Travis AFB holds end of summer event, encourages togetherness Published Aug. 6, 2021 By Staff Sgt. Christian Conrad 60th Air Mobility Wing Public Affairs TRAVIS AIR FORCE BASE, Calif. – As summer comes to a close and families prepare for the new school year, Travis Air Force Base, California, held an end of summer event Aug. 6, 2021, to cultivate togetherness among the base’s Airmen. The event was steeped in team-building and camaraderie through team sports, a car show and kid-friendly activities like face-painting and movie-watching inside the base’s Delta Breeze Club, encouraging Airmen to take a step back from their normal duties. The focus was creating connections between different squadrons and agencies on base that have historically operated less as interwoven threads within the larger tapestry of the Air Force and more as independent enterprises, said Master Sgt. Katelina Tiumalu, 60th Force Support Squadron food service superintendent and one of the event’s coordinators. “We definitely wanted to get everyone together before the school year started so that Airmen could not only spend time with each other, but with their families as well,” she said. “Forming connections between one another is important, and we wanted that to come through during the event.” The military often uses the phrase, ‘One team, one fight,’ and the reality of putting that idea into practice can sometimes prove to be logistically difficult within a day-to-day context, she continued. Another event coordinator, Tech. Sgt. Leon Kadoun, 60th FSS noncommissioned officer in charge of fitness center operations, credits the culture of Travis AFB as well as its commander, Col. Corey Simmons, for the leeway needed to truly exercise the ideas expounded by higher headquarters. “The base’s leadership was front and center during the entire planning phase of the day’s festivities,” he explained. “With the pandemic and the summer’s high operations tempo, there’s been a lot of stress placed on our Airmen. Today is a much-needed time-out from all the craziness at play in the world so that we can take some time with loved ones and soak up some well-deserved recharge time.” As the day reached its close, Airmen who’d been instructed to represent their group affiliations with specific colors began to mingle with Airmen from other groups, turning the event into a colorful mash-up of ideas, interests and hobbies. Hopefully, Tiumalu said, the connections formed today represent a future for Airmen in which they feel untethered by the four walls of their own offices and feel that same level of togetherness with everyone in a uniform. “I can’t imagine the day could’ve gone any better,” she said. “From all the agency and squadron support we received today to all the Airmen and families who came out, today was a team effort – an effort, I think, that did a lot of good for our warfighters.”