‘We train leaders’: Albany’s Marl McCracken honored for 70 years of combined service

Civil Air Patrol’s 50-year award honors a career spanning Albany’s flood response, search-and-rescue missions and mentoring future leaders

ALBANY — When his 12-hour shift at Albany’s 911 center ended during the Flood of 1994, Marl McCracken still had another job to do. He went to the airport.

There, the Air Force veteran served as a Civil Air Patrol incident commander, coordinating missions requested as agencies responded to the disaster. His military career had taught him how to organize air operations. Albany needed that experience.

“We doubled up on our dispatchers,” McCracken recalled. After his shift, he said, he headed to the airport to help manage the response.

That willingness to keep working is part of a service record recently recognized with the Civil Air Patrol’s 50 Year Achievement Award. Combined with his 20 years in the U.S. Air Force, Lt. Col. McCracken’s record totals 70 years of military and volunteer service.

The recognition honors decades spent searching for missing aircraft, coordinating emergency missions, mentoring cadets and helping the community he first encountered as a young airman in 1955.

“I still have a love for Albany and Georgia,” he said of the community where he and his wife, Anna, chose to settle after his military retirement.

At the squadron’s award ceremony, Anna’s own decades of service were recognized, too. She had never been a Civil Air Patrol member. But when calls came about missing airplanes, crashed aircraft or other missions, she was often the first point of contact.

“She’s the one that always answered the telephone,” McCracken said.

Anna McCracken received a special award recognizing 50 years of that support, he said, though she had been answering calls since his Air Force days.

McCracken’s path to service began even before his military career. Growing up in western New York, he spent two years in Civil Air Patrol before enlisting in the Air Force at 17 in September 1955. His uncle, Grant McCracken, a World War II B-17 gunner, helped inspire that decision.

By December, McCracken had arrived at Turner Air Force Base in Albany. Assignments later took him to places including Labrador, Thailand, Italy and Vietnam, but Albany became the place he and Anna chose to make their home.

In Vietnam, McCracken said, he worked as a command controller for AC-47 aircraft during the Tet Offensive. He recalled remaining at his post as the air base came under rocket attack. His service earned him a Bronze Star.

Command and control meant knowing where aircraft were needed and helping get them there. That experience later carried into civilian emergencies.

“I had a background in air operations, so there were many ways my skills were utilized,” he said.

After retiring from the Air Force in 1975, McCracken returned to Albany and learned that the city had a Civil Air Patrol squadron. A member recruited him into the organization.

He went on to serve as squadron commander, group commander and in positions at the wing level. He spent about 30 years as a search-and-rescue pilot before ear problems forced him to retire from flying, he said.

His responsibilities also developed into those of a senior incident commander, qualified to manage missions across state lines. During the 1994 flood, those skills served the same community he was helping as a senior supervisor at the 911 center.

“I worked that for as long as it went on,” he said.

“In the Flood of ’94, we worked 12-hour shifts,” McCracken said. “We doubled up on our dispatchers, so I was supervisor out there, and after my shift at the 911 center, I went out to the airport and was the senior incident commander, managing requests put in by the Air Force, the state and the federal government.” 

His work in Albany extended to Code Enforcement as the city’s false alarm administrator. He also recalled helping establish a drug prevention and gang intervention effort involving several Albany middle schools, bringing Civil Air Patrol’s emphasis on discipline and leadership into students’ lives.

Of all those responsibilities, McCracken said working with young people remains one of the most meaningful to him.

When he was squadron commander, McCracken recalled, the unit had 19 adult members and 36 cadets. He watched young people learn, take on responsibility and move into careers of their own.

“That to me is one of the greatest things about working with young people, providing them the ability to be the future leaders of our country,” he said.

Recently, a former cadet returned to a squadron meeting after entering the Air Force. The young man had become an electronics technician working on F-16s. The cadet, McCracken said, came back to thank him.

“He said that all that training he got in the Civil Air Patrol helped him when he went into the Air Force,” McCracken recalled.

Then McCracken asked where the young airman was going next. Aviano, Italy, he said.

“I was in Aviano in 1958,” McCracken told him.

The assignment connected a new airman’s future with a place in McCracken’s own past — including one of his favorite memories. While serving there, he recalled, an operations officer who flew an F-100 offered him an orientation ride. McCracken, known as “Mac,” accepted.

They flew over the Alps. Then came another offer.

“How would you like to break the sound barrier?” McCracken recalled the pilot asking.

He said yes.

The flight earned him a certificate commemorating the experience, he said, and a story he still enjoys telling.

His ambition to become a pilot took longer to fulfill. His eyesight had kept him from Air Force pilot training, but while stationed in Thailand in 1974 and 1975, a friend helped him join a flying club sponsored by the Royal Thai Air Force.

He learned in a Chipmunk airplane, earned a Thai pilot’s license and later converted it to a U.S. license, he said.

“That was something that I always wanted to do,” McCracken said.

The desire has not left him.

“Every time I look up and see blue skies, I say, ‘Geez, I want to be up there’,” he said.

Today, his contribution increasingly involves preparing others to do the work. McCracken said he trains members in emergency services and mission management, helping ensure they are qualified when a request for assistance arrives. He also participates in a national radio communications network, practicing the connections that can become essential when disasters disrupt ordinary communications.

McCracken is still finding new ways to serve. He plans to become an instructor, supporting CAP’s science, technology, engineering and mathematics education programs.

“I’m fixing to sign up for that,” he said.

There are opportunities for young people to begin their own involvement, too. CAP accepts new cadets ages 12-18 into a program focused on leadership, aerospace education, fitness and character. Cadets can take part in activities including camping, hiking and aviation experiences. CAP’s national program offers free orientation flights to cadets younger than 18.

The Albany Composite Squadron lists weekly meetings at 7 p.m. Tuesdays at Southwest Georgia Regional Airport, 3905 Newton Road. McCracken said the squadron meets in the old airport fire station; prospective visitors should coordinate with the unit because access is restricted.

For him, the point of those meetings reaches well beyond aviation: “That’s one of my joys: seeing the young people evolve into leaders,” he said. “We train leaders.”

And after decades of answering calls to serve, he says he believes there is work for everyone in Albany to do — whether helping people experiencing homelessness, organizing food drives or joining a community organization.

“Well, I’m proud of Albany. There is so much good going on here.” McCracken said. “And every one of us, we need to look at what we can do to make a difference in Albany. We can all serve.”