SCOTT AIR FORCE BASE

BELLEVILLE, ILLINOIS

2 June 1982 to 31 August 1984

My job at Headquarters MAC was probably the most satisfying of my entire career mainly because I was making life and death decisions almost on a daily basis. Part of my responsibility was controlling emergency deviations of airborne T-39 Super Sabres and rerouting them when they were needed for assistance in transporting critical neo natal patients, burn victims and organs for immediate transplant. Normally the T-39 was used primarily to carry VIPs around the country and sometimes it wasn't the most popular decision to divert a general but when a life was at stake I didn't mind the flak. Usually it was possible to reschedule a mission still on the ground as we had the location of every T-39 aircraft in the Air Force inventory along with the aircrews to fly them at our fingertips.

Into the Sunset

RETIREMENT

My retirement ceremony was conducted by a 2 Star General and the speeches and certificate presentation took about 10 minutes. My wife was to video tape the event however she had problems with the video camera and somehow nothing got recorded. The General overheard our comments and said "No Problem, we'll just do it again". So thanks to the kindness of a Major General my retirement ceremony is recorded for posterity. It's too bad I had to find out on my last day of duty that generals were human. After the ceremonial rerun coffee and cake went on as scheduled (a beautiful cake made it onto video also). The general stayed on as long as everyone else did. I don't know if it was because he really liked me and appreciated the job I did for him or maybe his golf game had been cancelled for that afternoon.