Candidate Initiation Dinner

Last night we attended the Arnold Air Society Candidate Initiation Dunner. Christian and his fellow AAS Candidates completed their training. There training has included middle of the night workouts, lots of memorization and testing, a service project, and a fundraiser. They even had to carry around identical candidate binders everywhere and all the time. They were expected to be at all ROTC events 15 min early and to be meticulous in performance and attire at both ROTC and AAS events.
Last night that all ended at a formal initiation dinner, hosted by the candidates themselves. From 10:00 am to 3:00 pm we had candidates over at our place cooking for the dinner (main dish: Sun-dried tomato chicken alfredo). While that was going on another group was setting up at the hall.

At the dinner the candidate (now referred to as initiates) hosted the Colonel of their ROTC detachment, the guest speaker (Major Joshua Flatley of the Air National Guard) and his wife, as well as the active AAS members in the squadron. It was fun to see the initiates present humorous awards to their training staff and see pictures from the past two months of training.

There were two highlights of the evening. First, when the candidates were officially accepted into the society as their individual mentors took off their own AAS pin and fourragere (the cord that goes around the arm) and placed them on the initiates to wear for the remainder of the evening. The second highlight was when Christian was presented with the award for Honor Candidate. He was consistently ranked at the top of his candidate class throughout the training. With the award he was presented with the framed second lieutenant bar of Steven M. Sherp to safe guard and pass on to next years recipient. (Steven M. Sherp is the individual that their squadron is named after. He was the first cadet to be commissioned through the ERAU ROTC detachment. He was killed in a plane accident early in his military career) Christian was not aware of the award nor that he had been ranked so highly by his class.

It was a wonderful evening.