Chapter 12

Jeff walked into my office, pulled up a chair, sat down, and said “I just stopped by to say goodbye”.  It was 20 January 1993, 0935.  It was sunny and cold.

Jeff was the squadron commander and he was everything a squadron commander should be. He was fair, consistent, even tempered, and compassionate yet firm.  He had flown Hercs, well, forever.  He was one of the last Viet Nam era guys and he brought that experience and those hard learned lessons to everything he did.

At first I thought he was headed out on a trip so I asked him where he was going and how long he’d be gone, but he just calmly said that he was retiring today and needed to out-process by noon.  I was gobsmacked (I love that word).  I asked if the family was alright, if he had a job transfer, if there was anything I could do.  He just shook his head and said everything was fine.  He just couldn’t continue to serve.  So I pressed him and he quietly and passionately told me why.

“You know I served in Viet Nam, those were really tough times.  I lost friends, but we did the job that was asked of us.  And when we came home, we came home to people that spit on us.  It was frustrating, but we moved on and we live our lives and try to honor those that didn’t make it.”  At this point his tone began to change.  I wouldn’t call it anger, he was firm and resolute.  “I lost too many friends and I believe too much in America to serve under a draft dodger who despises the military.  I’ll be retired before he takes the oath of office this afternoon”   And that was that.  No more discussion. Decision made.

We talk about integrity as a core value in the Air Force, but what does that really mean and how does that affect the way we live our lives and make important decisions.  I see lip service, I see politics soaking through the fabric of the military and staining the centuries old call to selfless duty.  We’re not perfect people but we need to hold ourselves to a higher standard than those we serve.  We can’t hide behind regulations, they’re no substitution for integrity and sound judgment.  We have to do the right thing not the politically correct thing.

Jeff was perfectly positioned to make O-6.  He would have been a great Vice Wing Commander, but if he couldn’t look himself in the mirror in the morning then it isn’t worth it.  He couldn’t compromise his values.

“The day we see the truth and cease to act is the day we begin to die” – Martin Luther King

Chapter 11

Our lives are made up, mostly, of habits.  The good ones, the bad ones, everything we do is based on the sum total of our experiences and our behavior based on the results of previous actions reacting to those experiences.  The question is, what’s a good habit and what’s a bad habit?  There are some obvious bads and some obvious goods, but most fall somewhere in the middle, habits that give our lives order and provide a rough framework for everyday living.  We have our favorite meals.  Maybe it’s pizza on Saturday nights, or Wednesday date night with the spouse.  We shower the same way, we brush our teeth the same way, we drive to work the same route.  Most of what we do, we do because we don’t have think about it.  I‘m no exception, when I’m at home I pretty much do the same thing every morning.

My alarm is set for 5:30 although most of the time I automatically wake up at 5:25.  It’s one of those radios that comes on softly and then slowly brings up the volume so you don’t jump out of your skin.  I don’t have to worry about it waking up Peg since she can pretty much sleep through a nuclear detonation.  I don’t have it set to music, I have it set to the same station I’ve been waking up to since I was 14 years old, KDKA.  It’s the only time I listen to the station and it’s really all about the morning format.  News at 5:30, weather and traffic at 5:35, sports at 5:38, and then the thing that drives me from bed 99% of the time at 5:40.

It’s a segment called “And Now You Know”.  They have a reporter who, daily, comes up with some question that is either so obvious that any idiot already knows the answer or is so trite that nobody cares.  At least I don’t care.  Questions like “Do kids really need discipline”, or “Are men and women really different”, or “Should you eat more vegetables”.  She interviews someone who’s written a self-help book and is an “expert” on the subject and she ends with “And now you know”.  Rarely do I make it to the final line. Before she gets there I’m irritated enough to leap from bed to bathroom and my day begins.  However, one day last month I had a 1% morning.

On that morning, my interest was peaked by the question “Can you change your attitude”.  The discussion focused on a recent study that showed that we have the capability to consciously change ourselves from a negative person to positive one.  This, of course, is no surprise to the Christians among us, but this study showed that our brains actually get rewired when we decide to be a “half-full” person.  And it doesn’t take long to happen if we make the choice.

