BRUNSWICK

Joe Lienert and his wife, Laura, thought their stay at Brunswick Naval Air Station would just be one stop in a series along Joe’s distinguished career path in the U.S. Navy. As it turned out, however, Brunswick would become the place their family would finally call home for good.

The couple and their three children moved to Brunswick in July 2005, when Lienert was assigned to BNAS. Three months later, the Base Realignment and Closure Commission decided to close the base.

“I remember when coming here … and thinking, ‘OK, these are three-year orders. We’re going to get out of here as soon as we can,’” Laura Lienert said. “After six months I was like, ‘OK, how can we stay here?’ We knew quickly this is where we wanted to raise our children here.”

Joe Lienert, a full-time primary physician for the Veterans Administration Maine Healthcare at Togus since May 2011, exited the Navy in April 2011. He signed up with the Maine Air National Guard and served as flight surgeon with the 101st Air Refueling Wing out of Bangor. In 2015, he was appointed state air surgeon.

Last week, he was promoted to the rank of colonel during a ceremony at the Hall of Flags at the Maine State House in Augusta. As state air surgeon, he serves as the primary liaison between Air National Guard Units, the adjutant general and the Air National Guard surgeon general.

“This is an important day for the Maine Air National Guard,” said Maj. Gen. Douglas A. Farnham, Adjutant General for the Maine National Guard, according to a press release about the promotion. “Col. Lienert has served with distinction as our state air surgeon and has my full trust and confidence in taking care of our most important asset, our people.”

Lienert is a first-generation member of the U.S. military. He graduated from the United States Naval Academy in 1992. That’s also where he met Laura, who lived in Maryland at the time.

“And then I actually chose to go into aviation as a student naval aviator and got a spot for that and plans were to go to Pensacola for training,” Lienert said in a recent interview. “Right after graduation I became a born again Christian, and things started changing.”

Stationed at Corpus Christi in Texas, he said, “God directed me to enter medicine.”

His father was an oncologist and as a child he would often tag along while his dad visited patients. This was an important influence, and he also learned he is more of a people person who enjoys one-onone interaction.

He graduated with a medical doctorate in 1998 from the Uniformed Services University, a military medical school. After a yearlong family medicine residency in Jacksonville, Florida, he underwent eight months of training in Pensacola to support the fleet as a flight surgeon.

As a flight surgeon, Lienert was required to maintain a certain number of flight hours and to interact with the air crews, so they could come to trust him.

Lienert said one of the his career highlights was working with a small cadre of flight surgeons to support a space shuttle launch and landing. He got to stay on Cocoa Beach and meet the astronauts.

“It’s a huge deal,” said Laura. “That’s when he got the name ‘Joe Lienert — Space Doctor.’”

Lienert served in Iraq between 2008-2009. To stay in Maine, he then joined VP-26 squadron, but was deployed to the Middle East again in November 2009.

He also served as a full-time doctor for a year at the Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape school in Rangeley. Any prisoner of war will talk about how important this training is, Lienert said.

Right now, “I just want to be the best colonel I could be,” Lienert said, noting his job won’t change, but he may be able to make more positive change with his rank.

dmoore@timesrecord.com