35 Years

Pilots are people too.

COPYRIGHT DECEMBER 2023, Roger Johnson, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED No copying of the photos in this story are allowed unless approved by the author.

This is long…ridiculously long, crippling long to those with ADD. You are under no obligation to read any of it, although I’ve included a lot of pictures, so you may enjoy perusing those.
As I was writing this I came to the realization that I use my blogging as a way of journaling my life, so this post, “35 years”, is a recanting of some of the more memorable events in my 35 years spent as an airline pilot. However, it encompasses my whole life during that time period, not just the boring flying stuff if you don’t care for aviation. There are some salacious bits and pieces too of my rather dysfunctional personal life in here, so maybe that will whet some appetites.
Why would I write this? Firstly, and as I just said, to give me a journal in which to look back upon when I’m old and gray…ooooops, I’m already there! Additionally, if I can prevent one person from making the same stupid mistakes I’ve made in my personal life and save them years of heartache, pain, and suffering, then it is worth me revealing the more intimate parts of my life. Finally, my career, the flying part, was wonderful, although I take no credit for it; God’s providence in my flying life was evident from the beginning and the path that was laid for me by Him was, in my humble opinion, miraculous. I pray that anyone reading this can get inspiration to also endeavor on the same path as I did, but with God as their co-pilot.
Without question this has been the most emotionally difficult piece of writing I have ever endeavored. I went to places in my heart and soul in this that I never wanted to explore again, secret compartments that were boarded up years ago because of the pain in remembering. Digging back into those memories however has been cathartic, because like a festering wound, cleaning it and exposing it to the air (truth), can bring healing.
Lastly, I am a Christian…now calm down those of you who think I am judgmental and self righteous. Yes some are, maybe a lot are, but given the sins I’ve committed in the past, as you’ll read in this “blog,” I’m the last person to point a finger at anyone. I tell you of my faith for you to know that being a Christian doesn’t mean in anyway, shape, or form I am perfect, without mistakes, or infallible in my character. It does mean that I bow and pray to God daily and try to become a better human; it’s hard, but I try.
Buckle up buttercup, you’re bound to encounter some rough air in what follows….

35 Years

1988

There are multiple facets to all of our lives and like our fingerprints that allows us all to be unique. We have our daily work lives, which may be exciting, strenuous, complicated, busy, or benign, or a mix of all those. And then we have our personal lives which may be totally opposite to our work life, or may be even more complex and dynamic than our careers. Intertwined with our work and non-work regimens are the emotions that permeate and surround us, defining who we are to others (and maybe ourselves). Our lifelong experiences, as we age, mold and shape us and affect how we react to the world and the problems we encounter. As we mature, and hopefully through the benefit of good friends, a committed faith, and introspection can we learn how to control our emotions so they don’t control us.
As dumb as it sounds, pilots are people. You may see that Captain or First Officer in the airport concourse and think he/she’s got their shit together, maybe better than you, but, trust me, and as you’ll read, in my case, it ain’t so. They, I, am human and have made some amazingly grandiose mistakes, for which I’ve paid a painful price, emotionally, monetarily, physically and which have left many, many unseen scars; most of those personal mistakes are self-inflicted but, some are drive by shootings from others. The sum total of the scars though, as they accumulated on my psyche, have shaped my character, my personality, and ultimately my faith.

I began flying for my airline in February of 1988. I was 29 and on Active Duty in the USAF/ANG at the time I was offered the position, however, that was not the first airline with whom I was employed.

In August of 1985 I started a position with Eastern Airlines. Their training center was in Miami and I drove there from Wichita, KS, figuring I’d never return west, except to get my household stuff so I could move back to Southern New Jersey, where I grew up. The Fontana brothers, who were good friends of a close friend, were Eastern Airlines pilots and they assured me they would pull strings to get me based in Eastern’s smallish Philadelphia crew domicile. I had been flying as a passenger with Eastern all my life, hence they were my first choice of the airlines with whom I wanted to get hired. But, when I got to Eastern I saw so much animosity between the employees and management I couldn’t see how they would survive, so I quit two weeks after starting; Eastern went out of business about 4 years later.

