New Chief Of Staff, Controller And Chief Of Chaplain Service Appointed

The Civil Air Patrol tells ANN three new national officers, appointed by Maj. Gen. Amy S. Courter, were confirmed by vote of the National Board on September 28.

Col. Russell E. Chazell of Salina, UT was confirmed as Chief of Staff. In his new role, Chazell will direct and oversee the organization’s national staff and advisors. He has been a CAP member since joining as a cadet in 1978. He has served in various command and staff positions during his CAP career, most recently as the Rocky Mountain Region commander, leading more than 3,100 CAP officers and cadets in 100 units located throughout Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Utah and Wyoming in their performance of CAP’s primary missions of emergency services, cadet programs and aerospace education.

CAP notes Chazell is also a qualified CAP pilot and mission observer. He received his Juris Doctor degree at Thomas M. Cooley Law School in Lansing, Mich., and is a master’s degree candidate in nuclear engineering at the University of Utah, Salt Lake City.

As national controller, Col. William S. Charles II of South Lyon, MI will assist the commander in managing the organization’s financial and property assets. He has served in CAP for more than 30 years, taking on a variety of leadership roles, including Great Lakes Region commander from 1999 to 2003 and national inspector general from 2003 to 2006.

Most recently, Charles served as the national equal opportunity officer responsible for compliance issues concerning CAP, Air Force and Department of Defense regulations and polices related to nondiscrimination. Before joining CAP, he served with distinction during the Vietnam War as a member of the US Air Force, earning the Air Force Commendation Medal. After 19 years of service as a police officer, Charles retired from the Novi, MI police department in 1993.

Lastly, but not least, Lt. Col. Whitson B. Woodard of Rocklin, CA was appointed Chief of Chaplain Service. Woodard will guide and support the efforts of CAP’s 900 chaplain service personnel nationwide. He joined CAP as a Florida Wing cadet in 1954 before active duty service in the US Air Force. He was appointed to CAP’s Chaplain Service in 1967, and he served in a variety of capacities before his most recent assignment as Pacific Region chaplain.

Woodard has more than 12 years’ experience as a law enforcement chaplain, senior chaplain, training officer and administrator. He earned the prestigious Master Chaplain diploma from the International Conference of Police Chaplains. As the California Wing liaison officer for assistance to active duty chaplains at Travis AFB for several years, he earned praise from the Air Force for his participation in Operation Enduring Freedom. Woodard served as chaplain to an Army Reserve unit when its assigned chaplain was deployed to Germany and provided chaplain services for the Army Signal Corps High Tech Training Facility in Sacramento, CA.

Civil Air Patrol, the official auxiliary of the US Air Force, is a nonprofit organization with more than 56,000 members nationwide. CAP performs 90 percent of continental US inland search and rescue missions as tasked by the Air Force Rescue Coordination Center and was credited by the AFRCC with saving 103 lives in fiscal year 2007. Its volunteers also perform homeland security, disaster relief and counter-drug missions at the request of federal, state and local agencies.

The members play a leading role in aerospace education and serve as mentors to the nearly 22,000 young people currently participating in CAP cadet programs. CAP has been performing missions for America for more than 66 years.

FMI: www.cap.gov