News Release

Coaldale native promoted to Air Force Lt. Colonel

Major Allen Rabayda was promoted to the rank of Lieutenant Colonel in the United States Air Force on Friday, Dec. 2. The ceremony was held in the Joint Warfighting Center at the United Staes Join Forces Command in Suffolk, Va., where Lt. Col. Rabayda serves as a Modeling and Simulation Planner for the United States European Command.

Lt. Col. Rabayda was born on March 22, 1966 in Coaldale. He graduated from Panther Valley High School in 1984 and then attended Pennsylvania State University where he was a member of the school's Air Force Reserve Officer Training Corps. He graduated in 1988 with a bachelor of science in meteorology and was commissioned into the United States Air Force as a Second Lieutenant on May 6, 1989.

In March 1997, Captain Rabayda earned his master of science degree in meteorology at the Air Force Institute of Technology's School of Engineering, Wright Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio.

Lt. Col. Rabayda has served with the fourth Infantry Division in Fort Carson, Colorado; the 48th Fighter Wing, Royal Air Force Lakenheath, England; the Air Force Combat Climatology Center in Asheville, North Carolina; and as a Flight Commander with the 56th Fighter Wing, Luke Air Force Base, Arizona, the world's largest fighter aircraft base.

Lt. Col. Rabayda is married to the former Christine Lynne Wagner of Reading and they have three children, Daniel (10), Adam (8), and Sarah (4). He is the son of Daniel and Patricia Rabayda of Summit Hill. He also has three brothers, Daniel, Phillip and Lewis.