When I was hired by Federal Express I was going through a divorce with my first wife, a young lady I had known since 8th grade. We married very young and I will be blunt and tell you I didn’t want to marry her, nor did I love her. The only reason we married, while I was a junior in college, is because my father, an extremely narcissistic, alcoholic, and sometimes very abusive man, demanded that I marry “Paula” before I went back to college after my Christmas break. Why his urgency? Well, I managed a bar on my college’s campus and one of my female bartenders sent me a lovely Christmas card and signed it “Love Janice.” My father was such a control freak he felt it was his right to open any mail addressed to me because it came to “HIS” house. So, while I was out running on a beautifully warm Christmas season day, my father got the mail, saw the letter addressed to me from Janice, opened it and promptly became infuriated because she signed it with “Love.” In my father’s warped mind, Janice and I were entrenched in a deeply sexual romance (Ha!!!!) and he felt I had to marry Paula, NOW! His intent was to short circuit Janice’s and mine flourishing (NOT!!!) romance. Consequently, due to my father’s paranoia, which manifested itself into physical and mental abuse directed against me after he saw the Christmas card, an early January wedding was hastily arranged with the town’s Mayor presiding over the nuptials after family members had congregated in my home’s living room. On that fateful day I married a woman, who, through no fault of her own I viscerally did not want to marry.
I was in a relationship with Paula for much longer than I should have been because every time I tried to break up with her, my father became very abusive. Due to his ridiculous interference while dating Paula, it became my plan that once I graduated college and went into the military I was going to end the relationship. (I found out much later in life my father was desperately in love with this lady and wanted to live vicariously through me so he could “love” her). My mother, who had just recently returned from being committed to a mental institution for about 5 months, told my bride to be, just before we were married, “You know Roger doesn’t love you. Why are you doing this?”
“He will learn to,” was her naive reply.
I never did, and 10 years later we were divorcing. But, prior to our separating we had had a beautiful daughter, Christina, who burst forth from her mother’s belly with exuberance since she had to be liberated from her mother via an emergency C-section.

My lovely munchkin, Chistina, after I had gotten hired by FedEx, and still flew F-4s in the military.

I began my new hire class on Federal Express on 22 February, 1988; there were 8 of us: Nick, came from People Express/Continental and flew A-10s in the ANG; Ned came from the USAF, KC-10 Aircraft Commander; Russ came from the USAF Reserves, also a KC-10 Aircraft Commander; Greg came from the USAF, KC-135 Aircraft Commander; Dick came from Navy, a notable F-14 pilot who is featured flying an F-14 in the movie “The Final Countdown”; Dave came the Navy, F-14 Pilot; Chuck another Navy, F-14/F-21 (Kfir) Pilot; and me, USAF/ANG F-4.
I was the youngest in the class, but, because the last four of my social security number begins with a 9, I was designated the most senior. Nick was particularly incensed that the company chose that method on how to rank order the new hires in seniority since he felt it should have been based upon age.
As of this writing all of us are now retired, I was the last to go in May of ‘23. Dick and Greg passed away years ago due to illnesses. Some new hire classes are pretty tight in their communication through the years and in having reunions, mine is not one of those, well at least with me; hell for all I know they other guys were tight and I was left out in the lurch…I’ll never know.

The very first aircraft I flew at FedEx was the iconic B-727. The 727 was the entry level aircraft everyone was assigned to when I was hired and it was into the flight engineer’s position, FE. My dad was very happy that I was going to be flying on the 727 since he was actively flying it at that time as a Flight Ops Test Pilot with the FAA; he said, “You’ll love the aircraft.” Well I am probably one of the very few pilots in history who hated it. I apologize to my fellow aviators for that animosity.
I will never forget my first FedEx trip after completing my 727 training. I was supposed to start reserve the following day after my line training ended. Reserve started at 1 AM, ya know, 1 hour after midnight, literally the day after I had finished my last training flight. I had had a date with the most beautiful woman I had ever personally laid my eyes on (at that point in my life) the evening before my reserve would began; we had Chinese take-out and watched a movie we got from Blockbuster in my crash pad. (To this day we are still friends. She is married with kids and is a wonderful lady). I took my date home at midnight, obviously no alcohol on my part was consumed, and I went to bed at 1230 AM….because EVERYBODY was telling me that since I was so far down on the reserve list I wouldn’t possibly be called for a trip that first R day. That is why I did have that date and went to bed so late. Well of course you know everybody was wrong…. because at 1 AM, on the dot, I was called out for a trip; Memphis to Orlando with a turn to Borinquen, Puerto Rico. YGBSM (You’ve Gotta Be Shitting Me).
I don’t remember the F/O’s name or even actually him, but the Captain for that trip, Brad, was pretty young in age, pretty senior and very forthright in personality. I think he was like 23 when FedEx hired him. I would fly again with him on a few trips over the years and through the years we have remained friends through both good and hard times professionally and personally. He retired a few years ago.
Up until that trip, the most tired I ever was in my life was when I went through Survival, Escape, and Evasion School in my military training. The flight down to Puerto Rico that night/morning is the second most tired I’ve ever been in my life ( but realistically, how can you judge what episode of being impossibly tired is more worse than another?) I have that trip to thank for my continuing love affair with coffee.
We got to Puerto Rico on Saturday morning and I arranged to go SCUBA diving on Sunday. I gambled at the hotel casino Saturday night and won 250 bucks in blackjack.
We flew back to Memphis on late Monday afternoon. One trip down, a bazillion more to go.
In another memorable B-727 trip on December 16 of 1988, I was flying on a morning flight from Memphis to Boeing Field, Seattle, Washington (Boeing Field is just south of Seattle and literally just north of Sea-Tac airport). As we neared the airport I got the ATIS and it turns out the field was WOXOF; Zero visibility, zero ceiling; it had been forecast by the company’s weather guys to be clear upon arrival; I think retraining for the weather guy was in order.
So, the company had us divert to Seattle’s main airport, Seattle-Tacoma, where it too was WOXOF, but at least they had approach minimums that allowed us to perform a CAT 3A, autoland approach (On that day I was in one of the last B-727-200 aircraft that Boeing built. FedEx bought the last 17 B-727s made and they all had autoland capability. That was my first, real life, Cat 3A approach). As expected, the visibility was only about 800 feet upon landing, so the runway was seen just before touchdown. We landed on Runway 16 Left and it took a long time to taxi to the cargo facility on the northeast side of the airport. As we pulled into the cargo ramp a Tiger B-747, engines running, was waiting for us to taxi into parking so they could leave. The cargo ramp area is very restrictive so only one aircraft at a time could go out/in when another wanted to do the reciprocal. Since we were on the cargo ramp frequency as we neared parking, the crew of the 747 asked us, “Did you heard the news?”
“What news?” the F/O, Don, asked
“FedEx just bought Flying Tigers.” (In 1980 Flying Tigers bought Seaboard World Airlines).
Silence.
In August of 1989 the two companies actually began merged operations, at least on the flying side of the business, and a few years later the pilot seniority lists were merged. As of this writing there are some individuals who are still upset over the way the two pilot lists were merged.

