As you all may recall, I remained at Vance as a T-37 IP.  I finally left Vance after 4 ½ years with two kids and a third on the way, for lovely NJ and C-141s.  The “master plan” was to fly heavies for a couple years and then make my fortune as an Airline Pilot.  However, after several long, boring nights flying over the Atlantic trying to keep my eyes open listening to the crackle on the HF, I decided that this just wasn’t my thing.  Also, I never quite figured out that I actually would have to get out of the AF to make this plan work. 

Then I naively accepted a “T-39 assignment” to Japan.  Only a few months later did I figure out that this was in reality a dreaded MAC Command Post assignment where you got to fly T-39s on your days off.  My crowning achievement during these three years was to piss off my Wing Commander so badly during an ORI that he threatened to reduce me in rank if we failed.  There is a longer story here, but somehow MAC got me promoted to Major proving that “bad visibility” is better than “no visibility”.  So, surviving this tour, it was next a “career broadening” staff assignment to HQ PACAF at Hickam as a War Planner specializing in “JOPES”. 

Nothing much to say about PACAF other than it’s a great place to work on a tan and your swimming skills.  But unknowingly, this would set the stage for later events in my career.  I then went to ACSC and somehow my life went into a spin. 

Not remembering the Single Spin Recovery bold face correctly I thought I had recovered through a divorce and second marriage only to find myself really in an inverted spin.  But, after ACSC I got a T-38 assignment to Reese.  That assignment was a blast.  Going to an ATC base as a Major and then getting promoted to LTC kind made you feel like a Prince wading through the masses of bowing peasants.  Somehow a set of twins appeared and my wife desperately wanted to return to her family in Tampa, Florida.

So, I landed a staff assignment at USCENTCOM headquarters.  The time is now 1990, and I’m thinking a couple more years and I’m out, spending the rest of my life on the beach.  I got put in charge of the “JOPES” branch, working with deployment planning computer systems, and then Desert Shield/Desert Storm hit.  I disappeared from all normal life for the rest of that tour and ended up at the Pentagon in the Joint Staff, retiring in 1994, and single again.

Remaining in the Washington, DC area, I’ve been working as a Computer Systems Engineer on contracts for the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) related to my military work at USCENTCOM and the Joint Staff.  I came out of my inverted spin and have been living with a wonderful woman for over 10 years who I will marry one of these days when we can figure out how to beat the marriage penalty tax.  She has two children who I’ve all but adopted bringing my total to seven.  I’ve also collected four grandchildren along the way. 

We are currently building our dream retirement home in the Adirondack Mountains of upstate New York on a nice piece of land adjoining family property.  Muriel and I will probably move there within the next ten years or so and live happily ever after.

Flying has been relegated to another life and other than about 30 minutes in a Cessna 150, I haven’t piloted an aircraft since my last T-38 flight in November, 1989.  But, I always peek in the cockpit when I fly commercial to see if there is someone I might recognize.  So, far I haven’t recognized anyone, but know that many of you are still flying around.

My current hobby is road biking with a local biking club and biking to work.  I’ve ridden about 5,000 miles each of the last few years.  I’ve also been building some neat wooded canoes and kayaks, taking a couple camping trips every year.

Oh yeah, don’t know if this is happening to the rest of you, but I’m also going blind and have to wear glasses now.  Bummer, it really pisses me off.  I still feel like I’m 22, but look in the mirror and see this old guy staring back at me.

Somehow I believe I’ve ended up being right where I was meant to be and still reflect on 75-07 as the biggest building block in my professional life.  I realize how the year we spent together was the most formative and challenging year of my life, bonding all of us in a way that can only be understood by those who’ve gone through it.