Sisters Appreciate the SOWF Helping Them Fulfill a Dream

As a helicopter pilot with the 20th Special Operations Squadron based at Hurlburt Field in Ft. Walton Beach, FL, Capt. Dyke H. Whitbeck deployed frequently.

His daughter April was 2 ½ and his daughter Stephanie was three months old in January of 1984, when his helicopter crashed in the ocean during a drug interdiction mission in the Bahamas. Three of the four crewmembers onboard, including Capt. Whitbeck, were killed.

"Not having Dad was our normal,” recalls Stephanie, but they were not all alone: "We’d go on base and people would say, ‘You’re the Whitbeck kids.’ "

"Our family stayed close to the others in the unit.”

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(Right: Stephanie and April at the Emerald Coast Salute to Special Operations Forces gala Nov. 16)

The sisters gained a father figure when their mom married an Air Force special operator. After she and her stepdad built a log cabin together by hand, April, who enjoyed woodworking, was weighing it as a career, but he suggested she pursue civil engineering instead, saying, "‘that’s where the money is.’ ”

April followed his advice, and with the help of the SOWF, she earned an associate of science degree at Northwest Florida State College and a bachelor’s degree in civil engineering from Georgia Tech, graduating in 2003.

She went on to earn an MBA from Georgia State University and receive her professional engineering license, and for eight years, April lived in Atlanta and worked at a private engineering firm and for a small municipality. Then she returned to the Florida Panhandle.

Today, she is program manager at Eglin AFB, and works with military construction projects. She was part of the team that oversaw the construction of 60-plus buildings to accommodate the 7th Special Forces Group (Airborne), which relocated in late 2011 from Ft. Bragg, NC, to Eglin AFB, adjacent to Hurlburt Field.

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Meanwhile, Stephanie’s interests took her in a completely different direction.

While still in high school, Stephanie considered joining the Armed Forces, but what she really wanted to do was work with animals. While searching online, she discovered that Pensacola Junior College, about 45 minutes west of Ft. Walton Beach, had a zoo program.

Stephanie applied and was accepted. She also did a two-year internship at a local zoo.

"It was a lot of fun working with different animals, and exotic species,” she says.

After graduating from PJC, Stephanie took a job as a veterinary technician in Texas for a few months, before returning to Ft. Walton Beach. She continued her education at the University of West Florida, pursuing a bachelor’s degree in zoo animal science and a minor in business, during which time also worked at a local wildlife rehabilitation center and at the nearby Gulfarium marine aquarium. (Stephanie’s husband, Chris Kadletz, is manager of the Aqua Farm at the Gulfarium.)

Stephanie graduated from UWF in 2008; today, she is the wildlife health supervisor at the Emerald Coast Wildlife Refuge in Ft. Walton Beach, which has four full-time and two part-time employees, and 150 volunteers. The refuge is home to a wide variety of Florida wildlife, including foxes, owls, hawks, squirrels and even a bobcat named Samson.

Most will be returned to the wild, but not Samson, because he was raised in a household.

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For both April and Stephanie, the Special Operations Warrior Foundation has been a supportive presence from a very young age.

"As far as I can remember, we always got birthday cards,” Stephanie says. "It helped me become who I am and do what I do today, and fulfilled my dreams of working with wildlife.”

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"To me, it’s a connection to our father,” April says of the SOWF.

Over the years, members of the SOWF family who knew Capt. Dyke Whitbeck have shared their memories of him with April, who has none of her own. Thanks to their stories, she now has a better sense of who he was.

And while she will always be grateful to the SOWF for financing her bachelor's degree, April cherishes that education most of all.