We all have coworkers who are, shall we say, a challenge.  They’re the wet blankets, the whiners, the naysayers, the gossips.  They bring the work place down and they have a nearly exponentially negative affect on everything you’re trying to do and they can quickly destroy an organization.  Sadly, some people don’t know that’s what they are.  Maybe they grew up in a family where everyone was that way.  Maybe they have a spouse who drags them down, or maybe they just evolved into it.   The other option is that they’ve made an intentional choice to be that way and those are the ones that do the most damage.  They enjoy undermining anything positive and love to see others as miserable as themselves.  They’re the people that I have the least amount of patience with.

The question is, how do we deal with them?  I’ve always preferred the “overwhelm them with kindness” approach.  Be the ying to their yang.  When they get overly negative, get overly positive.  Never lower yourself to their level and always take the high road.  Immediately squelch negative rumors with positive facts.  Be consistent, positive, a good example, and supportive to a fault even when you really want to slap them.  You can wear most of them down and a positive attitude is contagious.  Occasionally nothing works and if they become a threat to the organization then, if you’re in a position to make a change, you might have to “encourage” to move on.  If they really don’t like what they’re doing then maybe they should find something they do like.  Regretfully, some people will never find something or someplace they like.  If only we could rewire their brains it would be easier but all we can do is let them know how the rest of the world perceives them and let them make the choice to change on their own.  We can give them the opportunity and support but it’s really up to them.

Recent studies show that it takes between 21 and 66 days, based on complexity, for something to  become a habit and the behavior study showed that in as early as 6 weeks you can modify neural pathways to change from negative to positive. All I can recommend is that you to look in the mirror, listen to yourself, try to see how others see you, and make a choice.

Chapter 9

I’m sitting here at my computer on a beautiful Saturday evening and for some reason I can’t get two words out of my head, “cognitive dissonance”.  Most of you probably know that my interests lie about as far from psychology as you can get.  My degree is in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering and I’m all about quantifiable, measurable things.  I know that you can usually manipulate numbers to come to a convoluted conclusion, but I like to think that pure science and reason should prevail.  I’m not that touchy feely guy.  I’m the guy that tells the crying little kid (or the occasional adult) to grow a pair and get over it.  Not that I don’t have a sensitive side, but I like to save that for things that really deserve it.

But back to cognitive dissonance.  It’s basically defined as believing in, or about, something so strongly that when undeniable evidence to the contrary is presented, you find some way to mentally convince yourself that you’re still right.  I heard a great example last Friday from the Head of Pennsylvania’s Environmental Protection Agency.  Someone at the Chamber of Commerce luncheon asked him why, after years of espousing the joys of clean natural gas, radical environmentalists suddenly attacked natural gas development so rabidly.  He began the answer with cognitive dissonance.

He said that for years they had hammered on coal and oil because they were trying to break down the U.S.  economy and force us into energy sources that are not capable of sustaining our standard of living. They knew the science of natural gas and knew that it was clean and safe but it was only available in the U.S.  in extremely limited quantities and was not a threat to their world view.  However, when recent discoveries proved that we have an almost limitless supply of natural gas and we can continue our evil capitalist ways, their paradigm suddenly shifted.  Instead of celebrating a future of abundant energy, they attacked the thing that had been a safe energy source in their eyes just 4-5 years ago.  Hence, cognitive dissonance.

Jack was an “old school” pilot.  He smoked too much and had the voice to prove it.  Raspy, deep and thick, layered overtop a quintessential Pittsburgh accent.  He also drank too much, but he lived a life that might just lead anyone to it.  He had flown B-52s in Viet Nam and I think he earned a DFC after executing the only successful B-52 split S while escaping a SAM.  After the war he ended up in FB-111s in Plattsburgh where he bailed out after his wingman ran into him during air refueling.  Although you don’t really bailout of an FB-111, you ride the capsule down!  Everyone loved Jack.  When we were based together, he was the Chief of Stan/Eval, which I thought odd since he really didn’t like paperwork and he was everyone’s buddy, two attributes that can be problematic in a Stan/Eval officer, and I was the Tactics officer.

