OSI commander wins Sijan award

  • Published
  • By Staff Sgt. Tonnette Thompson
SHEPPARD AIR FORCE BASE, Texas --  The group of small girls surrounded her, wide, dark eyes staring up in awe.

The woman could have focused on their old, bedraggled clothes, or the bare feet standing on a dirt floor. But it was the girls' faces that she remembers, shining with elation and gratitude at the gifts they'd received. The offering of simple objects - toys, clothing, basic school supplies - drew a reaction from the Afghanistan girls that the woman will never forget.

"They looked like I'd just given them a thousand bucks, just for a pad and pencil," recalled Special Agent Amy Bumgarner, whose charitable deeds along with her diligent work for the Office of Special Investigations earned her the Senior Officer Lance P. Sijan Award for 2006.

Agent Bumgarner was still deployed to Bagram Air Field, Afghanistan, when she learned the news. She was reading an e-mail from AFOSI Commander Brig. Gen. Dana Simmons that listed the year's winners, and saw her name on it.

Seven months later, wearing mess dress blues and a golden medal around her neck, Agent Bumgarner accepted the award during a banquet at Andrews AFB, Md.

"The nicest part was having my family there," she said, referring to the attendance of her parents, Bert and Christine Henderson, and her husband, Randy.

Agent Bumgarner is the commander of OSI Detachment 11 at Sheppard. Before her deployment, Agent Bumgarner had just completed a massive overhaul of the detachment's filing system. With more than 100 case files that needed final notations before closure, Agent Bumgarner kept her team motivated until every file was ready to be shipped and stored in their file repository in Waldorf, Md., within four months.

Although she served as the team chief of four counterintelligence teams during her deployment, setting up CI teams both in Afghanistan and New Zealand, the gifts she gave to the children is what Agent Bumgarner said she is most proud of.

"We sort of adopted this school," she said. "People from other detachments and their families would send these toys and clothes and such, and we'd make monthly drop-offs at the school. It felt really good because it wasn't like I was just doing my job over there; I was helping these children."

What had the greatest impact on her, however, were the Afghanistan girls attending the school. With the Taliban burning down families' tents and making threats to the parents who allowed their daughters to attend school, the young girls amazed Agent Bumgarner with their bravery by still attending.

"They were really special to me; sometimes I brought gifts just for them," she admitted. "It really impressed me how determined those little girls were to go to school and learn, especially when you consider that females are only allowed to attend school up to the sixth grade there."

Even with the Sijan win, Agent Bumgarner doesn't feel an overblown sense of personal accomplishment, as much as pride at inclusion in such esteemed company.

"To sit at that banquet and hear about some of the things the other winners have done ... there are a lot of people in the Air Force doing a lot of awesome things, whether O-4 or E-4. It was humbling to be there," she said.