There have been a few REALLY great moments in my life.
26 May, 1978.
Agua Fria Union High School Graduation.
I don’t know how High School Graduation can’t be a big deal for any kid. It’s a pretty epic milestone that seperates you from being a kid to starting that journey out into the universe, carving a way for yourself in the world. I know it meant a lot to me, having had to slog through two high school programs, thinking you have it all figured out in one, only to be yanked out of it in the middle of my Junior year, and having to figure things out again. Not all my credits counted the same. Classes I would take as a Senior at Rancho were now Junior classes, so as I started my Senior year, I’m reversed with my classmates. Not that that was a bad thing: I made a lot of friends who were a year behind me. Wouldn’t have done that at Rancho. In the end it all worked out, I graduated in the top 10% of my class, was in National Honor Society still (see the collar thingy), and made my parents proud of me!
2 June, 1982.
Graduation from the United States Air Force Academy
Commissioned a 2nd Lieutenant in the United States Air Force
Huge day for me! That was a long, tough four years, and it was all on me to make it work. Quitting was never an option, but there were any number of days, my freshman and sophomore years, where I was convinced I was going to flunk out. Yet, somehow the semester would come and go and I was still pulling down C’s, B’s and some A’s. By my Junior year, I had chosen a major and things were clicking along, and I knew I could handle the academics. There were still some struggles like Philosophy and Physics, but even they fell by the wayside, because by then the light was starting to shine in the distance, and it didn’t feel like a tunnel anymore. I think the impressive thing is that when we graduated, we were given a class ranking, and I actually fell in the top 50%. That left me speechless for a bit: I was a long shot to get in, had shown up with the ELITE of my HS peers, somehow managed to survive an attrition rate of 50%, AND end up in the top 50% of those remaining. Crazy.
January, 1983.
Graduating from Undergraduate Navigator training.
Nav school was the first military technical school I ever attended. It was different, in that I was now a 2nd Lt in the Air Force and working as a job, not just attending school. Again, my future hung in the balance, because at the end of this school I would be assigned my aircraft. But now I was doing the things I always dreamed of. I flew in airplanes and directed the pilots on where to go.
The first plane we flew was the T-43. A small Boeing 737 converted for Navigator training. It could hold 16 Nav student stations, with 4 instructors watching over them. Great trainer. We had a route due north, due east, and one that went southeast. Each mission allowed you to get practical generic experience in the plane doing the job you would be expected to do later in your career, once you were trained on your particular aircraft.
We learned how to take position fixes. Decipher things like wind effect, airspeed, drift, magnetic variation and then predict were we would be an hour or two hours later. We learned how to operate and interpret a ground mapping radar, which came in real handy as a B-52 Bombardier. Celestial Navigation, both day and night, were huge topics of study, and I used them extensively in the B-52 and as a C-130 Nav up until the mid-late 1990’s, when everyone bought the Koolaid that it was easier to just use GPS. Pretty sure they don’t even teach it anymore, which will be fun when the bad guys shutdown all our GPS satellites.
The last plane I flew was the T-37. Think of a low wing Cessna -152 with two jet engines. Two man cockpit. We learned map reading and visual navigation flying around the Sierra Nevada using time, and heading and visual map cues, such as lakes, dams, road intersections, grain silos, etc to identify checkpoints and turnpoints, all the while trying to hit a Time Over Target (TOT) within 10-30 seconds. Very fun.
Assignment night was a big event. I was hoping for an F- 4 or F-111. Not my fate. The top 2 or 3 guys got their choice, and the rest of us fell to class ranking, our “Dream sheet,” and the needs of the Air Force. I was like #4 in my class, so just out of the running for getting a choice. I think I got my 25th choice: a B-52 to Ellsworth. I was devastated! I wanted the fighter, but more than anything I wanted to see the world. I actually considered self-eliminating when I found out my assignment, but as with anything, a good night sleep and common sense prevailed, and I determined to find out what this new adventure was all about and how I could excel at it.
I actually went over the the B-52 Squadron on base at Mather AFB, and asked if I could get an orientation ride. They thought I was crazy, but as newly rated Navigator, with a future Buff assignment, they agreed. Before I walked to the plane, someone remarked, “Geez, Kid, this seems like a lot of work. If you really want to know what it feels to be a B-52 Nav, go lock yourself in a closet for 8-12 hours with a vacuum cleaner.
He was exactly right.
27 January, 1984.
Meeting Laura.
5 July, 1986.
Getting married.
Family.
15 September, 1987 - Kara
Being the first, there are lots of things that stick out about the beginning of our family, and Kara arriving in our lives. First was finding out we (Laura) was pregnant. I was staying at Laura’s apartment in Washington, DC on during one of my C2 (Combat Crew Rest periods) after a 7-day nuclear alert tours. Part of the deal was for living next to the plane for a week, we received 3-1/2 days off, where we could pretty much go anywhere we wanted and and not be charged with leave. I went to see my wife!). She shook me awake one morning and stuck a plastic stick in my face. I, of course, had no idea what it was.
Fast forward 8 months or so, and Laura has moved up to New York, we have bought our first house and moved in, and I’ve been to SOS and back. (It was action packed!)