The stage is now set.  We came up on an Oak rotation and after the squadron put together the crews I found myself paired up with Jack.  Now, that was back when we actually did something at Oak and we flew out of Howard AFB, Panama.  Being with Jack meant that we would probably get at least one interesting mission and it would definitely be fun.  Sure enough, we ended up spending an entire week in Guatemala City providing the platform for the Central American Military Parachuting Competition.  Every morning we flew our airplane from Guat City to a little airport down in the jungle by the coast and we would spend the day doing lift after lift of static line and freefall jumpers from 5 or 6 countries.  It was great fun and once we got into the flow we were cranking them out by the hundreds.

There was a U.S. team there as well, and on the first day, the team leader, an Army LtCol, commented that he was tandem jump qualified and would be happy to jump with anyone on the crew who was interested.  I think I heard a little squeal come from Jack and for the next 4 days all he could talk about was how he’d always wanted to jump.  And every day I would laugh and tell him that he should put that on his bucket list.  Well, the last day came and we were doing the last lift with the U.S. team and after we had dropped the static lines and were climbing up for the HALOs, Jack suddenly announced that he had to go back and take a leak.  We had already started the checklists and I suggested he just wait until we got these guys out and then we’d delay the landing so he could hit the head.  He didn’t like the idea and insisted that he really had to go.  At that moment, that little voice in the back of my head started whispering and I didn’t like what it was telling me.  “Jack”, I said. “Why did you insist I fly the left seat today?” And just then, the loadmaster chimed in, “Jack, the LtCol is waiting for you”.  The little voice stopped whispering and started yelling, but the voice sounded a lot like mine.  “You are not jumping out of this airplane!” “But”, he pleaded, “You have long arms, you can reach everything from over there!”  “That’s not the point, you can’t jump out of the airplane.  And if you do, after I land this thing, we’re not flying again until they send me another pilot”.  With a pout and a whimper he climbed back in the seat. We completed the drop, landed the airplane, and never spoke of it again.

How do we talk ourselves into obviously boneheaded decisions and why do we cling to ridiculous assertions in the face of all logic and facts.  Cognitive dissonance is a cruel mistress don’t succumb to her wanton ways.

A Moment or a Mountain

I don’t like reality TV.  I’m certainly a fan of reality, but I’m convinced that reality TV is just a clever way of saving money on actors and writers.  If you’re a fan, sorry.  However, there is a new show that I do kind of like.  Technically it’s a reality show but it has a different wrinkle and, as a commander, it’s the kind of thing I wish I could get away with.  It’s called Undercover Boss.

If you haven’t seen it, the premise is that a CEO wants to find out how his company works so he changes his appearance and then travels around the country pretending to be some down and out schmuck looking to change careers.  Sadly, once Hollywood gets hold of a good idea, they turn it into a festival of tear jerking emotional goo, but if you look through the weepiness they actually do get to see the problems in their corporations.  What amazes me is how successfully lower and middle management shields upper management from the problems that, in many cases, keep the organization from reaching its true potential.  Many times the boss gets out there and finds out that the employees are working in unsafe conditions, or benefits have been cancelled, or most sadly, great ideas are being ignored by those that want to continue the status quo.  In the end, the CEO always helps those in need by giving away cars or paying for their education or helping with medical bills or sending them on vacations.  They all cry and hug and go back to work.

What I find most interesting though is how the CEO reacts to the realization that all is not rosy.   Some of them see it immediately and in a take action.  They’ll announce who they really are, stop operations on the spot and call in the experts to fix it.  Hard decisions made in a moment.  On the other hand, some bosses are in denial.  They bounce from division to division telling themselves that the problems are localized and are just minor hiccoughs in an efficient organization that they’ve spent years building.  Only when there’s a mountain of evidence to the contrary does it finally dawn on them that there are drastic changes needed to prevent a complete failure of the company.

Sadly, we never get to see the follow through on the problems or how the CEO deals with those that let the company down.  I’m pretty sure successful corporations don’t just move bad managers to other divisions or promote them.  Only the government, and military do that!

