News

461st officer wins AF Marquez award

  • Published
  • By Jenny Gordon
  • 78th Air Base Wing Public Affairs
Capt. Kevin Scholz is a recipient of a 2011 Lt. Gen Leo Marquez award.

Scholz, an operations officer with the 461st Maintenance Squadron, was presented the award May 10 during the Team Robins Quarterly Award ceremony at the base theater.

The annual Air Force-level award honors military members and civilians for outstanding service in the maintenance field.

"This is a huge honor," said Scholz, who is responsible for backshop and specialist maintenance actions on the JSTARS fleet. "Words cannot describe it. This is very humbling. It encompassed a year of my life while I was overseas in Afghanistan, where I experienced a lot of emotions."

Scholz, who has been at Robins for three years, was deployed to Kandahar Airfield for 185 days in 2011. He served as the 451st Expeditionary Aircraft Maintenance Squadron operations officer, and was responsible for maintaining more than 120 aircraft. During this time, those aircraft flew more than 16,000 combat sorties totaling more than 130,000 combat hours in support of U.S. and coalition ground forces.

He also assisted rescue helicopters, which performed combat search and rescue missions, and is proud of the role he played in saving more than 400 lives. He was also awarded a Bronze Star for his actions overseas.

Lt. Gen. Leo Marquez, who died in 2011, served for more than 30 years. He was a pioneer in the aircraft maintenance community and founder of the Air Force Combat Ammunitions Center.