Tisdale retires

Published Feb. 24, 2010
By Susan Griggs
Keesler News editor

KEESLER AFB, Ms. -- Thirty-four years after starting her civil service career as a GS-4 cashier at the commissary, Biloxi native Wanda Tisdale is retiring Sunday as the GS-12 resource adviser for the 81st Training Wing staff agencies.

"It was an intermittent part-time position, but it got me into the civil service system," said Ms. Tisdale, who's spent her entire federal career at Keesler.

Less than five months after coming to Keesler, Ms. Tisdale moved to successive clerk typist positions in the training group, security forces and a word processing center in Dolan Hall from 1976-1981.

After nearly six years as an accounting technician, she became a budget analyst for 4½ years before becoming a resource adviser in the 81st Support Group. In 1993, she returned to the budget office as a financial analyst.

Ms. Tisdale's first job with the wing staff agencies came in 1998 to fill in while the program analyst and resource adviser took a three-year assignment in Japan. In 2001, she became the resources flight chief in the 81st Civil Engineer Squadron.

"For most of those five years, I was the lone female flight chief," she recalled. "With the additional pressures of the ongoing A-76 competitive sourcing study, things were sometimes tough."

She assumed her current position in 2006.

She and her husband, Paul, live in Biloxi.