When companies fail, jobs are lost, stockholders lose money.  But if we fail, if we don’t make the right financial calls, the price is much higher.  When we make bad decisions and then let either our ignorance of the true situation or our pride get in the way of changing our minds we do a disservice to the nation we serve and to the people who look to us for leadership.

Keep your eyes and ears open.  Get away from the desk.  Check and double-check what the yes men tell you.  The facts are the facts no matter how hard you sometimes wish they weren’t.  Be willing to confidently change your mind.

It’s time for an old story.

When I first escaped active duty I discovered the Sleepy Hollow of AFRC, Youngstown.  It’s not that exciting things don’t happen at the “Yak”, it’s that it, pretty much, sits in the middle of a corn/soybean field depending on which crop rotation they’re on.  There isn’t anything nearby.  No hotels, restaurants,  fast-food, mini-marts, just corn.  As a result, deciding where to go for lunch in 30 minutes can be challenging.  Back in ’86 it was even worse than it is today so we often ended up at some odd places.

One of our favorite places back then was the Dairy Queen in the thriving megalopolis of Cortland, OH, right next to beautiful Mosquito Lake.  “Cm’on kids we’re vacationing at Mosquito Lake this year!”  This wasn’t your run of the mill Dairy Queen, this was one of those fancy Brazier Dairy Queens complete with inside dining. And, to my joy, in ’86 they were serving those new-fangled treats call a “Blizzard”.  Anyway, we headed there for lunch one Tuesday, me, Les, Lee and Marty I think, and walked up to the counter to place our orders.  As we took turns, I noticed a sign next the register which listed all of the great Blizzard flavors available and, on a whim, I decided to break out my trusty grease pencil and add one of my own.  I wrote, “Fish-head”.  I giggled to myself and when it was my turn, I ordered a hamburger, fries and a small fish-head Blizzard.  The woman behind the counter gave me a sideways look and told me, of course, that they didn’t have fish-head Blizzards so I matter of factly changed my order to a small chocolate shake.  Aircrew being aircrew, we all had a good laugh and went on our merry way.

Fast forward one week and there we were again standing at the same counter and, much to my surprise, no one had rubbed of my addition to the menu.  So, I strode up to the counter and placed my order.  “I’ll have a hamburger, fries, and…….. a small fish head Blizzard”  This time her response wasn’t as pleasant as the last time as she informed me that they still did not have fish head Blizzards and that it sounded disgusting,  So, I changed my order to a small chocolate shake.

We laughed even louder this time, but as we sat eating, an odd little man walked in and made his way to the counter staring intently at the menu along the way.  I describe him as odd based mostly on the black socks and sandals, checkered shorts, striped shirt, and coke bottle bottom glasses held together with scotch tape.  Not that I’m a fashionista, but I’ll only wear that at home.  He got to the head of the line and in an unsurprisingly nasal tone ordered a hamburger, fries and a small fish head Blizzard.  That’s about all the girl behind the counter could take and the poor little geekish man took the full brunt of her verbal assault.  “What is wrong with you people!  All week people have been ordering fish head Blizzards!  Who ever heard of fish heads in ice cream!  Are you crazy!  What makes you think we have fish head Blizzards”  Under a glaring stare that could kill a small animal, the man answered.  “It’s right here on the sign, Fish Head, right below Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups”.  The girl leapt over the counter, read the sign, and proceeded to rip it from the wall.  She then calmly walked back around to the counter and the odd little man said, “I guess I’ll change that to a small chocolate shake”

I’ve always been interested in the decision making process.  It’s not that I’ve always made the best of decisions, ask my wife.  There was the Christmas that all of her gifts had electrical cords and I’ve never lived that one down. I’m a guy after all and even our judgment in important decisions like in picking a spouse is usually clouded by brain-drop.  Luckily, I got a hot and smart one!  But, I’ve often wondered why people, and organizations, make decisions that can be so counterintuitive to an outside observer.

My brother Bob, a minister and author, once told me that the most difficult part of ministry was being asked by someone for advice on a big life decision and then the person doing the opposite of his advice, it going terribly wrong, and then coming back to him and asking why God did this to them.  It happens all the time and with the same people over and over again.  Even decisions that you would think are mundane can have far reaching, long term consequences.