In November of 1988, George H W Bush (senior) was elected president.

1989

In August of 1989 I began training for the Flight Engineer position on the DC-10. After the usual ground school/simulator training. My first IOE (Initial Operating Experience, line training) trip was flown to Germany, Frankfurt. My sister Linda lived near Frankfurt with her USArmy husband, so she came to the hotel where we laid over and picked me up. We had a wonderful visit for the day, driving around Germany. This would be one of many German visits with my sister until she moved back stateside.
My first real trip after being trained in the DC-10 was in December. We flew from Memphis to Anchorage, AK and then the next day onto Narita (Tokyo), whereupon we were to deadhead to Hong Kong. We were scheduled for a 4 day layover once we got to Britain’s Crown Jewel (Hong Kong).
When we arrived in Narita (Tokyo’s International Airport) we went to a local hotel to wait for our flight to Hong Kong. Instead of taking Cathy Pacific Airlines to Hong Kong, we jump seated on a Tiger 747. How can I describe the magnificent beauty of seeing Mt Fuji come into view as we climbed out of Narita? I’d seen countless pictures, or video’s of that sacred mountain all of my life, but I never thought with my own eyes I’d see that beautiful mountain. I was mesmerized. I never imagined that, from that first personal sighting, I’d be revisiting that mountain for almost 35 years, always above 30,000 feet though.

Mt Fuji in all its glory

Hong Kong was vibrant, bustling, magical; it reminded me of an Oriental New York City. For four days I was tail end Charlie to the Captain, Gene, and F/O, John, as we filled our days and nights with wonder eyed tourism. I also discovered the eye bag causing and potential long term physically debilitating effects of jet lag; over the years I never got used to it, ever. I just learned how to manage it. The older I got though, the more I hated it.
In our visit to Hong Kong we went to Canton (now Guangzhou), in Communist China and saw the terra cotta warriors and visited the zoo. Back in Hong Kong we went to Stanley Market and then Victoria Peak on Hong Kong island. We walked the myriad number of streets in Kowloon where an older Chinese lady, spying my 35 MM camera, wanted me to photograph her cut the legs off of a live lizard and then with the same scissors gutted it. She smiled, missing teeth and all, the entire time; I’m pretty certain the lizard wasn’t smiling.

A heavily overcast Hong Kong, taken from the Kowloon side.

We left about 11 AM from Hong Kong with a scheduled stop in Seoul, Kimpo International Airport planned. As the Captain and F/O looked at the weather and fuel, cargo, etc, the Captain asked the ramp manager in Hong Kong why we were stopping in Seoul. He added that we could go nonstop to Anchorage if we loaded up on gas in Hong Kong. The manager said there was cargo waiting to be picked up in Seoul. OK.
Upon arrival in Seoul I performed my post/preflight walk around in preparation for getting more fuel and cargo and then leaving for Anchorage. As I approached the front of the aircraft the Seoul ramp manager came running up to me, visibly agitated and asked why we had come to Seoul. Well, I was just the Flight Engineer but I remember the Hong Kong Manager telling the Captain there was cargo waiting for us in Seoul. “NO!, No cargo! You should not be here!” He was really pissed. I told him all of this was above my pay grade and to go bitch at the Captain and F/O. He did. We left after gassing up, but getting no cargo.
Six months after that flight I was in Memphis, eating dinner at a sports bar called TJ Mulligans. I had a flight the following afternoon so I was just chilling at the bar and struck up a conversation with a very well endowed and pretty woman sitting next to me. It came out in conversation that she too worked at FedEx. As we chatted, each of us feeling the excitement of a mutual attraction and connection, the love hormones being released in massive quantities in each of us, I chanced to ask this lovely woman what she did at FedEx.
“I’m a Freight Forwarder Specialist,” she casually remarked, as she pulled her long hair back on one side, exposing her neck.
“Oh very cool! Ya know, about six months ago I flew a flight from Hong Kong to Seoul and then to Anchorage and when we got to Seoul there was no freight. The Captain was really pissed. I actually wrote that up, the fact we landed in Seoul and should not have had to, and sent it to the VP at FedEx. Amazingly enough he wrote back and said he was would investigate it. Do you know anything about that?” I asked looking at her beautiful lips and then jumping to her eyes.
“Oh my God, so you’re the asshole that almost got me fired!!!! The VP himself came to where I work, walked me into my immediate supervisor’s office and dressed me down. He said if that happened again I would get fired!”
After her comment she hastily gathered up her purse and pocketbook, dropped some cash on the bar and began to leave.
I was flabbergasted. In all the gin joints in all the world, I would meet the person that screwed the pooch on that cargo flight. So as she prepared to leave, now knowing I was going out of the bar solo, I casually commented, “I suppose sex is out of the question?”
“No, it isn’t, you can go fuck yourself.” (I met her a couple years later, she was remarried, heavier, and a lot nicer).

