Tow that eyesore. Security forces has jurisdiction over military housing. That's what the HOA president yelled into her cell phone while two FE Warren AFB security forces defenders rolled up to my family ranch driveway in a 2018 Ford Expedition. The eyesore was my father's 2009 Ford F250 in Caribou, parked in his own driveway since the morning he handed me the keys in 2022. The jurisdiction was a fabrication.
My ranch sat on Laramie County land, not Air Force property. The two defenders stepped out. They looked at the truck. They looked at me in my Carheart jacket. Senior Airman Saxon Otterstead removed his cover, came to attention, and saluted.
Senior Airman Meta Halverson saluted half a second behind him. Both defenders had stood in my wing commander welcome brief at FE Warren 12 months earlier. I had been commanding the 90th Missile Wing for 18 months. Brian Pendergas was about to learn that her husband worked for me. The Callaway Ranch sits on the east edge of Laram County, Wyoming, 12 mi north of Cheyenne, on a county road called Saddle Ridge Road that my father, retired Air Force Brigadier General Gilead Callaway, paved the first half mile of with his own savings in 1989.
380 acres of high prairie, sage flat, and a small spring-fed pond. The ranch headquarters sits on a lowrise with the eastern slope of the Laram Mountains visible from the front porch on clear days. My father bought the parcel in May of 1953 with the savings from 2 years of Korean War combat pay. The deed has been in the Callaway family for 72 years. I'm Colonel Whitley Callaway.
I'm 52. I have been the wing commander of the 90th Missile Wing at FE Warren Air Force Base for the past 18 months. Before that, I spent 26 years in the United States Air Force, 11 years as a missile combat crew officer at Minet, Malmstrom, and FE Warren, then 15 years in nuclear deterrence policy and command at the Pentagon, Air Force Global Strike Command, and US Strategic Command at Offit. I assumed the 90th Missile Wing in July of 2024. The 90th Missile Wing operates 150 Minute Man, three intercontinental ballistic missiles across three counties in Wyoming, Nebraska, and Colorado.
I command approximately 4,000 airmen and civilian employees. I sign my name on operational orders that secure roughly onethird of the United States land-based nuclear deterrent. I drive a 2009 Ford F250 Lariat in Caribou Tan to my father's medical appointments because he taught me to drive in it when I was 16. My wife Marray is 50. She is a federal judge for the United States District Court for the District of Wyoming.
She sits on the bench in the federal courthouse in Cheyenne. We met at Yale Law School in 1995 when she was working on her law degree and I was completing my undergraduate Air Force ROC requirement at Yale's Air Force ROC unit. We have been married 27 years. We have one daughter. Our daughter Enes Callaway Vermuan is 27.
She is a lieutenant junior grade in the United States Coast Guard. She is currently stationed at Coast Guard Sector Honolulu. Her husband Vidar is also Coast Guard. They have no children yet. My father, Gilead Callaway, is 84.