Back in ’03, when we were getting ready for OIF to kick off, I remember weeks of phone calls with HQ.  They were trying to decide which of the two Youngstown squadrons should be activated.  There was the 773^rd which is a standard C-130 airlift squadron, and the 757^th which not only does all of the normal stuff, but is the only large area aerial spray platform in the DoD.  At the time, the 757^th was responsible for the coastal oil spill coverage for most of the US and was scheduled to spray for mosquitoes/biting midges over the entire summer.  My recommendation was that the 773^rd be activated first and 757^th provide follow on based on the future needs.  We talked about it for days, HQ agreed, and we just waited for the tasking.  The day came and when I looked at the order, it read “757^th”.  I called HQ thinking that there must be some kind of mistake, but they said that they had changed their minds the night before and the decision was final.  So off we went on the 1^st of February with the entire squadron for an “undetermined” length of time.

Fast forward to a beautiful May spring day in Germany (sounds like The Producers) when I received the first email.  It was from HQ.  “When will you be able to start spraying Langley?”  I ignored the email.  I ignored the second one, the third one, the fourth one, each getting a little more demanding.  I, of course, wasn’t working for AFRC.  I was working for USAFE supporting CENTCOM.   I was launching every aircraft, every day.  Supporting evacuations in Liberia, earthquakes in North Africa and Marines in northern Iraq.  So I waited for a phone call from USAFE.  When they did call I was advised that the Commander of ACC, at Langley, was in a pissing contest with the commander of AMC and AFRC demanding that his base be treated for a particularly bad mosquito season.  I called AFRC, I listened politely to, as chance would have it, the same guy I had spoken with about the deployment in January  and after listening to his long sad story, I spoke three words and hung up.  “You chose poorly”.  Yes, I do like Raiders of the Lost Ark.

“The way of fools seems right to them, but the wise listen to advice, Proverbs 12:15.”    Some people don’t really want an answer, they just want reinforcement of a decision they’ve already made.  All we can do is offer the best advice we can and feel no remorse when it’s not heeded.  The difficulty is not offering unless asked, no matter how much it hurts to watch, and not rubbing it in when it’s obvious you were right.  I’ve been accused of always having an opinion and I won’t deny that, but the only thing I ask is that you never ask me for dating advice or what color to paint the walls.  No one ever listens on the first and I don’t care on the second.

My Uncle George is the most mellow man I’ve ever met……. He passed away last Thursday, 0300, quietly.  Thank you all for your thoughts and prayers.

I think I need to dedicate a couple weeks to Uncle George stories.

Uncle George sang in the church choir.  He didn’t have a booming voice like my brother Tim, but a smooth soft bass which, like him, blended with everyone.  We had choir practice every Wednesday night and the whole family went.  You either sang when you got to the point your voice didn’t crack anymore or you sat and listened and learned.  During the summer we all took turns, after choir practice, going home with Uncle George who shared a house with our Grandmother. We always fought over whose turn it was to partake in the joys of spending a night with Grandma and, as grandmas are prone to do, getting spoiled.  Well, on this particular warm summer Wednesday in 1968, it was my turn.

Oh yes, there’s one other piece of information critical to this story.  There was a woman in our church, a rather large woman, who Uncle George would drive home every Wednesday after choir practice.  She was a lovely lady whom I had known pretty much known my whole life but she had a deathly fear of water, and on a warm summer evening in an un-airconditioned church the combination could be, let’s say, problematic. Let’s call her Mrs. X.  Mrs. X only lived three blocks from the church so it wasn’t a long ride, but the ride that night would put even the mellowness of Uncle George to the test.

I dove into the backseat of Uncle George’s two door Dodge with visions of ice cream before bed and Capt Crunch for breakfast dancing in my head but as Mrs. X fell into the front seat and slammed the door shut I slowly, inexorably began to lose my appetite.  There was an odor floating through the car like none I had ever encountered.

