Sometimes the road just forks

 Changing jobs is a tricky thing. On the one hand, as you lead up to that decision, you are probably getting tired of what you are doing, and the idea of a change starts seeping into your thoughts. On the other, there’s the idea that a promotion or new opportunity is just around the corner if you stay.

So you go back and forth: stay where you know the territory? Or move on and start something newer and potentially better? Both are complete unknowns.

A change decision is pretty easy when you are single. Anything you decide is something only you have to deal with. Get married and have a family, the decisions loom much more impactful to not only you, but the other important people in your life.

Deciding to get out of the Active Duty Air Force was a pretty epic decision. It happened as a few things all came together at the same time. One thing was work. I had just had a really great year as probably one of the top Radar Navigators (Bombardier) in our unit: I had gone to Bomb Comp, then been selected to participate in two Strategic Air Command Bombing/Navigation competitions, and we had brought back trophies from both. I was on Stan/Eval, and things were good. Then we had an inspection team come to town, and on the closed book Bold Face test, they switched the order of a couple questions, and I put the responses out of order, and I failed. As an Evaluator. I was devastated.

At the same time I was getting pretty close to finishing my Masters in Business Administration. So in the back of my mind, I had a pretty high confidence in my salability in the outside world. Great education, proven record of success as a junior military officer, etc.

I had been at Griffiss for 3+ years and it was time to think about what came next. As an evaluator and instructor, the path forward for a mid-level Captain was pretty clear: Castle AFB, CA to be a training unit instructor for newbies, or to Offutt AFB, Nebraska to go work in the vault as a planner. Neither job appealed to me after being at the tip of the spear (so to speak) for the past 6 years. Plus, after being an Evaluator and on all the bombing competitions, I felt I had pretty much done everything that really mattered as a B-52 Navigator. (I think I had a pretty narrow viewpoint back then, but I was 29…)

I also had a family to think about. Laura had managed to get assigned to Griffiss a year after I got there, but the opportunities for the two of us being assigned together were quickly dwindling as she moved up in the weather world, and I moved around in the flying world. She had an opportunity to run a weather Detachment in Colorado Springs, but when I tried to get assigned nearby at the Academy as an Instructor, all the logical slots were already filled with guys in my year group who moved there after their first assignment. No openings.

By this time we knew that Jill was on the way, so the search for “what comes next” became more poignant. I didn’t want to commute to see my family, and Laura didn’t want to be an “Air Force Wife,” following her husband around. The timing wasn’t optimum, but it seemed pretty obvious, the time to pull the ejection trigger ring had come. So I put my papers in at the end of November, 1989; Laura followed suit (after I told her); and we left the Air Force together on the 1st of May, 1990.

As it turned out, once we moved to Pittsburgh, I caught on at Cooper Power Systems in Cannonsburg, fairly quickly. I didn’t like the Quality Engineer job at first, but it grew on me the more things I got involved with and the more people I met. Unfortunately, after about a year and a half, the workers went on strike and I got laid off (Not Quality Control needed if they aren’t making anything). So I went “full-time” back to flying with the Reserves, and loved it. When, after more than a year, the strike was settled and they called me back to work, I decided not to go back. I don’t think that was very popular with Laura - we had two kids by then, and had had a couple of healthcare scares. I just had a feeling that the company wouldn’t last, and it turned out they didn’t. About three years later, Corporate closed the place.

At the Reserves, the flying was great… Hurricane relief missions (Hurricane Andrew), Gulf War clean-up, Bosnia twice, lots of South American counter drug missions, Red Flag, Maple Flag in Canada, OREs/ORIs (Readiness Inspections) kept me really busy. Then one day they announced the good times were over and I quickly realized I needed a real job. I looked at several things, including selling lighting with Pat, selling investments/stocks with Merrill Lynch, etc. but I really wanted to do something I could see made a difference.

I found a part-time job that worked into full-time with a guy in Cranberry who was a Naval Architect and wanted to build stuff along the rivers. I ran the administration side of the business and worked as a projected manager. Lots of interesting projects until  we hit a dry spot and I was basically working for free, still flying for food. About that same time I found a job at US Airways as a ground school instructor, and it felt like a no-brainer: go with the reliability of a major corporation. Working for an airline sounded cool, and it was!

Then 9/11 happened in 2001. After a few false starts, my unit got activated on 3 December, 2003, and I shipped off to the desert on a  year’s worth of orders a week or so later.

In the meantime, US Airways consolidated operations, started furloughing instructors and moved the training center to Charlotte.

While I was activated, I fell back in love with military flying operations, and really enjoyed being a full-time aviator. As my orders expired, the Operations Group had an opening for a full-time GS Air Reserve Technician (ART) Navigator, and they offered it to me. I jumped at it. The pay was virtually the same, if not better, and I didn’t have to move or commute. That was an easy decision.

In all, I (we) faced the job change decision several times, and for me it always came down to what was the best thing to do for our family as a whole. Not always simple choices, but in the end they were fairly straight forward ones I never regretted. (It helped that I got to do everything I ever wanted, work-wise.)

One of my Bomb Run timing/radar aiming forms.

Who’s the best first boss?

 Being in the military all my life, it’s challenging to come up with a definitive “First Boss” figure. I had two jobs in High School, an after-school janitor at Woolworths in North Las Vegas, and a bus boy at some restaurant called “the Bull,” or something like that, in Glendale, AZ. It was just outside the base, so it was pretty busy, but nothing fancy. I have no recollection of having a “boss.” at either of those places. I went to work, knew the job, did it, and went home.

