USAFA Class Heritage Class of 1963

George Barnes enlisted in the Air Force following his 1956 graduation from high school.  Following radar technician school at Keesler AFB, he was encouraged (by a 1948 West Point graduate) to apply for West Point Preparatory School (there was no Air Force prep as yet), with the goal of receiving an appointment to the Air Force Academy.

After his graduation and commissioning with the Class of 1963 at the United States Air Force Academy, he attended pilot training at Vance AFB, Oklahoma.  His initial operational flying assignment was in the C-130E model at Sewart AFB, Tennessee.  The following five years included flying duty assignments at CCKAB, Taiwan and Langley AFB, Virginia.  Both locations were staging areas from which he flew global missions in response to Air Force needs and requirements at the time, including Southeast Asia and numerous domestic and foreign contingency operations.

Captain Barnes entered engineering graduate school at Stanford University in June 1969, in preparation for faculty duty in the Engineering Mechanics Department at USAFA.  After his 1971-1974 tour as a mechanics instructor, he returned to cockpit duty in the AC-130H Spectre gunship at Korat AB, Thailand.  His next assignment was at Yokota AB, Japan, returning to the C-130E.  His last three years on active duty were at Clark AB, Philippines where he performed staff duties in the airlift wing until his retirement on February 1st, 1981.

Following his Air Force retirement and job search, Mr. Barnes worked as a Facility Planner in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia until November 1984, when he began work as an engineer with the Boeing Company in Wichita, Kansas.  After his transfer with Boeing to Seattle in January 1987, he worked on several military and commercial programs until his retirement in December 2007.

Mr. Barnes's interest in various financial and investment strategies has changed and evolved into his current focus on option-trading, an activity that provides a mental challenge and occasional psychological reward following his Air Force and Boeing careers.  His weekly regimen includes three rigorous cardio and strength workouts, two Bible studies and volunteer work by tutoring or other activity in his church or related venue.

He lives with his wife, Lily, near Redmond, Washington.

35th Reunion (1998): I was a surprise to my parents when I arrived on Childrens’ Day in 1938, since my mother and father were nearly 42 and 46 years old respectively. My eldest brother is 18 years older and was an 8th Air Force B-17 pilot during WW IL. I vividly remember his buzzing our northeast Kansas farm several times when I was very young, but old enough to know that a war was going on. The most memorable “‘buzz-job” was a Sunday afternoon when he had just picked up a spanking new B-17 in Kearney, NE (immediately after finishing pilot training and follow-on B- 17 transition training) and was en route at that moment to join the 8th Air Force in England. He was so low that we could see the crew’s faces in the airplane as they looked out. The large old mulberry tree in our front yard swayed back and forth from the prop-wash. It was one of several exciting “buzz-jobs” observed by a young kid in an era when a military uniform was what almost every young person wanted to wear. I received my grade school and high school education’s in a small, modest red brick building in Corning, KS. Downstairs was grade school, upstairs was high school. Following high school graduation well in the upper fiftieth percentile (in a whopping class of 13), I worked as a construction laborer, with the goal of making enough money to go to Kansas State. Although I soon determined that I wasn’t going to make enough money to go to college, that job taught me a lot about what I didn’t want to do for a living. I deferred college and enlisted in the Air Force, and became a radar technician. When I was a young airman on TDY to a Watertown, NY Radar Site, a 1949 West Point grad encouraged me to apply for admission to West Point Prep at Fort Belvoir. Captain Thevenet changed the course of my life. The Air Force Academy appointment was the most exciting development of my life. Following graduation from UPT at Vance, I flew C-130s at Sewart AFB, CCK AB, Taiwan, and Langley AFB, VA until the summer of 1969 when I entered graduate school at Stanford. The grad school assignment was under the sponsorship of the Department of Mechanical Engineering at USAFA, where I joined the Faculty following receipt of a MLS. in Structural Mechanics (Civil Engineering) in April 1971. I was promoted to Major during my third and last year (1974) on the USAFA Mech Department Faculty. The next assignment was Korat AB, Thailand flying AC-130H Gunships from October 1974-October 1975. I spent two years in a C-130E Airlift Squadron at Yokota AB, Japan before transferring to Clark AB for the final three years of my military career. I retired as a major in January 1981. I returned from the Philippines and made Colorado Springs my job- hunting headquarters where I wrote numerous letters in an effort to land a position in Saudi Arabia. Twenty-one months later, I took an engineering job in San Jose, CA. Finally, in March 1983, I landed a job with Sysorex (a Computer Systems Management Company then out of Cupertino, CA) as a Facility Planner in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. During June 1984, I took a trip/vacation and applied with Boeing in Seattle and Wichita. After a 17- hour trip from Riyadh to Wichita for an interview in September 1984, I joined Boeing/Wichita in November 1984. Kansas was the land of my birth, but not as exciting as I thought Seattle would be. So I transferred to Seattle in January 1987. The Wichita and Seattle jobs were both on the military side of Boeing until my departure from the company in August 1987. I wrote engineering curriculum material at the Egyptian Air Academy for a short time before returning to the States and taking an engineering contract job with Honeywell in Edina, Minnesota. My Boeing absence totaled 13 months. I returned to Boeing in September 1988 where I worked in Service Engineering until March 1997. In March, I joined the Certifications Program organization where my immediate boss is none other than our classmate, Skip Lee. I met Lily Wang ina local church service in 1989. We married in April 1991. I’m looking forward to retirement from Boeing in six years, but will probably not be content retiring completely. I’m interested in the financial world, with an emphasis on investment and stock selection. That may be my hobby when I retire from Boeing.