By the end of the first block I felt it necessary to air my concerns to Uncle George and, as most 12 year olds do, I expressed it as diplomatically as possible. “Uncle George, something really stinks in here!”  In true Uncle George fashion he calmly replied, “It must be something outside, maybe the wind is blowing up from ALCOSAN” (the local sewage treatment plant).  So to test the plausibility of his theory, I popped open the little back window and poked my nose outside.

The second block.  “No, it’s not outside, it’s definitely in the car and I’m not feeling so good”.  Now the mellow was starting to show a little wear around the edges.  “Maybe a mouse got in the trunk and died” he postulated.  Well being the science geek kid that I was I, of course, came up with a theory that I thought more closely fit the evidence at hand, “I don’t think it’s a dead mouse, I think it’s a dead fish!”

The third block.  If I had looked closer or if it had been light outside, I would have seen Uncle George quivering, but I didn’t and it wasn’t so my next comment was; “I’m really feeling sick Uncle George.  I think I might throw up”.  Mustering every ounce of mellowness from the deepest depth of his soul he said;  “We’ll figure it out when we get home”.  Seconds later we were at Mrs. Xs front door.  She flung open the door, rolled out and thanked Uncle George for the ride.   With the sound of the slamming door still ringing in my ears, Uncle George slowly turned around in his seat and on his face was a look I don’t think anyone had ever seen.  It looked like he was using facial muscles he had never used and it looked painful.  He wasn’t well versed in anger, but he did the best with what he had.  “That smell was Mrs. X.  She’s afraid of water and that includes baths.  Don’t you ever do that to me again!”  Still shaking, he turned around, dropped the shifter into drive, and drove home.  We never spoke of it again.  43 years and it was like it never happened.  But, I think I’m the only person that ever made Uncle George mad.

What is the nature of forgiveness.  We think we forgive, but do we really?  We hold grudges and look differently at people that have wronged us even after years have passed.  Let it go, set it aside, forget, forgive.  Forgive as you have been forgiven.

My Uncle George is the mellowest man I’ve ever met.  It’s not a child of the 60’s kind of mellow, or an “I don’t care” mellow, it’s just, well, Uncle George.  I call him Uncle George, but he’s really my great uncle.  My paternal grandfather was significantly older than his youngest brother George and in an earlier time when extended families tended to live together, George was only 9 years old and living in the same house when my dad was born.  So, since dad had two older sisters, by default George became his big brother.

When WWII started George was almost 20 years old and like most young men of his generation he stepped up to the task  of defending his country.  He joined the Army Air Corps and boarded the train heading west to pilot training.  I have his pilot training yearbooks on the coffee table in my office. He’s easy to pick out in the photos of eager faces with flight caps cocked way too far to the right.  I’ve often wondered how many survived the war and how many are still alive.

He never talked about his experiences.  He flew B-25s and A-26s in India, Burma, and China bombing and strafing Japanese positions until the end of the war.  It wasn’t that he had PTSD or was traumatized by what he’d seen, it’s that it was just what he had to do.  No fanfare, just a part of his life that was over a long time ago.  Millions of others had sacrificed a lot more and his part was no big deal.  His generation had been through the great depression and now was looking forward not back.  Eventually we started asking him about his experiences and I think as he grew older he started to enjoy telling stories that he had never told.  He told me about bombing missions in India and how they knew in advance where the Japanese AAA sites were because the natives told them.  So they would fly their low levels and watch the airbursts pop up from the jungle well out of range.  He told me how the Japanese RPM gage that sits on a shelf in my living room came from a downed Zero he came across on an abandoned airfield.  He showed me a piece of the wing of his aircraft that was damaged by enemy fire.  His crew chief repaired it and then gave him the piece as a souvenir.  He told me the closest he ever came to death was when, on a night combat mission, both he and his copilot fell asleep and woke up at tree top level, just in time to pull up.

