CLIFFORD A. KINNUNEN, Captain USAF (Retired)

USAF OCS CLASS 57C, OC CAPTAIN, 4th Squadron Commander

After OCS, I went to communications officer school at Scott AFB. From there, I was assigned to Andrews AFB as a communications officer in the 2045 Communications Group (AACS). From Andrews, I went to San Pablo AB (near Seville) Spain as communications officer (1959). I spent four years there. Two of our five children were born there. From San Pablo, I was assigned to Headquarters, AFCS at Scott AFB (1963) with the IG's office and spent the next year doing IG inspections. Then, I took out six months and bootstrapped to get my college degree. In 1965, I was assigned to Alaskan Communications Region (AFCS) at Elmendorf AFB. We almost got unpacked when the commander of the communications squadron in Kenai, Alaska was "fired" and the Region Commander assigned me there as commander. I spent three years there, and then retired from the Air Force.

I went to work for General American Life Insurance Company in St Louis, MO as a systems analyst and was soon offered a job as assistant manager in one the company's Medicare departments. I spent a year as assistant manager, and was then promoted to manager. General American was the Part B Medicare carrier for most of Missouri. Most of my years as manager were with the fraud and abuse operation, looking for the abusers and those trying to defraud the program. I had a department of one hundred plus people who did fraud and abuse, special claims, secondary payment recoveries, etc. I was also appointed a co-chairman of a

Technical Advisory Group (TAG) from the various Medicare carriers. The TAG worked with the Health Care Financing Administration to discuss fraud and abuse matters, find solutions to problems in these areas, propose systems for detecting fraud and abuse, etc. This was very interesting work. I really enjoyed it.

I retired from General American in 1987. Since retirement, I have been local coordinator for a group of volunteers who help senior citizens prepare their federal and state income tax returns. This service is free of charge and is sponsored by the IRS and AARP. I have from ten to fifteen volunteers in any given year and we have eight sites where we provide this service. This has been a very rewarding and satisfying experience. I plan to continue this activity for the foreseeable future.

As you can see from the above paragraph, the next planned reunion will conflict with my "job” next tax season. The season ends on April 15th, as everyone is aware, and then I will need to have time to prepare the final reports on the season's results, send out thank you letters to the sites we use (banks, senior centers, township offices, etc.) and to the volunteers. It would not be possible for me to get to Nevada on the 16th. Maybe next year.

Cliff Kinnunen