The Warmer Fitness Center was named after legendary Airman, Sgt. Benjamin F. Warmer. His story (below) is proudly displayed in the entrance.

“The secret dream of every American fighter pilot in combat was to shoot down five enemy aircraft. Even today the title ‘Ace’ conjures up special images of aerial dogfights between resolute pilots performing aerial derring-do far beyond the eyes and ears of mere earthlings. The Army Air Corp enlisted Warmer on April 18, 1942. Physical bigness and a cool, reserved, but not unfriendly, personality may have been Ben Warmer’s greatest asset as a B-17 waist gunner. Just how big he was is uncertain, but the records of his physical exam near the end of his fifty-mission combat tour measured him as six feet five inches tall weighing 215 pounds. In early 1943, he became the right waist gunner on the ten-man, B17F crew of 2d Lt. J.H. Drake. The crew was assigned to the 348th Bomb Squadron of the 99th Bomb Group. Theirs was one of 35 crews that flew the South Atlantic route to Marrakech, Morocco, in early March 1943. Sergeant Benjamin Franklin Warmer III was a Flying Fortress gunner of incredible skill. One memorable day, while on a bomb run at 21,000 feet over Sicily, he accomplished what no American fighter pilot has done in any war. During a frenzied fifteen-minute air battle on July 5, 1943, Warmer fired 1,200 rounds of carefully aimed 50-caliber ammunition and bagged seven of Germany’s best fighter aircraft. He would go on to down a total of nine enemy aircraft gaining him Ace status. After the war, Ben Warmer was a successful businessman in southern California. He spent his retirement years doing what he liked best, deep-sea fishing, where his only combat was with a fighting denizen of the deep blue sea.”