I think he became “mellow” after he got back from the war.  He went off to college, got married, had kids, but after combat the daily stressors are, well, not so stressful.  After his divorce, I suspect his wife thought he was too mellow, he moved in with my grandparents.  When they passed, he stayed.  He became our de facto grandfather and he lived either with us or, for 28 years, next door to us.  He was, to us, our friends, and our church, Uncle George.  Three years ago he moved into an assisted living home called Shady Rest.  He was to the point where he couldn’t quite take care of himself anymore and, even though every time you visited him he asked when he could go home, his health improved and he had constant contact with other people his age.  He turned 90 on January 2^nd.  We a took a cake and sang happy birthday.  We talked and laughed and tried to convince him that he was really 90 years old when he thought he was 68.

Two weeks later he had a small stroke.  We thought he was doing fine, but then pneumonia set in, a week in the hospital, a week in a nursing home, now back to the hospital.  More pneumonia, renal failure, DNR, machines turned off, and waiting. Like my dad, I’ll slip a pair of wings into his breast pocket and send him on his final sortie.  Not with the roar and oil spray of twin Wright R-2600s but on the silent wings of angels.

I love Germany.  I don’t speak German.  I don’t drink beer.  I don’t like their politics.  But, I love the food, the Autobahn, the cars, and, best of all, it looks a lot like western Pennsylvania.  Although with a name like Hartman, I think it might be something genetic.  So, when I found myself activated and deployed to Ramstein at the beginning of OIF, I wasn’t really too upset.  We were told to expect to be deployed for a year so I settled in for the long haul.

Delta squadron had been around a long time, at least since the Balkan conflict, and it had originally been at Rhein Mein.  But when they got the boot from Frankfurt the squadron moved south to the slower pace of K-Town.  It didn’t really matter though, it was still Delta squadron.  Hanging out at the CQ, looking for rides into town or deciding which restaurant within walking distance in Sembach needed your business, yellow fields of rape and slowly spinning windmills, it’s not a bad place to be.

Eventually we became a fixture at Ramstein.  We were included in all of the wing events, attended all of the meetings, and relearned why we left active duty.  My favorite meeting was the weekly OG staff meeting.  It’s probably because operators all pretty much think alike.  We talked about the standard overdue OPR/EPR issues, crew misbehavior (It made me really appreciate our more “mature” crew force), flying schedules, and some issues I didn’t really understand or care to understand.  Around April we started to hear other squadrons talk about floats.  I learned a long time ago to not ask questions about things you don’t want to be included in so we, basically, ignored the whole thing.  We had been flying 9 out 10 aircraft every day for months and we didn’t need any distractions.  But eventually, expectedly, we couldn’t avoid it any longer.

Since his father was a retired Guardsman, the OG, uncharacteristically, appreciated the Guard and Reserves.  He understood our desire to hack the mission and get the job done.  He let us manage the schedule which consequently made him look good.  Smart guy!  Well, as we sat around the big table in the OG conference room, he finally asked the question I knew he would eventually ask, “How’s everyone doing on their floats?”.  We had done a little due diligence so we had discovered that every year there was a parade on base that coincided with some sort of German holiday.  Every squadron built a float that had to comply with the base “Float Operating Instruction” which included basic safety requirements like brakes, fire extinguisher, ventilation, steering radius, and visibility.  We, of course, had no intention of participating.  Our ops tempo was staggering yet the active duty still took “Goal Days” so that they could have 3-4 day weekends while we ran the 7 day marathon every week.  But I digress.

As we went around the room, each squadron dutifully described their progress and challenges in constructing their float.  Eventually the OG turned to us and asked, “What about you, Delta?”.   Well, without pause, Tim Costa, 757 AS Squadron Commander, explained how our sheet metal guys had figured out how to fabricate the large metal cylinder required, that we had plenty of black paint, and we could incorporate all of the safety features.  But then I interrupted.  Comedy is all about timing after all, and I said, just like we rehearsed, “We just can’t figure out how to write “Eat Me” in German”.

Crickets chirped, you could hear a nasal drip for what seemed an eternity and finally with all eyes turned on him the OG said, “OK, good luck, who’s next?”.  They never asked again and we never offered.

I think what separates us from our active duty brethren are our priorities.  I heard lots of lip service about the mission and I hear it today as well, but the whole system appears to revolve around the next job and the next promotion or you’ll be out on your ear.  Traditionally the reserve system is about the mission, your family, your community, your employer and how you can support them all.  I pray we aren’t heading down a road that makes us less effective/efficient and more careerist.