Retired FedEx Captain Mark and his lovely wife Debbie (left side). I flew with Mark quite a few times on the DC-10 where he was the F/O and I was the F/E. We had one epic layover in Penang, Malaysia when our aircraft broke and we spent a few days while they repaired the jet. We went out all night pub crawling/night clubbing on the first night there. In that night we went to a pub called the Hong Kong Bar. I was dating a future ex-wife then and I remember Elizabeth’s father telling me that when he was in the Royal Navy (UK) during the Vietnam years he used to frequent that pub with his mates when the ship was in port at Penang. He told me he had carved his initials in one of the tables on the left side of the first room you entered when you walked in the front doors. So, recalling what Len said, when I went into the bar, I looked at all the tables on the left side (they were booths with the tables in between the seats looking like a light colored pine and heavily lacquered). Indeed, the third booth on the left, facing the entrance, and on the right side, were Len’s initials…”LET”…How cool is that?

Still on the DC-10, one afternoon, I was flying a flight to Ft Lauderdale. It was a lovely trip because you left Memphis later in the afternoon, flew to Ft Lauderdale, had dinner at a local restaurant while they unloaded and then loaded the aircraft, and then were back in Memphis by 11 PM. You flew that trip four days in a row, had weekends off and then started up again the next week.
On the trip that week I was flying with a really nice Captain named “Mac” and a great F/O named Jim. As we neared Tampa Jim asked me to look at the oil quantity on the number three engine. Zero (there was a warning light in the front of the cockpit that warned of high oil temperature. Just an FYI…you can have an indication of zero oil, but if the oil pressure and temperature remain normal, then it's probably an oil quantity indication problem). We then went through the emergency procedures for high oil temp and subsequently shut the number three engine down. We continued to Ft Lauderdale and landed uneventfully on the remaining two engines.
BTW…In my 35 years at FedEx I’ve had a total of six engine losses, one requiring a 340 mile divert, to Panama (the city/country). In all cases the diverts, approaches and landings were uneventful.
The F/O on that flight to Ft Lauderdale, Jim, was the same F/O on FedEx Flight 705, the flight that had an attempted hijacking by the late Auburn Calloway.

In September of 1989 I was flying F-4s in the New Jersey Air National Guard and was asked by my CO (Commanding Officer) if I would take military leave from my airline so I could train a new F-4 pilot. I agreed and got a month off from airline flying so as to train the newest pilot member of our guard unit.
On the very first flight of Steve’s and mine together, an advanced handling flight, we flew about 40 miles out to sea, and began a series of high performance maneuvers in the the E model Phantom. The last maneuver I wanted Steve to see/perform was not in any USAF training manual but one that had been passed down to me when I was learning to fly the Phantom.
Steve and I zoomed straight up, from 10,000 feet to slightly over 30 (thousand) and went from 500 knots to 150. What should have been a nice, easy flop of the nose of the aircraft went from straight up to straight down, turned into a life or death, end over end, slow rolling, out of control descent towards the ocean. Only by the grace of God did the aircraft recover from its wild gyrations that allowed Steve, with coaching from me, to recover to level flight back at 10,000 feet, from whence we started; that was the closest I ever came to ejecting in my 1800 hours in the Phantom. However, as you’ll soon read, that’s not the last time I’ve come close to dying in a fighter.
For more on this F-4 flight click here: Out of control phantom

While flying the F-4 in the Air Guard, before I transferred units and went to fly the F-16, I led a four ship of Phantoms on a low level and then bombing mission. After the debrief, the number three pilot, Darryl Hannah, came up to me and asked if we could talk, alone, since he wanted to bring something personal up with me. I was compliant, not having the slightest idea what he wanted to talk about. When we entered an empty briefing room, and with a pleasant smile on his face, Darryl proceeded to tell me, politely, that he felt I cussed too much. I had to laugh and literally said, “bullshit!”…and I didn’t say that for effect; it was an automatic reaction. From that brief meeting, Darryl and I would have a very close and very respectful friendship until he passed away from cancer in 2015.

