Interview transcript

Terry Gerton Let’s do first things first. Tell us about the Air and Space Forces Aid Society. What do you do?

Ed Thomas The bottom line, Terry, is we take care of airmen, guardians, and their families. We’ve been doing it since 1942, as World War II started to ramp up, all of the services have an organization like this. It is the official relief society of that service. Army emergency relief takes care of soldiers. Navy Marine Corps relief takes of marines and sailors. Coast Guard Mutual Assistance takes care of coasties. We take care in the Air and Space Forces, now the Air and Space Force’s Aid Society, we take care of airmen, guardians, and their families when they need us most.

Terry Gerton And what sort of format does that aid take?

Ed Thomas We do several things. At the most basic level we provide two basic forms of assistance. The first is grants, lots. We did $4.5 million in scholarships last year, we did almost $5 million dollars in disaster relief when hurricanes Helene and Milton and other natural disasters hit parts of the United States where we had our service member stationed. So we do grants we also do zero interest loans. Now we’re not a bank but the reason we do zero interest loans is in some cases, it prevents our young, particularly our most junior enlisted folks from going to a payday loan organization that’s going to charge them 30%, 39% interest. And we want to avoid that.

Terry Gerton Well, the big news for us in this conversation is that you’ve added Space Force to the organization’s name and logo. Tell us about why and what message you wanna send with that.

Ed Thomas Yeah, well, I would say, Terry, it is overdue that finally we have rebranded, renamed ourselves the Air and Space Forces Aid Society. You know, I was on the Air staff with Gen. Goldfein, Gen. Raymond, Secretary Wilson in 2019 on December 20th, when we stood up the Space Force and it wasn’t like a five-year planning ramp to create this new service. On day one, when President Trump signed the NDAA out of Andrews Air Force Base, we had a space force. It was a Space Force of one, Gen. Raymond, but now it’s ramped up to about 10,000 people. They’re going to be ramping up to almost three times that size in the out years, and we need to recognize as the official aid organization of the Department of the Air Force, who we serve. And we’ve been serving guardians since day one, but we just wanna make sure that we’re connecting with those people that we’re charged to help take care of and that airmen, guardians, and their families know that we were here for them.

Terry Gerton As you’ve built a support mechanism for guardians, are you finding that that force has needs that are different in scale or scope from airmen in general?

Ed Thomas No, I would say for the most part, the needs are very, very similar. You know, most of our support is focused on our most junior enlisted, E1s to E4s. And the kinds of difficulties that our young service members are experiencing, whether they’re Air Force, Space Force, Army, Navy, Marine Corps, they look very similar, It’s simple things like not having any savings in their account when a financial crisis hits. Their Hyundai Santa Fe, they lose their engine on their 8-year-old car. Very expensive to fix. Maybe one car for a family and they just don’t have the financial reserves. That’s where we come in, help them get them back on their feet. Hopefully they’ll never need us again, but we want to be there for these families, Space Force, Air Force, when they need us.

Terry Gerton Is there something about this group of service members that you think most Americans don’t understand? You’ve just mentioned some real significant financial challenges.

Ed Thomas Yeah, Terry, thanks. I think there are several things, but you know, I used to work for the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Martin Dempsey, Gen. Dempsey, one of my favorite people in the world. And he would very often say, our people are called to lead uncommon lives. And they are uncommon lives. I mean, you take an 18, a 20, a 22-year-old, they move away from their family, sometimes to the other side of the world. They leave their community, they leave their support, sources of support. Often they end up with all the change happening at once that adds a lot of financial stress, often adds a lot of mental or emotional stress, and all things people learn to deal with. I spent 33 years on active duty in the military, plus four years as a cadet, and I grew up in an army family. I was kind of used to this. But we have a lot of people that are plucked out of their families and their homes across America thrown into this military life across the country, across the world. And there’s a lot unique challenges and stressors that they just might not be prepared for.

Terry Gerton I’m speaking with retired Air Force Maj. Gen. Ed Thomas, who leads the Air and Space Forces Aid Society. Are there particular needs in the Air Force and the Guardians that you’re meeting right now?

Ed Thomas Absolutely. Some of the biggest needs that we meet on a day-to-day basis, and we’re often doing them very quietly, is just basic living expenses. It’s those airmen or guardians or their families that meet an unexpected financial crisis, and they just don’t have the reserves to deal with it. Sometimes it’s rent, sometimes it’s mortgage, particularly in high cost living areas like New York or L.A. Where we’re asking people to go relocate to. Sometimes it is auto repair. So there’s a lot of those things that we’re doing. And then one of the other things that we do that people don’t often realize is just helping young airmen and guardians get back for emergencies. Let’s say they’re stationed in Kunsan, Korea, you know, an hour, hour and a from soul. And they lose a family member, they have a family that’s terminally ill. Our U.S. Government policies, while they’re great and they help take care of our people, they don’t pay for all of those things. So for a young airman to be able to … take off and travel from one of the side of the world to the other to get there for a family emergency, they often need help and they often need support. We’ll do that, we’ll work with them, we work with the Red Cross. We’ll pay for their flights, we’ll get them home and make sure they’re there when they need to be there. Or, in unfortunate cases, at least be there to say goodbye.

Terry Gerton As you look forward to 2026, what are the priorities? Beyond the name change, are there new programs or outreach initiatives or partnerships you’re really excited about?

Ed Thomas No, thanks. Yes to all of those things. We have probably made the biggest changes in the last, say, six or seven months that we’ve probably made in decades to the way we deliver our programs. And I’ll tie that to our number one strategic priority, and that’s just awareness. That’s just making sure that we create and enhance the awareness across the force, so when airmen, especially people who are relatively new to the force, hit a snag, they know who to turn to. So some of the things that we’ve done is we’ve dramatically increased our childcare support, money that goes to these young families to be able to help take care of children when they’re deployed, when they are doing a permanent change of station from one assignment to another. Car seats is another one. We buy car seats for every E1 to E5 when they have a new child. It’s $250 that gets Zelled straight into their account so that they can go get that car seat. We also just finished a program called Home for the Holidays, where we just spent more than a quarter million dollars getting young, single airmen from their location back to home to spend it with family and loved ones over the holidays. So that travel program is one of the things that we’re really proud of, and we wanna make sure that we can reunite our service members with their families, particularly at times like this.

Terry Gerton As we wrap up here, I wanna give you the opportunity to make a call to action. What can the public or industry do to help you move the needle?

Ed Thomas Well, the first thing I’d say, Terry, is the awareness piece. We, while we need funds and we need to fundraise, we want to make sure that all of our service members know that we’re here to help them. That’s where my passion is. And that’s where I want to make sure people know how to come to us in times of need. It’s not only good for those service members and their families, but it’s good for the readiness of the nation. Now, also, I’ll never turn down an opportunity for help. AFAS.org, If people go there, they can either click a button that says ‘hey I need help’ or click a button that ‘I want to support.’ There are certainly a lot of young junior airmen and guardians of their families that we can use with your help. So thank you Terry.

The post An organization’s new name signals a broader mission to support both Airmen and Guardians first appeared on Federal News Network.