{"id":217546,"date":"2013-09-10T16:49:53","date_gmt":"2013-09-10T20:49:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.afspc.af.mil\/news\/story.asp?id=123362691"},"modified":"2013-09-10T16:49:53","modified_gmt":"2013-09-10T20:49:53","slug":"commander-patches-together-15000-piece-career","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/?p=217546","title":{"rendered":"Commander &#8216;patches&#8217; together 15,000 piece career"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"float:left;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.afspc.af.mil\/news\/story.asp?id=123362691\"><img decoding=\"async\" border=\"0\" style=\"margin-right:15px\" src=\"http:\/\/www.afspc.af.mil\/shared\/media\/photodb\/thumbnails\/2013\/09\/130904-F-PB776-001.jpg\"<\/img><\/a><\/div>\n<p>For nearly three decades, Lt. Col. Rich Operhall, 76th Space Control Squadron commander, has fueled his love of Air Force history and heritage by collecting patches.<\/p>\n<p>A lot of them. More than 15,000 at last count.<\/p>\n<p>The son of a three-war Air Force veteran, Operhall said his love of the Air Force began in second grade. He recalled childhood memories of drawing planes and being fascinated by the flying world.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;In junior high school I had a friend &#8230; and he discovered that by writing to Air Force bases, to public affairs offices and other places, they would send him stuff,&#8221; said Operhall. &#8220;He showed me how to do it and I started writing to different public affairs offices for the various wings and bases and they started sending me stuff.&#8221;<br \/><a href=\"http:\/\/www.afspc.af.mil\/news\/story.asp?id=123362691\">more&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":615444,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-217546","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-air-force-space-command"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/217546","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/17"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=217546"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/217546\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/615444"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=217546"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=217546"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=217546"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}