Three Phantoms on their way to Key West to fight the Navy. These aircraft are from the 184 TFG of Kansas.

1990

Last flight in the Phantom, October, 1990. Beautiful jet.

August 2nd, 1990, Iraq invades Kuwait. A coalition of Allied forces was formed with aircraft, ships, tanks, and ground forces arriving at many bases in the Mideast in preparation for war against Iraq. (I had landed in Anchorage on a FedEx trip when the invasion occurred. I was told by my CO to get back to New Jersey because we may be deployed to the Mideast. Since I had been an Instructor in the USAF F-4 Fighter Weapons School, I was told if we deployed I would be leading an 12 ship of Phantoms to wherever we were told to go. After waiting for five days, we were released and told to go back to our regular jobs)

In August of 1990 my second child was born. Let’s just call Kyle a love child. He was borne out of a divorce that kept dragging on and an alcohol fueled passion one night while mixing it up with my future ex-wife; Kyle too emerged alien style, like his sister, from his mom’s belly (C section), since Paula’s pelvis was too narrow for the passage of a baby. I was there to see the future fighter pilot successfully eject from the mothership.

Kyle…all grown up..Marine F-18 Fighter Pilot.

In November of 1990 I started F-16 flight training in Klamath Falls, Oregon. After 3 months of school I went back to the 177th Fighter Interceptor Group based at Atlantic City International Airport in Pomona, New Jersey. It was a very poignant moment for me when I was able to get accepted into the same unit that a man to whom I owe much had been assigned years before. Bob Grace, a neighbor, colleague of my father, and a P-51 World War 2 veteran, flew F-84s, F-100s, and finally F-105s from the same Guard that in which I flew the Viper (F-16) in. Bob Grace is the only reason I endeavored to fly fighter aircraft. He had faith in my ability to pursue an occupation that I thought was far beyond my mental and physical capability. My father had no faith that I would ever amount to anything and he was always trying to get me to join the army, work in computers, or some other position that didn’t include flying. My dad never said I wasn’t good enough to be a military pilot, but he never encouraged me, in fact he never encouraged me to ever be an airline pilot either. Bob, on the other hand was always encouraging, if not pushing me to go for it, telling me that if he could fly P-51s, I could fly a fighter too.

My Dad, left and Bob Grace, in Hawaii, 1983

There is no doubt that the people who had the most positive influence upon my life…teachers and other adults, were always the most complimentary, encouraging, and optimistic about my abilities.

1991

Just out of F-16 Training (1991), in the same unit Mr Grace flew F-105s, F-100s and F-84s in. I have never loved flying a particular aircraft as much as I loved the Viper. You sat so high in the cockpit, I felt I was on top of the jet, not in it. It maneuvered so gracefully, so powerfully, so swiftly. I never lost a visual air to air engagement against a F-15 while flying that little sucker.

The Coalition Forces began bombing Iraq on January 17, 1991. The F-117s and cruise missiles kicked off the extended bombing campaign. The bombing continued unabated until February 23rd, 1991, when the war was won.

At some point after my F-16 training was complete and while on a layover in Anchorage, while flying a DC-10 trip, I met future ex-wife #2 (stay tuned folks, that’s just the beginning) while still working on divorcing number one.
I was in the gym in the Hilton hotel when this very attractive young lady (she was ten years younger than me) asked me how to work one of the gym’s running machines. Whether it was a come on from her or she really didn’t know how to program the treadmill I’ll never know since I never asked, but that evening we went on the first of many dates we would have in destinations around the world before we married, about 4 years later.
To put it on record, I really didn’t care for “Elizabeth’s” personality when I started dating her. I thought she was stuck-up, aloof, and pretentious. But, she was British, lived south of London, and was a Flight Attendant for a prestigious international airline. Above all, her body and looks were intoxicating….and the accent, that refined British accent…I heard it on so many James Bond movies I was immediately smitten just to hear her talk. It wasn’t the east London, cockney accent, it was very posh and refined. I fell head over heels in lust with her, Elizabeth, after our third meeting if only because she was so wildly sensuous. At that point, even though I thought she was a bit shallow, the physical aspect of our relationship took precedence over everything else…trust me, there were red warning flags as to why I should have run away at almost every turn, but my disfunction, due to my upbringing, precluded me from paying attention to the “Danger Will Robinson!!” voices in my head.
As we dated we both traveled around the world due to our jobs and we would meet in London, Paris, Brussels, Cambridge, Amsterdam, Frankfurt, Tokyo and Anchorage, not to mention where we each lived when not on airline trips. All of that was glamorous as hell, but not even remotely realistic into getting to know how we would get along if living together.
As I type this and reflect upon meeting Elizabeth and my attraction to her, I can truly say that, even though she was not exactly my type in personality, likes, interests, faith, etc, I am certain the biggest reason for my attraction to her was intrinsic, the genesis of which was from all of the James Bond movies I saw as a kid with my father. Every time a new Bond movie came out my father would take me since my mother never wanted to go. I had so many “woodies” seeing some of those scantily dressed (for that era) women, I am convinced I was programmed from early childhood to be attracted to English women. The British mystique, the beautiful ladies in those Bond movies, though not all of them English, are truly etched deep in my synapses. When I began to fly to the United Kingdom, or Hong Kong, and met British women, I was immediately fascinated with them. But, I was not someone who could immediately say to a woman, “Hey this is your lucky day, you got the bonus plan because you met both an airline and fighter pilot, let me take you to my room;” My personality was much too reticent. So when I met Elizabeth in the gym, saw how beautiful she was (still is, we do actually talk, amicably, on occasion) and then when she seemed to come on to me? Uh oh, here comes wife number two.

