{"id":2002,"date":"2019-09-04T11:53:12","date_gmt":"2019-09-04T15:53:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/?p=2002"},"modified":"2019-09-04T11:53:25","modified_gmt":"2019-09-04T15:53:25","slug":"lakeland-native-climbing-noaas-corp-ranks-hoping-to-someday-fly-hurricane-hunter-planes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/2019\/09\/04\/lakeland-native-climbing-noaas-corp-ranks-hoping-to-someday-fly-hurricane-hunter-planes\/","title":{"rendered":"Lakeland native climbing NOAA\u2019s Corp ranks, hoping to someday fly Hurricane Hunter planes"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Lakeland native and 2009 George Jenkins High School graduate\nKennieth Brewer wore the blue flight suit of an ensign for the National Oceanic\nand Atmospheric Administration Corps as he helped ready another hurricane\nhunter flight over the weekend for the pilots, scientists and meteorologists\nbased out of Lakeland Linder International Airport.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI knew I wanted to get into the military and then NOAA came\nabout,\u201d said Brewer, 29, who earned his bachelor\u2019s degree in 2014 from Embry\nRiddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach. \u201cI thought that would be a\nreally cool job.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

His first stop after college graduation, though, was in airport operations and security manager in his hometown at Lakeland Linder, where he helped to attract the NOAA Hurricane Hunter base of operations from MacDill Air Force Base.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHe started with us as an intern and worked his way up the\nranks,\u201d said Airport Manager Gene Conrad. \u201cBut we knew his heart was someplace else.\nHe wanted to serve in a different capacity \u2014 I know when he left he was super\nexcited about NOAA. He\u2019s carrying the torch for not only himself but for the\nairport and everything we stand for. We\u2019re just super proud of him.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At around the same time the NOAA hangar was being built, his\napplication to join the ranks of NOAA\u2019s team was accepted and he was sent to\ntraining in Vero Beach. He is also working on his master\u2019s degree from American\nMilitary University, an online program. He expects to finish up both soon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Brewer\u2019s ancestors moved to Lakeland about 120 years ago,\nbecoming an early settler in the area. The family is also made up of many\nmilitary service members.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cEvery male and a lot of females,\u201d Brewer said, a ready grin\nacross his face. \u201cThe whole family\u2019s pilots, as well.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Brewer took his first flight out of the Bartow airport with\na former U.S. Navy pilot when he was about 7 years old.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI was bit by the bug,\u201d Brewer laughed. \u201cI immediately knew\nwhat I was going to do.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When reminded that famed Apollo 11 Astronaut Buzz Aldrin\ntook his first flight out of Bartow, too, Brewer said he knew that because his\nuncle flew in the same squadron as Aldrin.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Like other NOAA pilots before him, he will have to work his\nway up to the P3 planes that fly through hurricanes or the Gulfstream jets that\nfly above the storms. Instead, he is starting out small on a twin-engine Otter\nthat does shore surveys and scouts for mammals along the coast. Part of the\nplane\u2019s mission is to spot endangered right whales in shipping channels.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe can see where right whales are and change the shipping\npath,\u201d he said, adding that the plane\u2019s task is also to map coastlines before\nand after storms. \u201cWith coastal mapping, it gives immediate feedback. It helps\nthe governor and the president allocate resources to the proper area.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Brewer said he is looking forward to climbing the ranks in\nLakeland, where he lives with his wife, Kimberly, the director of education for\nthe Aerospace Center for Excellence \u2014 the overseeing organization for Sun \u2019n\nFun.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Lakeland native and 2009 George Jenkins High School graduate Kennieth Brewer wore the blue flight suit of an ensign for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Corps as he helped… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2003,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"9","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","inline_featured_image":false,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"wpai_generated_summary":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"dois","default_image_id":71799,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2002","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2002","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2002"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2002\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2003"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2002"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2002"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2002"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}