STEVE MILLER/STAFF

Sergeant Major of the Army Raymond F. Chandler Ill, right, thanks soldiers of Alpha and Charlie Batteries, 2nd Battalion, 4th Field Artillery for allowing him the opportunity to go out in one of the Multiple Launch Rocket System (MLRS) launchers and fire a rocket on Friday.

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LPD Lt. Brian Shotts receives his new bars from his father, Dale, during his promotion ceremony Friday at the Lawton Municipal Court. Shotts began his law enforcement career at the Comanche County Sheriff's Office in 1996 and was hired by LPD in 2003. He has served as a patrol and K9 officer, been a part of the Gang Unit, serves as a firearms instructor and is a member of the Criminal Investigation Division. "Thank you to everybody that's been involved in my career," Shotts said. "You've groomed me into the officer that I am now."

Blue Moon's Manicures opens with a big bang

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SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 15, 2012 LOCAL THE LAWTON CONSTITUTION 3A

Police search for identities of suspects in city robbery Police say pair took off in stolen car after taking cash BY MALINDA RUST STAFF WRITER MRUST@LAVVTON-CONSTITUTION.COM

COURTESY PHOTOS

These are pictures of two men Lawton police are searching for in connection with the robbery of a Lawton business on Wednesday.

Lawton police are still searching for the identities of two robbery suspects who allegedly burst into a southwest Lawton business Wednesday for cash and took off in a stolen car.

Lawton police first start-ed investigating the case around 11:15 a.m. when one of the employees at Indian Nation Wholesale, 3602 SW 11th, was able to get free and call for help.

LPD Capt. Craig Akard said two black men came into the business, at least one brandishing a firearm, and demanded money. After taking an undisclosed amount of cash, the two left the business and stole a PT Cruiser from the parking lot as a getaway car.

The maroon PT Cruiser was abandoned in a hurry at Southwest 10th Street and Summit Avenue, where the two suspects reportedly clambered into a black, short-bed pickup truck with purple detail.

According to dispatchers, the vehicle was last seen by bank employees at South-west 6th Street and Gore Boulevard headed west.

Blue Moon's first produc-tion went off with a bang. Opening Friday night with almost a full house, Mani-cures and Monuments was heartwarming, realistic and well-performed.

MEGAN BRISTOW

MINI REVIEW The cast was led by Bai-

ley (Sahona Littig-Albin), a hardened, retired Army nurse and Janann (Hannah Brock), a future manicurist that has to complete time as the nursing home's mani-curist before she can grad-uate from school. These characters were supported by Camille (Jillian Hud-son), Mr. Swanson (Clayton Hudson), Luther (Tyrell Al-bin), Sammy (Jordan Godleweski) and Smitty (Laura Ewing).

Vicki Caroline Cheat-

BT JUDI BOLAND STAFF WRITER JBOLAND@LAVVTON-CONSTITUTION.COM

DUNCAN — The dangers of texting while driving is the focus of a special assem-bly for Duncan High School students on Wednesday.

Duncan Assistant High School Principal Justin Smith said that even though there is a lot going on that week the administration be-lieves in the importance of the message.

This is the same day Gov. Mary Fallin has proclaimed to be "No Texting While Dri-ving Awareness Day" in Ok-lahoma.

"We are wanting to be a part of this because of the importance and the possibil-ity of saving a life," Smith said.

No arrests had been made as of Wednesday afternoon, and police say they need tips to identify the suspects. One was described as about 6 feet tall, thinly built, wear-ing a white shirt, dark shorts and a gray pullover. The other was 5 feet, 8 inch-es wearing a baseball cap and had facial hair.

wood, originally from Law-ton and playwright for the show, succeeded in portray-ing the emotions of life of its residents. The brilliancy of her pen coupled with the experienced direction of Jack Hunsucker and the performance of the cast made for an enjoyable evening.

This show will be per-formed again tonight in ad-dition to the performances on Sept. 21, and Sept. 22. All performances begin at 8 p.m. with a dinner option at 7 p.m. The stage is located at Goodwill Adult Daycare Center, 923 NW Hilltop.

For reservations, call 591-6730. Tickets are $15 for adults and $10 for stu-dents. Dinner is an addi-tional $10.

A full review will be in the Styles section of Mon-day's edition of The Lawton Constitution.

Along with the assembly there will be balloons placed on cars in the school parking lot that read "Don't Text and Drive."

Smith said there will also be pledge cards handed out which both teens and their parents can sign promising not to text while driving. The cards explain a Virginia Tech Transportation Insti-tute survey which found those who text while driving are 23 times more likely to be involved in some type of safety critical event as com-pared to those drivers who don't text while driving.

This is all part of "It Can Wait" which is AT&T's no texting awareness cam-paign.

"We are concerned about everybody texting while

If anyone has any infor-mation about this robbery or the identity of the al-leged robbers, call Crime Stoppers, 355-INFO. Callers can remain anonymous and may receive up to $1,000 in cash for tips leading to an arrest and charges being filed.

Benefit set to build pavilion at homestead

CACHE — The Cable fam-ily will hold a benefit garage sale from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. to-day at the Cahoma Building, located 1 mile west of Cache on old U.S. 62 and then one-fourth mile south on Quanah Road.

Items to be sold include blankets, comforters, cloth-ing, tools, household items, and arts and crafts.

Breakfast will be served from 8 a.m. to noon during the sale at $5 per plate for adults and $2 for children. Pancakes, bacon, eggs, sausage, juice and coffee will be served.