Mike was my first aircraft commander.  I showed up at Ellsworth AFB in January 1980, a brand new 2ndLt B-52 copilot and I suppose they found it fitting to match up the worlds’ oldest, crustiest LtCol with the newest squeakiest Lt.  At the time I thought Mike was ancient although he was probably 10 years younger than I am right now.  He had been a C-47 gunship pilot in Vietnam and an air attaché in the US Embassy in Saigon when it fell, one of the last Americans out of Vietnam.  He followed that career path to the US embassy in Tehran and, you guessed it, he was there when the Shah fell and ended up hiding out with friends until he could be evacuated out of the country.  Supposedly, the parts to his dismantled .45 are still under the ballroom stage in the Tehran Hilton, but that’s another story.  Enroute, during his evacuation from Iran, he was asked what he wanted to do and since he was tired of being chased out of war torn countries, he figured flying B-52s in South Dakota sounded pretty safe.  So he moved there with his wife and 4 sons and settled in for a mellow last assignment.

I learned a lot from Mike.  He taught me how to estimate surface winds by the size and direction of white caps on the water.  He taught me how to fly a good NDB.  He taught me that in the Air Force there are important things and then there are IMPORTANT things and how to tell the difference.  He taught me about leadership and motivation and how it can happen with very little effort with the right attitude.  He taught me that after facing enemy fire, every other crisis in life becomes a little less of a crisis.  And, sadly, he taught me that a decision I had made years earlier was a good one.

As most of you know, I don’t drink.  It’s not that I gave it up because I had some black out/woke up in a ditch experience, it’s that I’ve never had a drink in my life.  I’m not a Mormon or a member of a religious sect that doesn’t allow drinking, I just grew up in a family that didn’t drink and couldn’t think of a good reason to start.  I remember asking my mom when I was 8-9 years old what beer tasted like and after a thoughtful moment she looked me straight in the eye and said, “I think it tastes kind of like ear wax”.  Well I had tried that once and wasn’t interested in anything that tasted even remotely like it.  When I was 16 I started dating my future wife Peggy and in that first year of dating I became keenly aware of how her mother’s alcoholism had affected her life.  Kids shouldn’t have to find their parents passed out, carry them to bed, clean up after them, find the hidden bottles, make excuses to friends and family, or be embarrassed when friends come over.  I know I kid her about “retiring” 30 years ago, but when her mother finally passed 3 years ago it took her a long time to get her head around not having to check on her mom 3-4 times a day and deal with the weekly crisis.   We stayed put in Pittsburgh these last 28 years so she could take care of her mother and she should be nominated for sainthood for it.

Anyway, we made a conscious decision before we got married that we wouldn’t support the industry and wouldn’t drink.  I’ve never looked at anyone differently based on whether they drink or not, but the older I get the more I’m convinced that no good comes from it.  Without much effort I can rattle off half a dozen great Air Force people who either died untimely deaths, have lost everything, or said and did things while drunk that they’ll never recover from.  I don’t know if it’s physiological, psychological, sociological, or genetic, but it seems to me that, like base jumping and alligator hunting, the risk assessment analysis points to avoiding it all together.  Like anything, if you don’t want your kids to do something, don’t do it yourself.  Alcohol abuse is a learned behavior and your young airmen ache for good examples and will emulate successful life choices if you demonstrate the results.

We deployed to Guam for 6 weeks at a time back in the early 80s and I found myself being the designated driver and helping Mike back to billeting on a very regular basis.  One night the command post called me because they couldn’t find Mike.  His wife had had a miscarriage and they needed me to find him and break the news to him.  I tracked him down at a local bar, did what 23 year olds shouldn’t have to do, and then got him back to the Q.  Eventually Mike divorced and the last I heard he was living somewhere in Utah, although the number I have for him is disconnected.  I like to think that he went through rehab and is doing well but my experience is that, with few exceptions, the success rate isn’t good.

All choices, no matter how seemingly insignificant, have lifelong consequences and we need to pick a good guide and take the forks in the road that lead to the scenic mountain drive.