David Kolmetzky

Military career as a recruiter turns to career with the VA.

By Petra Chesner Schlatter, BucksLocalNews.com


Retired U.S. Air Force SMSgt. David J. Kolmetzky may have officially retired from the military, but in his current job, he continues to serve his country.

Kolmetzky is marking his first year as administrative officer of Washington Crossing National Cemetery.

The first burials at the 131st national cemetery took place Jan. 20, 2010.

Administered by the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), the new 205-acre national cemetery will serve veterans’ needs for at least the next 50 years. The cemetery will serve approximately 580,000 veterans in the Philadelphia metropolitan area.

After 22 years in the Air Force, Kolmetzky’s new employer is the VA. He joined the Air Force when he was 18 and served in the military from Oct. 1987 to Aug. 2009 until he was 42.
He applied on line through USA Jobs. “I actually left a job with the Department of Labor in Philadelphia to take this one, because I couldn’t think of a better way to spend a retirement still being able to serve,” he said.

Kolmetzky said he cannot think of anything as rewarding as “honoring veterans and their families like we do here everyday. It’s the next best thing to still being in active duty.”
When he was 6, his family moved to the Bustleton area of Northeast Philadelphia from the Mayfair section.

Most of his relatives were law enforcement officers, but his grandfather served in the Pennsylvania National Guard. His father, Benjamin Kolmetzky, was a Philadelphia police inspector. He is 87 and lives in Bucks County.

Kolmetzky spent most of his career as a recruiter. “I did not deploy in support of any battles or operations,” he noted.

“The reason I stayed in so long and stayed with Air Force recruiting for so long was just the number of kids I was able to give an opportunity to like I had myself,” he said. “I helped kids get into the Air Force who had everything in life they needed to kids that had nothing.

“There was one young man in Michigan,” Kolmetzky remembered. “I went to meet him and interview him and talk about the Air Force,” he said. “He lived in a 12 x12 cinderblock home — one room — chickens running through the house.”

Kolmetzky said the kids slept on a board that was placed across the rafters with a mattress on it. He had a brother and a sister as well. “He joined and came back. Just to see that change in any young man or young woman was about as heartwarming and rewarding as anything.”

But, that’s one story. In the 19 years he was a recruiter, he had a hand in over 3,000 men and women joining the Air Force in one way or another. He said he hopes he made a difference in their lives.

“I still have every letter that was ever written to me from all my recruits,” Kolmetzky said. Call him sentimental. He has all of his 200 recruits’ basic training photographs.

When he completed his tour as a recruiter and then as he moved through different supervision or leadership positions, he technically stopped recruiting.

“But I supervised the recruiters that did,” he said. “I worked at the processing stations where they joined. So, I had a hand one way or another of over 3000.”

Kolmetzky started as an aircraft armaments systems specialist. For three years, he maintained the weapons systems on B52 aircrafts. Then, he became an Air Force recruiter and did that for the next 19 years.

He retired as a production superintendent in charge of recruiting for New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania and Delaware.

When asked what his hope is for the country, the world and children, he said, “I would hope that someday there would be no need for the military. I would just love to see every country, every nationality, every religion respect one another.”

Regarding world peace, he said, “I would hope it would be in my children’s time.”

He is a member of the American Legion Post 79 in New Hope, which is where the veterans’ group, the Guardians of the National Cemetery, is based. Group members are active in the formal ceremonies held at the cemetery.

Kolmetzky lives with his wife, Lynn, in Warminster with their children, Devin, 15, and Hannah, 12. Devin is a sophomore at Archbishop Wood High School. Hannah is in the seventh grade at St. Joseph/St. Roberts School.

Lynn is a radiological technologist specializing in mammography at Lansdale Hospital.