CHAPTER 4
Fly, Fight, Lead… and WIN!
When people ask me what do I want to be remembered for, I have one answer. I want the people to remember me as a winner, ‘cause I ain’t never been nothing but a winner.
—Coach Paul “Bear” Bryant
One could say that, despite a dubious academic beginning at the Naval Academy, things seemed to work out for me during what many of my classmates probably considered an unlikely career. Frankly, I never intended to stay in the Navy beyond my initial commitment. The mere thought of flying for a career had been an inspiration ever since the day a good friend took me to visit his squadron at Nellis Air Force Base in Las Vegas. I couldn’t understand why some people chose to work in seemingly boring and benign careers such as law, accounting, or architecture. I had no desire to pursue that but rather sought a path toward aviation—and military aviation at that—as a means to put food on the table and, in retrospect, cheap beer in the refrigerator. Little did I realize I’d soon replace that beer with diapers and baby formula! That single day with my friend on the flight line made my decision. I had the aviation bug, and I had it bad.
Thinking back to that discussion with my company officer during my sophomore year, I remain dissatisfied with the final direction that conversation took. However, refocusing on the classroom and keeping my nose above the proverbial minimum GPA mark earned me a slot at the Navy’s flight school located in Pensacola, Florida. The Navy sends every budding flight student to a single location in Pensacola, where they begin their journey that will someday lead to earning their coveted wings of gold. Since every one of those hopeful future aviators passes through Pensacola on their aviation journey, it is affectionately known as the “Cradle of Naval Aviation.”
Once I realized what I truly wanted to do in the Navy, flying drove every decision I made during my time in Annapolis. It drove my study habits, it drove the classes I took, and it drove every thought about how and when I’d get to Pensacola. However, man can’t live on aviation alone, and I rationalized that many good pilots have equally good copilots.
Enter Amy Louise Welter. I met my future wife during my last week of summer vacation going into my senior year at the Academy. If there is any such thing as love at first sight, I was certain that I had found it. We met in Georgetown when I had chosen at the last minute to skip out on another party and head into the big city for an impromptu albeit low-key birthday celebration with another classmate of mine. Amy also happened to be out that night with a friend, and as her story goes, she “accidentally” locked her keys in her car. I have a suspicion that, shortly after meeting me, she pretended to go use the restroom but instead intentionally locked her keys in her car to play the damsel in distress to my knight in shining armor. A pretty extreme measure to spend a few more minutes with me that night, I must admit—but that’s pure speculation on my part.
Regardless of how those keys got locked in her car, I took advantage of the situation and did what any aspiring aviator would do. I let my buddy unlock her car while I chatted Amy up and secured her phone number. We married just under a year later and have grown closer and closer with every day that we’ve been together since then. As a matter of fact, I later laminated the parking receipt that Amy gave me with her name and phone number handwritten on the back as a sentimental keepsake. I carry it in my wallet to this day as a treasured memento and reminder of that warm, August evening when we met and our love started. For decades, I’ve ensured it’s made the transition from one wallet to another, believing that it just might continue to bring me good luck. It hasn’t failed me yet.
No matter whose version of the how-we-met story you believe, we had our wedding at the Naval Academy Chapel several months after graduation, and within a few weeks, I was headed to Pensacola for initial aviation training. As we packed all our worldly belongings into the car, I could hardly contain my excitement with the understanding that our journey in naval aviation would soon begin.
There is something much bigger about naval aviation that transcends the allure of flight that I didn’t understand until well after my training. Frankly, there are some things I don’t think I fully understood or appreciated until I retired some thirty-five years later. As a rule, naval aviation is an unforgiving profession. There are rarely earned do-overs with dire life-or-death consequences that revolve around individual decision-making as it pertains to hundreds of sequences flown in a given mission. For example, a few things involved are precise interpretation of a multitude of spatial and contextual presentations that happen on ever