In the Air Force, I didn’t really have a “Boss” until I was put on my first crew at Ellsworth AFB. So I went through college with a lot of “guidance” in an academic situation. That carried over to my training assignments at Mather and Castle AFBs in California. We were in “flights” with a Captain as our Flight Commander, but really we just showed up for class and worked our way through the curriculum. Unless you had issues, you didn’t really talk to them much. I wasn’t the biggest Nerd in the class, and a long way from the worst, so I pretty much just waded my way through the material: Log procedures, general navigation, Day Celestial, Night Celestial, and finally Low level. Then it was a month of Advanced Navigation which was basically how to navigate overwater, using things like dead reckoning, air plotting, air pressure and celestial. Then to Nav/Bomb Training (NBT) or “how I learned to love the Bomb.” Everything B-52 for Navigators. You basically learned to be a Bombardier and Navigator, with the goal that you could show up at your unit as a really basic Navigator.

That was the only place I had much trouble. I didn’t get the way the test questions were written so you could go through the secret documents in sequential order to find the answers. Totally tubed the first and only test I failed. Had to go see the Lt Col for counseling, but once he figured out why I was so lost, he gave me the gouge, and from there on I was fine. It was a test that was meant to get us in the books, so I was like one of the very few guys who had failed it. For over thinking it. Just one of those things. A real head-shaker.

After that it was to Castle AFB where we finally got to fly our selected (I won’t say “chosen.”) aircraft. Then you were put on a training crew with your Radar Navigator (Nav upgrading to Bombardier), new co-pilot, upgrading aircraft commander, and new gunner. We all had dedicated instructors, so there was a Captain Instructor Nav who flew with us, but he was so laid back ~ I did learn a lot from him, but his job was to get us through our check-ride and out the door to our first base.

When I got to Ellsworth, I was just pointed in a direction and told to see the next important person in my life: The Squadron Commander, the Life Support folks, the Admin office, the Travel/finance office, the housing office, the training office, etc. As all the administrative stuff gets taken care of, your life centers on the training office and the tactics office (Bomb/Nav), down in the vault. Sitting Nuclear Alert in a Strategic Air Command B-52 involved a LOT of study and practice. So you show up to work everyday in your blues and go through the secret books learning where the targets were, how to get there, when/where to get gas, when to fire missiles, what to do if you are late, where to go when you are done dropping bombs and you want to come home. etc. Basically you become a walking encyclopedia of preplanned armageddon. THEN you stand up in front of the Wing Commander and all his loyal minions, brief the mission you are about to assume, and stand there taking questions from all the staff officers, grilling you on various aspects of your job. It’s pretty daunting. But in the end, you are a certified Strategic Air Command aircrew member, and you are assigned to your first crew.

My first real boss was a guy named Major Christopher Moore. Chris was a very interesting guy. Most other aircraft commanders were upgrading young Captains, who had been co-pilots for a few years, or maybe had been FAIPs (First Assignment Instructor Pilots). Chris had been at one or two bases previously, but then had been a Staff officer somewhere, gone to Air Command & Staff College in residence, and was back in the cockpit for a year or two then onto the staff track somewhere. The uniqueness about that background was he knew what it was like to run a crew, but also know what all the Ops organizations were looking for when they thought about “success.” If two opportunities came up for the crew, he would choose the one that gave his crew the greatest exposure. The fun part was he had total trust that we could perform any tasking.

It was a great crew: At the beginning it was Chris as the Aircraft Commander (AC), Capt Tom Griffiths (CP), Maj Jim Veazey (RN -Bombardier), Me as the Nav, so the weak link); 1Lt Dave Bucknall (EW) and SSgt Lynn White (Gunner). If there were VIPs on base who wanted to fly, we were the crew: Chris was born Staff officer, so made sure we had briefs prepared and everyone could give a tour of the plane or their flight stations. He put us in for awards, not caring if we won or not. It was getting his people’s names and stories out in front of leadership. He volunteered us for things like Academy cadet visit liaisons… Additional duties that seemed like a pain at the time, but paid off when the two-star sent a letter of appreciation to your Wing Commander with your name on it as an outstanding performer.

He spent a lot of effort making sure our performance reports sparkled. He made us write our own Performance Reports. When I protested, his logic was simple: You know better than anyone what you did. If you write it well, the worst you can have at the end is what you put in it, so write it well. If your rater is lazy, he’ll hand in what you wrote. If he cares, he’ll make it better. It was also great practice for when you were put in a leadership position and had to write reports on your staff. That came in extremely handy later in life. I’ve written dozens of performance reviews since then.

He also did a great job looking out for the guys on his crews. Tom Griffith went on to upgrade to aircraft commander, lead a Bomb Comp crew and became a Squadron Commander at Barksdale. Jim Veazey left our crew, when to Training Flight for a bit then out to Edwards to work on the B-2. Dave Bucknall became an instructor, flew Bomb Comp with Tom and went to Minot, then got involved in the whole nuclear reduction monitoring program. It allowed him to stay in the Dakotas till he retired.

Me? I’m convinced he helped me move from the crew to Training Flight, where I flew with all the young guys and got set up for an early upgrade to Bombardier on my way to my next assignment at Griffiss. What a blessing that was. I didn’t show up and immediately get put at the bottom of the Nav upgrade list. Taking care of your people has huge pay-offs.

Besides running a good crew, Chris Moore taught me about how the Air Force works, how to focus your personal career for success, and the importance of taking care of your people. They will  remember your efforts, be better employees and teammates; and return the favor in spades. It has proven sound advice many times.