AFPAAA's Oral History Project was begun on September 12, 1994. It operates following the recommeded standards of the USAF Oral History Program and the national Oral History Association.

The collection accumulates and preserves first-person accounts of public affairs events, activities and related periods in the lives of selected interview subjects. The purpose of the AFPAAA collection is to provide a record of USAF public affairs activities for use by PA & PR practitioners, students, researchers, authors, historians and journalists.

Why? There is a lot to learn from what others have been through ... both good and bad, right and wrong. USAF Public affairs people have participated in every significant activity in which the Air Force has been involved, often in key positions; usually interpreting policy if not making it, and normally in close proximity to the "movers and shakers." Yet, no one has taken the time to collect the "lessons learned" ... until now.

Our goal is to make the AFPAAA Oral History Collection widely available through donations to selected military agencies (see list below) and via the internet.

• Secretary of the Air Force Office of Public Affairs (SAF/PA), Pentagon, Wash DC; 
• Air University Oral History Program, Maxwell AFB, AL; 
• Defense Information School, Ft. Meade, MD; and the 
• Air Force Academy Library, Colorado Springs, CO. 

AFPAAA's Oral History interviews provide a unique perspective on the Air Force and the role of public affairs in the military that will benefit interested students, authors, and journalists alike. As can be seen in the list of persons who have held positions roughly equivalent to todays Director of Public Affairs, the Public Affairs tradition in the USAF and its predecessor organizations is long and populated with some surprising names. Wouldn't it be nice to have Oral Histories from them all?

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