USAFA Class Heritage Class of 1963

I'm teaching HS classes in Kaiserslautern, Germany, close enough to hear the sound of freedom at Ramstein Air Base.  For a kid from Chicago whose grandfather and father worked for Al Capone to a retired Lt Col/HS teacher in Germany, it has been quite a ride. I wound up at USAFA because I had to turn down a West Point appointment since it was a payoff to my family for my forebears involvement with Big AL. Unfortunately, I still can't talk about some of my AF career.  I do recall being asked if I'd like to join a beltway bandit company and I asked them for June, July, and August off with my DoDDS wife and they laughed while I walked down the street and signed on as a teacher. As a detachment commander in Vietnam (65-66) I was almost tossed out of Vietnam by MACV's J2, Gen McCristian. I was taken to the Philippines for court martial and sent back to Viet Nam by an Air Force Colonel. I used to occasionally eat dinner with Gen Nguyen Kao Ky, and I had the NSA and CIA both looking over my shoulder but I wouldn't let then have my data.  I taught AFROTC at VMI, in fact, a former student teaches just down the hall from me.  I had a great time flying on the airborne command post over Cambodia while President Nixon was telling the American public that we were not fighting in Cambodia.  I was an intelligence resource manager dealing with Habu, TR-1s, ships, stations...all the toys.  I frequently would have to tell the generals to tell me what the question was and I would assign the best resources.  Some of my activities involved the Pueblo, Kho Tang Island, the evacuation from Saigon, working with Henry Kissinger to create CentCom, playing with DARPA toys to create the internet.  In many cases I was just an action officer and in others I had a direct role to play, but it was exciting right up to the end. There were some amusing incidents like the night we did a TACEVAL of a Belgian fighter unit where the only man on guard was a Spanish conscript who did not speak any language except Spanish, and when we finally talked our way onto the base (my pigeon Miami Spanish) and woke the duty officer, we discovered they had just gone to bed at dark thirty following the grandest party of the year.  Fortunately the fog/rain/name the WX disaster, rolled in the next day and not a single mission was able to takeoff. They taxied one fighter and called it an exercise. I had a great 25 years in and now I've been teaching for 25 years (not counting the ROTC assignment.)  I remember being told that my butterfly heart would prevent me from flying (I still wrangled a combat flying job on the ABCCC, 7th ACCS-Hillsboro) and had decided to go into the Marines when a Colonel came into my cadet room, woke me up and said he had a great job in mind for me... he was absolutely right... particularly when Marine Lieutenants had about a fifteen minute life expectancy in VN.  Was my career exciting?  Hell yes!  I'll probably be long buried when someone realizes what we did back then...in the days. Do I enjoy teaching?  Beats stealing money from the government...it's not about teaching stuff as much as teaching how to take chances and expand one's knowledge by making connections between the known and unknown.  It's a ball.  I have no ideas relative to retiring.  I am still enjoying myself too much to quit.  I don't know what the voice/video thing is....have someone read this.

GLOSSARY:

DoDDS-   Department of Defense School Habu-   SR-71 TR-1- Tactical Recon (version of the u-2) TACEVAL-Tactical Evaluation like an Operational Readiness Inspection WX-weather ABCCC- Airborne Communications Command and Control System ACCS- Airborne Command and Control Squadron 35th Reunion (1998): LT COL USAF Ret, USAFA 63 Two undergraduate universities, two tours in SEA, two tours as a Commander, two joint tours, two allied tours, two graduate degrees, two children, two dogs and two cats, and now a second career—this time as a school teacher. However, as a fourth grade teacher I sometimes feel as if I have merely changed battlefields. Sixteen years overseas were with the Air Force and another six were with the DoDDS as a DoDDS school teacher. The military career began at Goodfellow AFB, TX, and ended at Ramstein AB, Germany. The civilian career began at Sembach AB, Germany and ended at Incirlik AB, Turkey. About halfway through my career I found the girl of my dreams, a DoDDS schoolteacher, in Seoul, Korea, was married at Fort DeRussy, HI, and now Rose and J are living in Tampa, FL. I have spent a lifetime seeking simple answers to seemingly complex problems, which frustrates my students sometimes as much as it frustrates my classmates; particularly Lloyd Probst and Dave Skilling who named me Simple Circuit after I shorted out a significant portion of the EE Lab. I also recall going over the wall several times as graduation approached, only to return the last time to find a girl sitting on my bed in the room. Turns out my classmates had set up a mannequin to await my return, and I was convinced that someone had snuck a girl in just to compound my problems if I had gotten caught. I also recall that our squadron was often referred to as the zoo because of the pets we were raising in the dorm. I had a hamster which was discovered by the AOC in the hallway and followed back to my room. The hamster was a successful veteran of several parachute jumps from the sixth floor and eventually disappeared into the walls of the dormitory. Of course, all of us will remember when Charlie Stebbins, Class of ‘61, used to haul his pet cat off the roof after SAMI. We were on the top floor and the cat would scream bloody murder as it was pulled into space and back into the room. Well, the past was fun—but the future is exciting and its challenges can be handled so simply....