Kara’s due date was 15 September. I was back on my crew and on alert again, and Laura was going into work every day. Then on Tuesday afternoon, I got a phone call from Laura that said I should head to the hospital, where she would meet me. Contractions had started! Then she said she was running home to get her bag, and would meet me there. Yikes! So I found someone to ride with me and hang out through the birth, because I was still subject to getting called to go fly the mission. (Not sure if they even attempted to find a replacement; everything became a blur at that point.) From the time we got there, until Kara arrived, it seemed we were in constant motion: go in one room to change into a gown, then the contractions coming faster, so we moved to another one where we hung out very shortly, but then they just moved her right into delivery. Lots of nurses bustling around, but no Doctor. Don’t worry, they assured me, he was on his way. And he was. He basically walked in, reached in, and brought out Kara!
4 February, 1990 - Jill
Psychologists have a list of things that can add stress to your life. In the winter of 1989/90, most of them piled up to make it a very stressful time in OUR lives. Into this, poor Jill arrived (totally our fault, NOT hers!).
We had decided to get out of the Air Force the summer before, and in early November, we put our papers in to get out on the 1st of May. Involved with that decision were all the myriad of stressors: that crop up: selling our house, moving somewhere new, but not knowing where; looking for a new job and finding the job; finishing up my MBA; packing up the house. where would we go if I didn’t have a job, etc.. Drama!!!
Jill was born early on the morning of the 4th. The evening before, we decided to take Kara to new Disney movie playing at the base theater. I remember Laura holding Kara on her lap while we watched the show, and at some point, Laura grabbed my arm, squeezing it and telling me we had to go. Contractions had started. We took Kara to her babysitter, Debbie Miller’s house, and then headed to the hospital. I thought for sure it was going to be quick and dirty like Kara’s arrival had been. Not to be. It went on for what seemed like several hours. (it didn’t really). Because Laura was in labor awhile, everyone had time to assemble, and things went fairly orderly as far as i could tell, until there was a quick flurry of activity as she came out. The umbilical cord was initially wrapped around her neck, but with a quick flick, it was clear and she was crying. It happened about that fast, and if I wasn’t paying attention, I would have missed it. But then everyone was all business and smiles and our family was suddenly twice as big as when we started!
Laura and Jill spent rest of that short night, and probably the next in the hospital. In the meantime, (details are fuzzy), Pat, at least, must have driven up from Zelienople. I took Pat to the hospital to help bring Laura and Jill home. For some reason, I must have run back to the squadron building for something while the women all got ready to be discharged, because while I was driving back, in really crappy weather, like an ice storm, I slid into a police pick-up truck who pulled out in front of me when I had the right-of-way. Naturally, this caused quite a delay, but since I had a camera in the car to take pictures of bringing Jill home, and pulled it out taking all kinds of pictures of the accident, nothing came of the incident police-wise (the guy ended up paying to fix the damage himself), and I was back on the road to my family fairly quickly. Obviously not fast enough, if you are waiting in a lobby for a ride home on a winter day. Life happens.
8 December, 1993 - Kurt
My most vivid memories of Kurt’s birth day include walking around and around outside with Laura on a pretty nice day for December. Once things started, I remember being relegated to the side of the delivery room so Laura’s Mom and sister could get front row seats. For some reason they let all of us in, and it got to be a bit crowded at “Go Time.” Having experienced two births before, I generally understood the sequence of events and followed along and listened to the medical staff’s conversation and tone of voice. All went great!
As with the previous births, we purposely avoided knowing the baby’s sex before the arrival, so on top of being thrilled at the sound of a healthy screaming baby, we got the thrill of hearing, “It’s a boy!” for the first time! What a blessing: a fully rounded out family!
15 May, 2015
Taking Command of the 737th Expeditionary Airlift Squadron.
There was a TV show back in the 70’s called ‘Baa Baa Black Sheep.’ It starred a guy name Robert Conrad as a very flamboyant Lt Col Pappy Boyington, who was the squadron Commander of a Navy F-4U Corsair Fighter Squadron, stationed in some mythical island location during World War II. That’s the guy I wanted to be. The MFWIC (Muther F’r What’s In Charge) in a combat zone.
Through a series of strange and unforeseen events, I was given that opportunity. It started when my Commander wanted to set up a new Inspector General Exercise Evaluation team on base. He came to me to be the head exercise planner. I balked a bit, but how do you say ‘no’ to your Wing Commander? So I put together a bunch of large scale excises, culminating in a mass casualty exercise called Exercise Lycoming Reach. It simulated a terrorist attack on the Little League World Series. Our job was to “evacuate” a 100+ ‘patients’ and transport them to waiting FEMA medical teams in Pittsburgh, Buffalo, and Springfield, MA, for triage and ground transport to hospital treatment centers. Big operation. Involved 850 people, numerous state and federal response agencies, ambulance companies in three states, all done in one day.
That blew everyone’s mind away, and by the end of the day, I was the deployed Squadron Commander for our 2015 desert deployment to Kuwait. From that point on, I was consumed by the myriad of details of getting people ready and out of town: including making the crews, finding bodies from other units to fill our vacancies, determining where we would stop on the way over, etc.
Once there it was getting settled, getting everyone flying, then finding out immediately we would move the whole unit to Qatar in 1-1/2 months, so getting immersed in those plans. It was a hectic 6-8 months. I really enjoyed it!
The big event that kicks off a tour as a Commander is the Change of Command ceremony where the Operations Group Commander takes the flag from the out-going Commander, and passes it to you, in front of everyone in your unit. It’s pretty Awesome.
