Vice commander gets Pentagon assignment
By Turner Walston
Published in News on August 7, 2005 2:04 AM
Col. Donald Jurewicz, vice commander of the 4th Fighter Wing at Seymour Johnson Air Force Base, is taking on a new assignment.
Jurewicz will transfer to the Pentagon to be the deputy director for Air Force capability and analysis. His new job involves operational requirements at the headquarters of Air Force staff.
"That was probably my last flight with the Air Force," Jurewicz said after his traditional "fini flight." After a commander takes his final flight at an assignment post, he is hosed down by members of the wing.
Jurewicz has been at Seymour Johnson since August 2003. Despite his short time here, he said the community will be hard to leave.
"It's the toughest departure my wife and I are going to have because of the people that we have, the mission that we have and the community that's here," he said.
Jurewicz grew up in a military family, and says he has never stayed in one place longer than four years.
"This has been a whole-life thing," Jurewicz says of his Air Force career.
In addition to his assignment here, Jurewicz has been stationed at bases such as Lakenheath in the United Kingdom; Mountain Home, Idaho; and Elmendorf, Alaska.
In the military, a lot of relationships are made when officers and enlisted men are "thrown together," Jurewicz said. Not true in Wayne County, he added.
"Goldsboro and Wayne County bring the relationships to you. You feel like you've been their friends for life," he said. "I've never seen its equal at any base that I've been in the Air Force."
Although his assignment takes him to the nation's capital, Jurewicz says he won't be a stranger.
"We've made too many friends not to make Goldsboro and Wayne County a stop in the future."