My sister Gail, older than me but younger than my sister Linda, was diagnosed as a paranoid Schizophrenic and was institutionalized for 4 months while living in Hawaii with Linda. Gail destroyed Linda’s apartment one day because she said there was a listening device, bug, planted in the place. After her stay in the Psych ward Linda told Gail she couldn’t stay with her anymore because Gail refused to take her lithium, which controlled her unpredictable temperament. Consequently Gail hopped on an airliner and flew to Los Angeles. She made her way to Hollywood and took up residence in a condemned building along with other squatters.
I would visit Gail when I had LA layovers. I can’t begin to tell you the absolute pain I felt in seeing the kind of life she was living. She had been raped more times than I can count and had a hardness that made her so foreign to me when compared to the sister I knew when I was a kid.

Gail in Hawaii, after being diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia. She moved to Hollywood, lived in a condemned building for a few years before being kicked out. She was raped more times than I can count. Her stories of life in Hollywood and then Vegas, homeless, defy anything I’ve ever heard from anyone of pain, hardship, and the ugly side of humanity.

Flying the F-16 was a joy, but the CO of the unit was a dick; so was his second-in-command, a guy name Robbie (he passed away years ago). I’d had a run in with the CO when I flew Phantoms, since he too came from a F-4 unit. Too much background to put in this missive, but suffice it to say, I only lasted 4 years in the unit before I told the DO (Director of Operations, Robbie) to shove a F-16 up his ass and walked out of the military, never to return…without question the biggest regret of my professional life. A painful lesson learned about letting pride and ego get in the way of humility and self control.
Before I stopped flying the Viper however, I did have a couple memorable missions in it. The most pleasurable was when I got to lead a two ship of Vipers to St Louis so we could escort a two ship of Russian Mig 29s to Niagara Falls airport.
The second most memorable flight, and one in which I almost lost my life, occurred on a cold, dark, winter’s night, 30 miles out to sea. I was flying a single seat Viper in support of a two seat Viper that was flying a night vision goggle ride. We were getting all the squadron pilots re-current in NVGs (Night Vision Goggle) in preparation for a deployment to Panama (the country).
We took off in complete darkness under a very low overcast. I flew in 3 mile radar trail out to the Whiskey warning areas east of New Jersey. We needed clear air in order to perform our mission so we climbed to above 30,000 feet where we finally got clear of the clouds.
After the two seat Viper performed multiple intercepts on me, I was the target, they said they were getting low on fuel and going to return to base. Since I was flying a single seat F-16, I had more fuel than they did, so I dropped down to 14,000 feet and did a couple 360 degree orbits, just east of the beginning of Whisky 107, our dedicated military working airspace. As I orbited in the absolute black of that cold February night, I wondered what it would be like if I flew the Viper in complete darkness…I mean, in darkness to the extent I shut off all the aircraft’s lights, cockpit and external. I’m sure the Forest Gump phrase from the movie, “Stupid is as stupid does” may come to mind? Now don’t ask me why I was such a shit for brains wanting to do this…if you saw the movie Altered States, you might begin to get an idea. So, in keeping with that intent, I put the Viper on autopilot and flew easterly, straight and level, for a bit at 300 knots indicated airspeed and 14,000 feet and then turned out all of the lights.
After flying for a minute or two in the most complete and absolute darkness you could ever imagine, I felt, heard, imagined, a change in the noise of the aircraft and a difference in the airframe vibration. So I turned on a cockpit light. To my utter horror…repeat horror… I was now almost completely inverted, 60 degrees nose low, accelerating through 400 knots and passing 7000 feet. I recovered immediately and climbed back to 14,000. The rest of the flight was routine.
I was seconds from slamming into a very deep, dark, and cold ocean and not one human would have had the slightest idea of what stupidity it was that caused that crash; I guess God didn’t want me to die that night.

Mt Rainier in the foreground and Mt Hood in the distance. Taken while descending on an arrival into Seattle.

1992

Bill Clinton was elected as president in 1992.

1993

On February 26th, 1993 a large bomb was detonated in the underground parking area of the World Trade Center. A huge crater, over ten floors in height, was created; 6 people were killed. This is considered a precursor to 9/11.

