By Joel Langton
The 830 Times
A long-time Del Rio resident received one of the Federal Aviation Administration’s most coveted awards Tuesday in the Southwest Texas College auditorium.
Mike Bridges, who’s been turning wrenches at Laughlin AFB since 1973, received the FAA’s Charles Taylor Master Mechanic Award.
According to Garry Mitcham, the master of ceremonies and a member of the FAA Safety Office in San Antonio, only 3,800 of the awards have been given out.
“I’ve been in the office for two years, and we’ve given out four of the awards,” Mitcham said. “That’s for an area larger than the state of Missouri.”
The award is named after Charles Taylor, who was the Wright Brothers’ mechanic when the Wright Flyer left the earth for 12 seconds in the plane’s first flight Dec. 17, 1903.
Bridges said he was a little surprised when told he was receiving the award.
Bridges told a reporter, “I said, “I’ve been doing this for 50 years already?”
Bridges came to Laughlin for the first time in 1973 where he stayed as a military member, with a one-year assignment to Korea thrown in, until 1989. Then, he was called to higher headquarters, where he worked in the T-1 Site Activation Program, meaning he’d go to different bases that were going to receive the aircraft and help each base prepare.
Upon retiring from the military, he returned to Laughlin where he was just in time to help receive the base’s first T-1A Jayhawk after helping the wing prepare for it from Air Training Command’s headquarters.
As a civilian, he served nearly his entire career there working and leading maintainers on the T-1 program, until Dec. 17, 2024, when the last T-1, known officially as tail number 346 and unofficially as the First Assignment Instructor Pilot’s aircraft, left the base without a T-1 on the ground for the first time in 31 years.
While Bridges has one foot out the door, ready to retire at the end of February, he’s still not sure the retirement trail suits him.
“I’ll probably retire at the end of the month,” he said. When it was pointed out to him the word probably isn’t typically used in correlation with retirement dates, he nodded.
“Yes, but I’ve already retired once,” he said. “I’m not sure what else will present itself.”
During the 30-minute ceremony, Bridges, a high school dropout, told audience members how an Air Force supervisor pushed him to get his General Education Development diploma.
After completing the GED’s course requirements, he went on and earned his associate’s and bachelor’s degrees.
“Here I went, from picking cotton as a kid to having my degree,” Bridges, a Greenville, Texas, native, said.
Tuesday, that cotton-picking kid was honored with one of the most coveted awards available to FAA maintainers.
The writer can be reached at JoelALangton@gmail.com .