In addition to the garage sale, there will also be a bin-go session from 7-10 p.m., also at the Cahoma Build-ing. Other evening activi-ties will include a 50/50 cash split drawing, blackout, cake walk and a concession stand.

All benefits from the garage sale and bingo will go toward the building of a pavilion on the old homesite of Shorty and Leatrice Ca-ble, located 31/2 miles west of Cache on old U.S. 62.

"We invite everyone to come out and help us out, and have a good time," said Jeanne Wilson, daughter of the Cables.

Prayer walk will be held Sept. 22

Spread the Word Ministry Worship Center will host the Big Challenge, State Prayer Walk from 10-11 a.m. Sept. 22 at Fort Sill's 3-mile track, Sheridan and Mow-Way roads.

Participants should as-semble in the parking lot ad-jacent to Sheridan and Mow-Way roads before 10 a.m.

Call 574-4700 for more in-formation.

driving," said Deano Cox, AT&T Oklahoma.

He said the company has gotten involved in this pub-lic awareness campaign due to the dangers inherent with driving and texting.

CONTINUED FROM 1A said, noting that the live fire training included elements from two 2-4 FA batteries, Alpha and Charlie.

Chandler said what im-presses him about Fort Sill is "the people — a positive attitude, a take-charge atti-

tude, a lot of great train-ing going on. The invest-ment in sim-ulations and constructive training re-ally impress me, as we look to ways

to be more efficient with our dollars. And then just coming out here (on the East Range) and seeing kids excited about what they do and being able to employ this system and shoot rock-ets. You know, it's inspiring. I'm feeling pretty good about things right now."

In his previous assign-ment Chandler was the first enlisted commandant of the U.S. Army Sergeant Major Academy at Fort Bliss, Texas.

"It was part of the Year of the NCO that the Army celebrated back in 2009, and it was about showing the strength of the Non-Commissioned Officer Corps and where we've come really since the be-ginning of the volunteer army. Gen. (Martin) Dempsey in support of the Year of the NCO initiative made the decision to re-place the commanding of-ficer, a colonel at the time, with a command sergeant major, and I was the one who was selected to do that job," Chandler said.

Chandler will be the guest speaker for tonight's Backbone Ball celebrating the NCOs as "the backbone of the Army," but that's only one of many reasons that brought him to Fort Sill.

"I'm here to see soldiers and families. I'm here to get an update on training. I'm here to see some of the ini-tiatives with live, virtual and constructive training that's going on. See these soldiers, and one of the things that I'll do is to be at the Backbone Ball and speak," Chandler said.

He said he's had a lot of exposure to field artillery in the past as a cavalryman most of his military career.

"That's one of the com-bined arms organizations in our Army, and we love our artillery and they're always around. As a matter of fact,

Sgt. Maj. (Sam) Young, the Artillery School command sergeant major, and I served together previously in a cavalry squadron, so I'm very familiar with and very passionate about ar-tillery," Chandler said.

He said his plans are to see that the Army continues to be the best the nation has ever fielded. His office will take direction from the president and the secretary of defense and continue to make the U.S. Army even better than it is today.

On Jan. 9 of this year, Chandler's approach to keeping the best and losing the rest as the Army down-sizes was an Army Times cover story.

"I'm very excited about and proud of the efforts that our leaders have made across the Army to retain the best-qualified individu-als. We've done an outstand-ing job to this point, and I believe we'll continue it into the future. With our reten-tion program, we have real-ly made a strong effort in eliminating those who real-ly aren't the best-qualified folks. We've gone through a lot of natural attrition, peo-ple just leaving the service because they've made a de-cision to do something else, and I think we've retained the best-qualified folks. So I'm very proud of where we are.

"Last year we were about 568,000 or so people, and we're around 555,000 or so right now. And we'll contin-ue on a glide path to 490,000 around 2017. So I think we're on path, on target. Very proud of what the ef-fort's been so far," Chandler said.

With the drawdowns in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Army's future mission will be to do whatever the nation needs it to do. Its focus will still be in the Central Com-

mand area of operations and the Pacific, but its real strength will be to do things that none of the other serv-ices can do, he said.

"We focus on brigade combat teams and brigades, but we have a lot of other things that the Army does beyond that. We provide al-most all of the logistical support for the other servic-es. We do a tremendous amount of work for training the other services. As you know, right here at Fort Sill we train both the Marine Corps and our partner na-tions, so we do a lot of other things besides brigade com-bat teams."

Adviser assistance teams are part of the strat-egy, which is to "prevent, shape and win," and pre-vention is going to come from the great training that soldiers are doing and their ability to demon-strate to adversaries and allies how ready the coun-try is. Shaping will be done through assistance teams around the world.

The Army has started to regionally align brigades, Chandler said. The first will be next year with the 2nd Brigade, 1st Infantry Divi-sion in Africa, and the Army will look to do that in other places around the world.

"That shaping effort is go-ing to help us to build part-ner nation capacity so that we don't have to go and fight. And at the end of the day, if we are called upon to win, win decisively," he said.

One of the biggest chal-lenges for soldiers and their families today is transition-ing from 11 years of persist-ent conflict to being ready for something else. What's next?

"We don't know that. So we've got to be ready for all contingencies," Chandler said.

STEVE MILLER/STAFF

Command Sgt. Maj. Taylor Poindexter, left, command sergeant major of 2nd Battalion, 4th Field Artillery, presents Sergeant Major of the Army Raymond F. Chandler Ill with the pod cover off the back of a rock-et, signed by all the soldiers who went out with him on a live fire exercise Friday.

SILL: Sergeant Major fires MLRS during visit here

Assembly focuses on driving, texting dangers