Pilot Training Class Reunion

Recently I received a notice of a reunion of my pilot training class, 70-08, aka Raindance and Gombey, to be held next March in Dallas, TX.  It will be our first and perhaps only gathering.  We were asked to provide a brief biographical sketch, so here is part of what I sent.  Two of the pictures were provided by classmate Joe Hawes.  Somehow it seemed appropriate to put it here, since my wonderful daughter prints these for posterity. 

This was my plane, a Cessna T-37 twin engine jet (aka Tweety Bird or Flying Dog Whistle).  It was very noisy and not very pretty, but it sure was fun to fly!  She cruised at 200 knots, had ejection seats and could be put into spins.  It was fully acrobatic, which I taught, along with instrument and formation flying.  It was the first jet a student got to fly before going to the supersonic, high performance T-38. 

I departed the Air Force in November of 1973 after being alerted to my next assignment, flying an RC-47 out of Thailand.  I'd had a run-in with the base commander and he got his revenge this way.  It took me years to figure out why I was being given this assignment.  After all, I had accumulated 1500 hours of jet time, was acknowledged as a good pilot and wanted to go into fighters.  The RC-47 was about as far from that as I could get.  So, I got mad then got out.  It remains one of the hardest decisions I've ever made, since the Air Force was the only thing I'd ever wanted to do and I had a Regular, not a Reserve, commission. 

After one interview at Piedmont Airlines, where a vice president told me that with my poor vision I needed to find another career, I finally found a sales position with Carolina Power & Light Company, thanks to my then-wife Diane's uncle, Jim Marshall.  So I left the Air Force on a Friday and started at CP&L the following Monday.  C'est la vie.