U.S. AIR FORCE ACADEMY, Colo. - Senior officials at the Air Force Academy revealed plans Oct. 14 to rename its civil engineer headquarters building after the base’s first engineer.
The Academy’s Association of Graduates hosted a ceremony announcing the 10th Civil Engineering Squadron’s headquarters building will be named the Col. Arthur G. Witters Civil Engineering Building.
Witters, the school’s first director of installations, drafted legislation signed by President Dwight Eisenhower establishing the Academy April 1, 1954. He became chief of the Air Force’s architectural division in 1961 and, a year later, a consultant for the design of the Academy’s cadet chapel. Later, he helped secure federal funding for the construction of the cadet field house, according to the association. He died in 2011.
A crowd of Witter’s colleagues, cadets and top brass attended the ceremony, including Lt. Gen. Richard Clark, the Academy’s superintendent.
“Colonel Witters laid a foundation for something that was great at its inception and is only becoming greater,” Clark said. “It’s not just about civil his engineering genius, it’s about his foresight of what our Air Force might become one day, and what it would take to develop the leaders of the future.”