teaches emergency services and homeland security courses for five university systems. He also teaches courses for the Federal Emergency Management Agency and CAP’s National Emergency Services Academy Mobile Training Team (NESA-MTT).

Ditch came late to CAP. Despite his lengthy Air Force service, he had never heard of the auxiliary.

“It was like it was some kind of whisper or rumor out there, but I didn’t know anything about it,” he said. “I would have loved to have been in CAP as a youth.”

Shortly after joining CAP in November 2007, he became Arizona Wing director of emergency services, filling that role for six years. He now serves as director of emergency services for the organization’s Rocky Mountain Region.

He’s worn a rack full of hats in his 17-year CAP career — wing-level chief of staff, region emergency services director, and leading major national programs as Operation Pulse Lift director, NESA-MTT director, and CAP’s liaison to FEMA and the IAEM.

The key to success in operations throughout his career?

“My real strength has been as a field operational planner, in keeping the ball moving down the field and not becoming static, keeping operations successful through the planning process,” Ditch said.

Operation Pulse Lift was unnamed when he started it in the Arizona Wing at the squadron level in Mesa in 2017. The mission conducted three blood drives a year to assist the Red Cross.

On St. Patrick’s Day 2020, Ditch was watching a White House briefing on the pandemic response. For six years in Anniston, Alabama, Ditch had taught a course for FEMA on pandemic preparedness and planning.

The course was discontinued in 2016, but Ditch’s interest never waned. His master’s degree dissertation was on the 1918 Influenza pandemic, during which his grandmother had served as a nurse both in World War I and the pandemic.

A secondary impact of the newly imposed COVID-19 restrictions, Ditch learned, was that the nation had lost 80% of its blood donation center capabilities, costing an estimated 150,000 units of blood.

“I thought to myself, we can fix this,” he said.

He reached out to John Desmarais, then CAP’s director of operations and now the organization’s chief operating officer, and asked if CAP buildings could be used for the blood donation effort to help the Red Cross open donation centers to ease the blood shortage.

Falcon Composite Squadron 305 in Mesa began the work to expand from three to 16 blood drives annually, while things also began to pick up steam at Phoenix’s 388th Composite Squadron, which hosted the first CAP COVID blood drive April 15, 2020.

The numbers grew to seven centers across Arizona, after which the campaign expanded to assist the armed forces with logistics and administration in their blood donation efforts.

In all, 67 Operation Pulse Lift locations have been involved, generating over 600 blood donor events. Nearly 42,000 pints of blood have been collected, Desmaris said.

He called Operation Pulse Lift “an amazing success.”

Aye also praised the effort, calling it “a powerful way to demonstrate our core value of volunteer service.”

“It’s one of my favorite Civil Air Patrol missions,” she said, “because members can participate without a lot of training and have a positive impact on their communities.”

Ditch “has dedicated his life to saving lives and shaping futures through his work in emergency services in Civil Air Patrol,” the national commander said. “His leadership on initiatives like the NESA Mobile Training Team has also ensured we educate the next generation of leaders in this mission area.”

Leadership is a common thread among Civil Air Patrol’s IAEM award winners. But Ditch, Schlosser, Ozer, and Lt. Col. Thomas Schaeffer, who leads CAP’s ReadyOp program, say the honors are not about them but instead about moving the CAP mission forward.

Schaeffer said the ReadyOp system provides a unified communications platform for CAP that has proven effective in real-world operations, training, and other operations, including Operation Pulse Lift.

“What I think these awards show is a forward-thinking Civil Air Patrol, leveraging technology to make special or significant contributions to the field of emergency management that significantly enhances emergency response services to FEMA, the Department of Defense, state emergency management agencies, and first responder coordination centers,” Schaeffer said.

Schlosser reacted with disbelief to the Emergency Management Educator of the Year award and praised those who wrote supporting material for his nomination.

But there was something more.

“Most importantly, when I told my students, to see the pride in their faces was just amazing,” Schlosser said.

As for CAP’s big awards night, Schlosser spoke of service.

“It’s never about us,” he said. “It’s always about making the world better for those around us, and that is something that truly sets this organization apart.”

Ozer said he was “surprised and humbled” by the award. CAP’s historic performance, he said “shows the professionalism, dedication, and abilities that are the backbone of Civil Air Patrol.”

Ditch was asked to describe himself in a few words.

“Tenacious, agile, and passionate,” he said.

Others in the Air Force Medical Services have used words like “legend.” But consider Thomas Blau, the former department chair of homeland security at the National Defense University. Upon meeting Ditch’s wife, Blau said, “I want you to know, your husband is a national treasure.”

Said Ditch, “I’m still humbled by that.”

Awards and accolades aside, Ditch still has work to do. As with Theodore Roosevelt and his fellow IAEM award winners, nothing gets done from the cheap seats where critics sit; accomplishments occur only on the field.

And volunteers like Ditch, Schlosser, Ozer, Schaeffer and ReadyOp, and the thousands of CAP emergency services members are never on the sidelines or in the cheap seats.

Instead, they’re working to make things better.

Ditch once wrote, “The dividends that come from volunteerism are never cashed in.”

And he likes the words of aviation pioneer Gen. Jimmy Doolittle, a line that could describe every hard-working CAP adult member and cadet.

“There Is nothing stronger than the heart of a volunteer.”_____Paul SouthContributing Writer