Your Keesler News is a survivor Published April 29, 2015 By Perry Jenifer Keesler News editor, March 1985-April 2008 KEESLER AIR FORCE BASE, Miss. -- (Editor's note: Jenifer retired from federal service seven years ago today. He now lives in Sevierville, Tenn.) Expecting an obituary? You won't find it here. The rush to sign off on a death certificate for the Keesler News - your Keesler News - is premature. How do I know this? Your Keesler News is a survivor. The Army Air Corps gave birth to the new base newspaper in the months before America was drawn into World War II. It survived that war. Korea. Vietnam. Iraq. Sept. 11. Iraq II. Afghanistan. Between 1985 and 2005, Keesler was ravaged by three major hurricanes. Your Keesler News prepared you for each storm well in advance, and was in your hands within days after Elena (1985) and Georges (1998). It took the horrific devastation of Katrina (2005) to halt production, only because Gulf Publishing Co., longtime printer and distributor of your Keesler News, was unable to do either. Flyers printed on base served your most pressing information needs for three weeks. Then, like its namesake, your Keesler News came roaring back. During those historic times, the Keesler experience included the renaming of Keesler Technical Training Center as the 81st Training Wing, the standup of 2nd Air Force headquarters, Brig. Gen. Karen Rankin as the first woman to lead an Air Education and Training Command wing and the base's 50th birthday. Your Keesler News reported on it all, as it has every year since 1941. Forty-one of us passed through the offices of your Keesler News from March 1985 through April 2008, one-stripers to lieutenants and civilians. A turnover rate of nearly one position a year can be a recipe for chaos. You, however, didn't go hungry for the lack of Keesler news, not even when the staff numbered only two. There has been recognition, lots of it, before and since 1985, from the base community all the way to the Defense Department. It's not about winning awards though. Information, education, motivation and recreation have always been paramount with your Keesler News. Some said radio would be the death of printed newspapers. It didn't happen. Some said television would write their epitaph. It didn't happen. Some said the Internet would do what neither radio nor television could. This time it's happening, and not only in the military. So here we are, April 30, 2015, almost 74 years after it sprang from the womb as the Keesler Field News. You're reading the last printed issue of your Keesler News. Obituary? Death certificate? Epitaph? Really? It's not as though the words and photos have been dispatched to an unmarked grave in a remote field somewhere north of Interstate 10. They're very much alive on the Web. Today's blue suits and civilians are beneficiaries of a rich legacy. As long as they remain faithful to their inheritance, this is not the end of your Keesler News. I know this because, like Keesler, your Keesler News is a survivor.