MSG Rhonda M. Lawson, the station manager for AFN BENELUX, comes from a diverse military family. Her maternal grandfather spent two years in the U.S. Navy, she has an uncle who was killed while serving in Vietnam, and she, herself was born at Keesler Air Force Base, Miss., as the daughter of two Air Force NCOs.
After briefly travelling the world with her parents, she and her younger sister found a sense of normalcy when they moved in with their grandparents in New Orleans, La. She graduated from John F. Kennedy High School and attended Loyola University for two years before continuing her family’s military tradition and joining the Army in 1993 at the age of 20.
She attended basic training at Fort Leonard Wood, Mo., and AIT at Fort Benjamin Harrison, Ind., and then began her career as an Army journalist at Fort Knox, Ky. After working her way to editor of Inside the Turret newspaper and earning Commentary and Feature Writing awards, she PCS’ed to Fort Story, Va., in 1997, where she served as the installation’s first Bureau Chief for the Fort Eustis Wheel, and was awarded Training and Doctrine Command’s Journalist of the Year. She later moved on to Fort Hood, Texas, where she edited the Fort Hood Sentinel for two years.
Her move from Fort Hood to Fort Lewis, Wash., in 2001 is when she says she truly became a Solder. She became the NCOIC of the 28th Public Affairs Detachment, which she deployed to Bagram Air Force Base, Afghanistan in June 2002 in support of Operation Enduring Freedom. The 28th PAD is credited with creating the Freedom Watch newspaper and TV news program. After returning to Fort Lewis, the 28th PAD also provided some of the first coverage of the Army’s Stryker Brigade certifications at the Joint Readiness Training Center at Fort Polk, La., and the National Training Center at Fort Irwin, Calif.
In 2003, Lawson couldn’t get enough of the desert, so she moved to Sinai, Egypt, where she ran the award-winning Sandpaper Magazine in support of the Multinational Force and Observers. After a year there, she finally took a knee and moved to Fort Meade, Md., where she taught the Basic Public Affairs Specialist-Writer course at the Defense Information School.
After two years of teaching, Lawson PCS’ed in 2006 to Camp Red Cloud, Korea, where she spent two years as the Public Affairs Operations NCO, a job that more than prepared her for her next assignment as the 3rd Sustainment Brigade, 3rd Infantry Division Public Affairs Officer in 2009. She deployed with the brigade in 2010 to Balad Air Base, Iraq, where she was inducted into the prestigious Sergeant Audie Murphy Club. A year later, Lawson brings her vast experience to AFN BENELUX, and she couldn’t be happier.
Despite her busy career, Lawson enjoys community involvement, and is an active member of Zeta Phi Beta Sorority, Inc., and a co-founder of the New Movement Book Club. She is also a published author, with four novels and seven anthologies to her credit. She has one daughter, Beautiful, who is finding her own way in the world as an actress and writer.