While on a layover in Narita at the Let’s Hotel, Elizabeth was also on a layover. She met me at the Karaoke bar that was next to my hotel and we spent the evening in a very packed establishment, listening to the volunteer singers…some very good, some very bad. After a few drinks Elizabeth asked me if we could go to the pool in my hotel. I told her it was closed; hell it was like 1 AM when she asked me. She insisted we try to go there, so, being drunk on hormones and alcohol I acquiesced to her demands and we boarded the elevator for the floor where the gym was located.
To my amazement, though the gym was indeed closed (a sign on the desk saying it was closed and the lights were out), the pool was available in the sense you could get to it by using the unlocked changing room doors.
Exiting the changing room, Elizabeth smartly walked to the side of the pool, took off all of her clothes and jumped in…this being done without warning and certainly by no protest from me. As she swam she asked me to come in too, to which I quickly obliged. We swam together for a bit and then she wrapped her legs around my waist and held me as I walked us up to the edge of the pool, the shallower end, 4 feet deep, and pressed her back against the pool’s wall. At that point we began a kiss, a long one, while preparing for some sort of consummation to the evening. It was when the train was approaching the station when I chanced to look up at the wall above and behind Elizabeth. There, moving about, was a video camera, red light on. It paused as it faced us, and never moved again. Like a one eyed, red eyed cyclops it was staring at us. I had no doubt in no time at all we would have a SWAT team upon us. I told Elizabeth to get dressed and we needed to leave…Now! We were out of there in half the time it took to get in.
The next day I asked the guys in the gym, if their cameras were monitored. “Of course!” the manager cheerfully said.
“Even at night?” I asked.
“Even at night,” was the bland reply, as if I asked I stupid question.
Then the guy at the desk said, “They record everything, even though it is also monitored by security.”
“Oh, great. Good to know.”
To this day, I wonder if that video was saved.

The world preparing for a sunrise while flying over the Pacific.

In August of 1993 I began training on the MD-11 in Memphis, TN. My dear friend Darryl Hannah, the guy I told you about who didn’t like my strategic use of F bombs when I spoke, had graciously offered his house as my place of abode while attending my 3 months of training. At that time Darryl was a DC-10 Captain at FeEx and senior to me. It was during my stay at Darryl’s where I began to attend Bellevue Baptist Church with he and his lovely wife Sylvia. I was still dating Elizabeth, but things were strained because I had an ever strengthening faith in Jesus and Elizabeth was more into mystics and new age spiritualism. As I approached the end of my MD-11 training, one Sunday, with Darryl and Sylvia sitting next to me, I walked to the front of a packed, 3,000 plus church congregation, and professed my faith in Jesus Christ. I was baptized the next week. I have never regretted my commitment to God, though I have back slid more times than I can count, and recommitted more times too, and as you will read… I am horribly broken and far from perfect, but, my love for Christ has never ceased.

Darryl and his wife. Lovely people.

I began a relationship with Elizabeth, again, after having broken up with her after my religious conversion. I said I was not going to let sex be a bandaid to hold us together, since we differed in just about every area of existence other than breathing and eating; she couldn’t understand my reasoning for becoming a Christian.
After being apart for a few months, one day she called and said she “got faith.” Obviously I was skeptical but I happened to have a trip shortly after our conversation that went to London with a three day layover. In that time I stayed with her and she took me to “her church” on Sunday; she had her friend Sharon come with us. When I left her I was not fully onboard with any kind of religious conversion she may have had and I said we would not be sleeping together unless we were married. That decree lasted about three or four months, as you’d expect, but I was making progress in developing my own deepening faith; the good news is the frequency of sex was much less; if that meant anything to God or not I’m not sure.
As a point of note to a young person reading this….Elizabeth’s conversation to Christianity lasted until we got married in late December of 1994. After we married and she moved to America, going to church, praying, anything to do with God, went by the wayside…Lord I was gullible, naive, and a stooge. So….young person…don’t be a Roger, seek the truth in someone’s true change.

On October 3rd, 1993, three Black Hawk helicopters were shot down by RPGs in Mogadishu. Two were shot down deep inside the city and the survivors came under intense gunfire from the local citizenry. What was supposed to be a one hour extraction of a leader of the rebel forces turned into a two day rescue operation for the helicopter crews. A ground convey eventually reached the helicopter survivors but, in total 18 Americans lost their lives in the operation. Dead American soldiers were dragged through the streets by the Somalis. Clinton pulled out of Somalia shortly after this.

1994

On April 7th, 1994 a FedEx DC-10 was on an afternoon flight from Memphis, TN to San Jose, CA. There were 3 crew members, Captain, F/O, S/O and one off duty FedEx crew member who was jumpseating. Once airborne, the jumpseater attacked the 3 crew members with a hammer and attempted to hijack the aircraft. He was unsuccessful in his attempt, though the F/O and S/O were severely injured in the attack. The aircraft returned to Memphis. click the associated link for more info: FX Flight 705

In Sept of 1994, Newt Gingrich along with Dick Army authored the Contract with America. It outlined to the public what a GOP Controlled Congress would do for them if elected in November of 1994.
In 1994, for the first time in 40 years the GOP gained control of both houses (Senate, House of Representatives) and in 1995 Newt Gingrich became the Speaker of the House.

