USAFA Class Histories

The Air Force Academy experience was just about the best and just about the worst of my life. At the time a service academy seemed the only shot at a truly first-rate education for a boy of humble origin, and I€™ve been paying for it and reaping its rewards ever since. Learned more in Vandenberg than Fairchild.

Lacked the focus and energy of others. Did OK considering. 207 combat missions, Vietnam and elsewhere, 1965-66. No heroics, just payback to the taxpayers. Never wild about aviation; a hundred years earlier my RF-4C would have been a horse. Understand how airpower fits in with everything else in warfare.

Wonderful assignments in England and Germany. Lloyd R. (Dick) Leavitt, then a colonel and USAFE ORI Team Chief, was perhaps my best boss ever. Loved being back at USAFA as an AOC, 1971-74, but it was a poor career move (Leavitt counseled ASTRA and had it wired for me). Some really bad cadets in that era. Thoughts of our school still torment me€"how best to prepare whom to serve, and my own inadequacies.

Couple of early promotions despite a tendency to pass up opportunities to keep my mouth shut. Picked up an MBA from Auburn and learned how to think about money. Great assignment at Moody AFB as 40-year old Base Commander. Two years at Air Staff (XOX). Two years Joint Staff (Chief, Strategy Division, (OJCS)), then out, when it was clear O-6 was max for me. No one€™s fault, really.

Bought a Harley 1986. retired (quit) 1987, divorced 1988. Tried to raise the hell I never raised as a kid, drank way too much, and survived it. Rode a couple of years with the Vietnam Vets Motorcycle Club€"salty bunch. Back home (Thomaston, GA) now, caring for my Mom (stroke victim, nursing home). Active in Kiwanis for a while until I figured out it was just a middle-class white boy preservation society. Helped found and serve on board of Harbor House, our unique, privately funded shelter for abused and neglected children€"proud of that. Send me your checks made out to Harbor House, tax deductible. Active in VFW but concerned about severe shortage of peers

Great day in July 1996: carried Olympic flame through my home town. Wore sash under my official shirt bearing the names of our thirty classmates who didn€™t make it through the Vietnam era. The parade we never had when we came home from SEA. Loved it, people who love me loved it, but it was too late.

Two grown, beautiful, educated daughters, one a former staffer for Sen John Warner, the other a regional sales director for the Ritz-Carlton Co. Both now married to equivalent men and making babies in Fairfax and Falls Church, VA. My ex and I did something right.

In my fourth year now with a remarkable woman, from a remarkable family, who appreciates me as no one ever has. Her daughter is a €˜96 grad; good story on how we met. Won€™t marry me. Smart.

No last paragraph here. Hope those of us who remain have many paragraphs to go before we sleep. Cheers! Frank, 1998.