Chief Master Sergeant Griffin promoted

NEWBERRY — On Saturday, March 2, Benjamin A. Griffin was recognized for his promotion from Senior Master Sergeant to Chief Master Sergeant, the highest rank that enlisted personnel in the United States Air Force can be promoted to. Only the top one percent of enlisted members are promoted to Chief Master Sergeant.

Chief Master Sergeant Griffin joined the USAF in 1999. In his 24 and a half years of service, has been stationed at bases from California to Afghanistan and North Carolina to South Korea. He’s been deployed six times in support of Operation Enduring Freedom, supported the United States Southern Command (SOUTHCOM) and United States Africa Command (AFRICOM) and has served as an advisor to the Afghan National Air Force in Kabul, Afghanistan.

“Those 24 and a half years have flown by,” Griffin said. “Whenever I first joined, President Clinton was still in office. And then September 11 happened and I found myself trying to explain to people, as their aircraft was diverted to our base, why they were landing here and having to break the news that people had attacked our country to people who had no idea.”

Not long after, Griffin found himself in Kurdistan, where he was helping build bases and where operations expanded. When he returned, he was stationed in Dyess, Texas, his and his wife’s favorite base to be stationed at. Not long after being stationed in Texas, Griffin was deployed to Afghanistan.

“I did a year in Afghanistan attached to the Afghan Air Force where I got to meet so many incredible people dying, literally dying, to make a better world for themselves,” he said, describing why Afghanistan was a favorite deployment. “And while that chapter didn’t end as well as we would have hoped for the Afghans, getting to meet, see, work, fight, with those folks, be with them shoulder to shoulder as they as they fought for things that we fought for in the Civil War, The Civil Rights movement, the Revolutionary War. To see them grow and develop and to fully grasp how fragile it can be made me realize how much more important it is to focus on things here at home as well.”

When he returned from Afghanistan, he was stationed in California, again. Then, from 2018 to 2019, he was deployed on his most recent assignment to South Korea and upon returning to the states, Seymour-Johnson Air Force Base, North Carolina.

“I look back and it feels like just six months ago I was brand new, out on the flight line of Edwards Air Force Base, getting to touch the Space Shuttle Endeavor when it landed there,” Griffin said. “At the same time, it’s been entirely too long.”

Griffin explained how much has changed over the years. When he first joined, he was being trained and taught by older veterans from World War Two, the Korean and the Vietnam War, but now he’s those “older guys” that are not as technologically adept and knowledgeable as the new airmen that he teaches and trains.

“The airmen that come in now are so much smarter and they’re so much more technically adept and they’re so much well rounded they know what’s going on in the world because they grew up with all this information just inundating them from Instagram or TikTok or, or Facebook or whatever social media they grew up with,” Griffin said. “We older folks like to criticize them that they don’t have a social circle. But what we fail to grasp is that their social circle is so much bigger than we actually give it credit for because they are so much better plugged in. They have a better scope of understanding of what’s actually happening and what’s important.”

Chief Master Sergeant Griffin said that his career has been really unique, starting as an arrogant Airman who has accomplishments but failed to see what it took to get those, to where he is now, in a rank that only one percent of airmen are promoted to and giving others the credit. He said all the credit for getting to where he is now was all thanks to his wife and two Master Sergeants he’d met at an early point in his career. They explained to him that you get places using “us” and “we,” not an “I.” Following the conversation, Griffin said he became dedicated to being a better father, husband, friend, Airman and overall person.

“While I’m thrilled that I get to serve in the highest grade and I’m thrilled that I get to wear the stripe that only one percent of airmen will ever get to wear, I would never be here if it hadn’t been for ‘us’ that I found along the way. That’s that’s what’s vitally important to me is that it’s not a me accomplishment,” Griffin said. “Whatever you apply yourself to apply yourself with conviction and passion and with an open heart and an open mind with a foundation of I’m going to be a good human today. Once you once you start from respect and be a good human, everything else becomes a lot easier in life.”