November 08, 2011
Virginian-Pilot|by Michael E. Ruane
When Al Flowers was born, his grandmother brought him home in a shoe box and sat all night by the wood stove to keep him warm.
When he was 10, he went to the tobacco fields with the adults, "cropping" leaves by hand and dumping them in a cart drawn by two gray mules.
He lived in a tin-roof house with no running water and bathed in a No. 10 washtub.
Coming of age, he thought: There must be something more.
There was.
This month, Maj. Gen. Alfred K. Flowers, 63, retires from the Air Force as the military's longest-serving active-duty general.
He is also the longest-tenured active-duty service member in the Air Force, and the longest-serving active-duty African American in the six-decade history of the Defense Department.
For 46 years, from his days as an Air Force warehouseman, to Vietnam, where he helped gather the bodies of the dead, to his current job at the Pentagon, where he is the Air Force budget director, he has wanted for nothing else.
"Best decision that I've ever made," he said of signing up at age 17.
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