Correspondent photos / Maurita Hoffman ... Kim Burin, 71, of Liberty, proudly wears a T-shirt with the name of the Air Force base where he served in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.

EDITOR’S NOTE: This is the final 2024 veteran profile in our annual series, which will begin again on Memorial Day 2025.

LIBERTY — Kim Burin has been a member of American Legion Post No. 235 in Girard for 18 years.

“I’ve held lots of positions there, but I’ve been the historian for all of those 18 years. No one else wants to do it,” he said.

He has served as commander of the post for the past eight years. In addition to being post historian, he also has served as the post chaplain, vice commander and sergeant at arms.

Born in Cleveland, Burin graduated from Vanguard High School in Philadelphia. He joined the Air Force when he was 20 and served from October 1973 to July 1977. He went through basic training at San Antonio Air Force Base in Texas.

After basic training, he studied law enforcement at the San Antonio Base and upon completion, he was assigned to Kincheloe Air Force Base, the 449th Bomber Wing, in the upper Peninsula of Michigan.

The base closed in 1977 and as he was close to his service time being up, he was “discharged early because they closed the base and I did not want to sign up for another four years,” Burin said.

Kincheloe was part of SAC, Strategic Air Command. Burin served in law enforcement, which he pointed out was not security.

“Security personnel were assigned to guard the bombers and nuclear items,” he said. “As members of law enforcement, basically, we were cops.”

He explained they did law enforcement jobs, such as controlling traffic and answering police calls. He said because they were only about 20 miles from the Canadian border “and pretty far away from cities, we often were the first responders.”

He noted that his group would help state police when something happened because the area was remote. He said he liked serving in the Air Force in spite of the remoteness of his base.

“We joked that if the Russians ever came from the north, across Canada, we’d be the first defense,” Burin said.

He did not like the winters in Michigan, saying that he and his fellow airmen often said “it was God’s country in the summer, and in the winter, God left on vacation.”

Burin said many members of his family were not happy when he joined the service.

“This was Vietnam War time, and we were unpopular,” he noted. Nonetheless, he said he was very patriotic and liked “serving the people, and I learned a lot there.”

“It was tough when we were discharged,” he said. “There were no parades, and people had lots of bad remarks for the servicemen.”

However, he noted that a few years ago, he was shopping with his wife, Penny, when a woman approached him and asked if he had been in the military.

“I was prepared for some more bad comments, but this woman thanked me for my service and apologized for ‘the jerks who treated the veterans badly years before.'” He said this reminded him that there are “lots of good people, good civilians, who treated people better.”

Initially when he was discharged from the Air Force, Burin returned to Cleveland and “bummed around for a couple of years.” Then he got a job in maintenance and janitorial service at International Towers in downtown Youngstown. After 30 years working there, he was laid off.

“I wasn’t able to retire, but after about nine months, my dad told me about a job opening at Vallourec in Girard,” he said.

He was hired there about eight years ago and works in security.

Burin is proud of his service in the Air Force and of his involvement in the American Legion. He displayed the many pins on his Legion hat. He is especially proud of the Vietnam War Medal he received from then-Congressman Tim Ryan.

“I was not in Vietnam, but I did serve during that war,” Burin said.

He is also proud to have been a representative at the American Legion Convention in Toledo in 2013. He said American Legion Post 235 has about 180 members.