Brother John Gordon has honor of swearing sister Jacqui into Air Force

by Angie Asam, Staff Writer

Jacqui Gordon graduated from Rogers City High School last year and on her birthday, December 16, 2008 she was sworn into the Air Force by her brother John Gordon, 1st Lt. in the Army.

?John made all the arrangements to swear his sister in to the Air Force. He planned it all out, it was something he wanted to do,? said father Keith Gordon. John entered the United States Army in April of 2004 in the military police program and was stationed in Alaska for a short time before he spent a year or more in Afghanistan. After returning from Afghanistan, he finished his degree in criminal justice through the army and applied to officers candidate school.

After the 13-month

process of officer?s school, he graduated in June of 2007 as a 2nd Lt. and began ranger and airborne school. Upon finishing that training he was assigned to the 101st Airborne and was sent to Iraq.

John has now returned and is stationed at Fort Campbell Kentucky. He was promoted to 1st Lt. in December and will be deployed sometime early in 2010 to Afghanistan where he hopes to become captain, a goal of his when he joined.

Jacqui graduated on February 13 as an airman with the United States Air Force and is now going through advanced training in security forces at Lackland Air Force base in Texas.

?This is something Jacqui has wanted to do since she was in the eighth grade. She didn?t go right away because she had to wait for the training program she wanted, so she took a semester of classes at Alpena Community College and joined in December,? said Keith. She will be stationed in a few weeks and became the first girl to graduate from a family with strong military tradition. Her cousins Nathan Ryan, Steven Quaine and David Quaine, along with brother John, are all successful military men and she followed in their footsteps. Her grandfather, Charles Gordon, was an Air Force navigator during World War II.