I joined the US Air Force in 1978

High Voltage Powerline Distribution Maintenance Course, Aug 1979

I'm the skinny 19 year old kid on the left

I joined the Air Force in March 1978. I didn’t have a clue what my job was going to be until I got to the Military Entrance Processing Station (MEPS) Center in Los Angeles, California. The military bused me down from Oxnard the night before and put us up in a hotel near Hollywood. It seemed like an older part of town from what I can remember. The one thing that stands out is a song playing on the juke box back then. A song by the band Heart called "Crazy On You". It was a strange night, I had a lot of mixed feelings and to this day it doesn't matter what I'm doing if that song comes on the radio I think of that hotel. The next morning we were all bused to the processing center. What I did know was that I loved aviation and wanted to be around airplanes, the Air Force seemed like the logical choice. I asked them what jobs would keep me outside. I didn’t want anything to do with working in an office. After several options and lots of questions I settled on being a high voltage lineman without really knowing what the job entailed. I was a lineman for 15 years on several bases starting with the Air Force Academy, Colorado, then Columbus AFB, Mississippi; Hill AFB, Utah (where I got my Private Pilot's license) and then on to Alaska, Elmendorf AFB. I then did a short stint in South Dakota, Ellsworth AFB working in the missile field as a facility manager for ICBM launch facilities. We then moved on to Patrick AFB in Florida and then back to Elmendorf AFB, Alaska. After gaining some rank I ended up flying a desk and retired after 23 years in the Air Force. I should also mention I did several temporary duties (TDY's) in Southwest Asia; one tour during the Desert Storm era in Saudi Arabia, one tour in Kuwait, and again in Saudi Arabia just before I retired. The first tour in Saudi we were attacked by a car bomb which destroyed one of our military buildings, OPM-SANG. We had to respond and shut the electrical power down to the building. I then spent the next two weeks helping the FBI at the bomb site gathering bomb fragments (evidence) using our bucket truck. We had to go on top of all the roof tops within a 1/2 mile radius finding evidence. We were actually finding pieces of the truck bomb all the way out on the outer perimeter.