My Call to Service: An Air Force Career in Retrospect

Monday, December 1, 1997, dawned as another cloudy, cold and drizzly day in midcoast Maine; a seemingly ordinary day, much like all the others since our return from six years of living in Great Britain. A day when once again I would climb aboard a commuter bus, travel 17 miles to the shipyard where I worked, put in an arduous 8-hour day, and then return home.

But this was no ordinary day. It actually ranked as one of the most important days of my life, because it marked the official end to my two decades-long career with the United States Air Force.

Getting Started

That career began 21 years, 7 months, and 23 days earlier, on April 7, 1976, when I boarded a Delta 727 jetliner at Portland (Maine) International Jetport for a five-hour flight to San Antonio, Texas and Lackland Air Force Base (AFB), where I would enter Air Force Basic Military Training. At that time, I was 24 years old, a college graduate, married, and the father of the first of our three children. I enlisted in the Air Force in order to learn a skill that I (hopefully) could take back with me into civilian life once my four-year enlistment was over.

After six weeks of basic military training in Texas and nearly nine months of avionics technical training in Colorado, I moved, along with my wife and daughter, to my first "permanent" duty station at Homestead AFB, Florida. There I began the career-long process of learning and polishing the technical and professional military skills I would need in order to be a successful Air Force avionics technician. I worked hard to become technically proficient, with my eyes fixed on the goal of returning to civilian life armed with a marketable technical skill that would lead to a good-paying job.

Travelling the World

The Air Force, however, had other ideas for both my family and me. After only 17 months at Homestead, I was suddenly reassigned to Kadena Air Base, in Okinawa, Japan. By this time, our second daughter had been born. For the first time in our young lives, we faced the choice of an 18-month family separation, or of moving the entire family 8,000 miles away to a tiny island in the South China Sea for a period of three years. We chose to stay together.

This was the first of five overseas assignments I would eventually serve during my Air Force career. Between 1978 and 1997, I would serve a total of 16 years at various locations in Okinawa, South Korea, and Great Britain. I would also serve temporary duty assignments in South Korea, the Republic of the Philippines, Spain, Turkey, and Germany; I would also help support Air Force operations in Africa, the Middle East, Central America, the Caribbean, and eastern and central Europe.

To Stay In or Get Out? My Decision

I'm not sure when my original intent to serve only one four-year active duty tour with the Air Force evolved into a decision to make the Air Force a career, but I made the decision willingly and with no regrets. Over the years, it became clear to me that I was destined for a military career. I enjoyed the work I did, and I did my work very well. I became a very skilled avionics technician, and, as I advanced in rank, also became an excellent supervisor and manager. I knew that when I retired, I would be fully equipped to re-enter civilian life and achieve professional success.

My Air Force Career: Its Effects of on My Life

But technical and professional skills were not the only things I learned during my military career. Perhaps the most important attributes I developed were intangible ones: a renewed patriotism and appreciation for, and love of my country and what it stands for; a well-defined set of values and principles based on honesty, justice, and integrity; a clear sense of right and wrong; and a focused and energetic work ethic. These qualities may have already lain dormant within me before I enlisted; but my military career forced me to revitalize them, re-energize them, and continually put them into practice.

I believe I am a better person today because of my military career. I am now far more patriotic than I was as a young man; I more fully understand the ideals of courage, commitment, faith, putting others before self, justice, and integrity. My years of service instilled within me a desire to serve my country that I still feel today. Now, as I near my 60^th birthday, I've been retired from the Air Force for 14 years; yet I still serve my country as a rural mail carrier working for the U.S. Postal Service. My lifelong service is my way of saying "Thank You" to this great nation that has given me the great gifts of freedom and opportunity.