AFA boss remembered for change

John Regni is learning how to pick out clothes.

For the past 40 years, few such decisions were required. Since he showed up at basic cadet training, he'd worn Air Force blue like a second skin.

"It would be a lot of fun to do it again," he said the day before his retirement ceremony last week. "But I'm not 17."

Regni's last stop in a long line of Air Force assignments was undoubtedly his most influential.

As a three-star general and top officer at the Air Force Academy, Regni spent nearly four years running the school from which he graduated in 1973 and ushering in massive changes.

Outside the 18,500-acre academy, people noticed how Regni opened the gates to the public, and from Interstate 25 drivers could see the first ground work on the academy's move toward green power with a site being cleared that will eventually hold a two megawatt solar plant, the first of several new generation facilities at the school.

Less visible, but probably more important was the work Regni did to rebuild morale at the scandal-battered school he took over in 2005.

"Pride," he called it.

Pride was tough to come by at the school, which was recovering from 2003 allegations that leaders mishandled sexual assault reports. A 2005 scandal that alleged brass and cadets alike were accused of improperly evangelizing non-Christians made it tougher.

"Pride was probably job number one," he said. "Morale sprang from that."

When he got picked, some thought Regni was the wrong man to bring that pride. He's a human resources expert who never fired a shot in anger or sat in the pilot's seat.

Yet he won accolades.

"He's a very, very bright man and got along well with the cadets," said academy graduate Randy Cubero, a retired brigadier general who flew in Vietnam as a forward air controller and later served as the academy's dean of faculty. "He made sure he was visible. He was a tremendous leader."

Regni didn't work on building pride by playing cheerleader. Instead, he spent about an hour every day wandering the hallways of the academy and button-holing cadets to ask their concerns.

"I don't lose any sleep at night about these lieutenants who are the future of the Air Force" he said.

On those walks, Regni made plans to reinvent the school. He put cadets in charge of virtually everything outside the classroom, planning everything from basic training to field trips. They had supervision, but the cadets ultimately determined how to run their school.

"They're leaders," Regni said. "And the more opportunities we give them, the better off they are."

Still, Regni was no teddy bear. He combined the cadet-run system with harsh discipline.

After a 2007 cheating scandal, he kicked 15 freshmen out of the school and set a zero-tolerance policy for cheaters who try to hide their misdeeds.

"Only the superintendent can disenroll cadets," Regni said, saying kicking would-be officers to the curb was "my toughest job."

One of the trickiest jobs, though, was opening the academy to the public.

Since the 2001 terrorist attacks in Washington, D.C., and New York, security has been the Air Force's top priority. Bases throughout the Pikes Peak region have become well-guarded camps that are mostly closed to the public.

The academy, before the stricter security, was Colorado's top man-made tourist attraction, drawing 1 million people per year. That dropped to a few thousand after the gates were blocked by armed guards.

Working with the Pentagon, Regni decided the academy had provided the heightened security, but could not close itself to the public.

"We had to do both," he said.

The result is a system that lets the public everywhere but inside the classrooms and dormitories used by cadets. The school's famous chapel, visitor's center and miles of biking and hiking trails are open to anyone with a driver's license.

"We have so much to offer," Regni said, noting that he hopes to again draw a million tourists to the academy per year.
Regni will leave a permanent mark on the academy.

Solar panels will be installed this summer near the school's airfield. Hydroelectric turbines will soon draw electricity from water flowing from the mountains through the campus.

He wants the school to be energy independent by 2015 and pushed through most of the projects required to make that happen during his final months in uniform.

He took that uniform off Tuesday after a ceremony where he handed control of the school to Lt. Gen. Michael Gould.

Regni will be remembered for steering the school out of troubled waters by focusing everyone around him on building cadets who will lead a new generation of airmen, said Ervin Rokke, a 1962 academy graduate who heads the school's Center for Character Development.

"The salient feature of his tenure was the vision that he brought," Rokke said.