I finally got my divorce from Paula in mid 1994. It took so long due to several on going issues that don’t need mentioning here. We really weren’t that contentious throughout the whole process, since she’d started dating someone very shortly after we split up and she got lost in that relationship. I saw the kids whenever I was not on a trip. I lost my shirt financially in the divorce because, besides the alimony and child support payments, I was responsible for 7 maxed out credit cards. I went to a lawyer and showed him my balance sheet and salary; he recommended declaring bankruptcy. I bit the bullet and filed. Filing for bankruptcy is one of the most embarrassing moments in my adult life. I fully admit I was fiscally irresponsible. I vowed never again. For eight years I had to report that bankruptcy on every car, house, any, loan I applied for, not to mention having to pay a higher interest rate if the load was approved.

On December 7th (Pearl Harbor Day) of 1994 I got my first landing on Hong Kong’s famous Kai Tak’s airport runway 13. It was an abysmal day as Dave Morris (Captain) and I flew from Narita (Tokyo) to Hong Kong. It was raining when we took off and the weather en-route was a never ending stream of less than violent thunderstorms, some of which we flew through because deviating around all the weather would have depleted our quickly diminishing fuel supply because the winds en-route were much stronger than forecast. Due to minimum fuel the dispatcher changed our alternate to Kaohsiung instead of Taipei, Taiwan; as we were vectored for the approach, we determined that we had enough fuel for one approach, otherwise we would have had to divert to our alternate.
Dave had big cahoonies in allowing my first landing on runway 13 out of the IGS approach with such monsoonal type weather and minimum fuel. Once we were established on final approach rain began pounding on the aircraft’s front windows with a vengeance. Two aircraft immediately in front of us, a SwissAir MD-11 and then a Vietnam Airways 767, both went missed approach due to the torrential downpours sweeping across the airport. Our radar display, which was overlayed on our FMS computed route of flight, showed solid red as we got closer to the runway; if we went missed approach we would be flying into the the heart of the storms. The approach to the IGS is an ILS type approach flown to a large hill and at around 600 feet above the ground you turn forty five degrees right, while descending, so as to land on runway 13 which extended on a man made strip of land into the Hong Kong bay. On this day as we got to minimums (675 feet MSL) Dave saw the lead-in lights first and directed me to start a right turn. As I rolled right I saw the subsequent lead-in strobes appear out of the driving rain and followed them to final. I was able to see the runway threshold lights as I turned on to final which gave me confidence I would be able to see the runway well enough to land. We landed in a downpour. (I actually have video of that approach since we had an off duty Captain jumpseating with us and he used my video camera to film the approach and landing; lovely memory. On a sad note though, Dave passed away shortly after the beginning of the new millennium…He was an outstanding Captain, pilot, and human). RWY 13 IGS APPCH.

Enroute to Anchorage, AK in the winter. The mountain in the background is Canada’s Mt Logan, the highest point in Canada at 19551 feet.

1995

I had been on another trip with, Dave, the Captain with whom I flew my first IGS approach (previous paragraph) when I had locked myself out of hotel room and was completely naked. That story, if you care to read it can be found here….Naked in Narita

Then on another occasion I got into a good ‘ole barroom fight that I didn’t start but tried to finish with somewhat disastrous results…..Wild West Show

Flying the MD-11 out of Anchorage, Alaska, where I was based from 1993 to 1995 was an amazing opportunity to fly with some of the finest pilot’s I’d ever, and will-ever, fly with. Great men all; there was only one female Captain with whom I flew, she was average in flying skill and she didn’t exactly like me, for reasons I’ll never know, or care. But the one amazingly cool thing about this Captain was the fact that her father flew Pan Am Clipper aircraft back “in the day”; she got tired of me asking her to relay stories her Dad told her.
Since the sub title of this blog is “Pilots are People too,” I’d like to elucidate you on two different emotional states exhibited by two different Captains who were going through the very same type of a very stressful life event. I had long trips, like 12 days, with these two guys and the differences in how they dealt with their situations highlights some pilot’s need to effectively, even if you need to see a shrink, manage the darker areas of their lives.
The first trip occurred very shortly after getting checked out in the MD-11 and started during a blinding snowstorm in Anchorage, Alaska. As we sat at the runway’s approach end, waiting for the airport to open while a convoy of snowplows pushed the four plus inches of trillions and trillions of snowflakes off the runway, the Captain dove into his tale of woe about how he got home from a trip a couple of months ago and found his wife of 17 years in bed with his best friend of 30 years. Ugh for him, bad for me since I got to hear every salacious iteration of his future ex wife’s love affair with his best friend, and of his marriage to her before he found out she was cheating. The sad part was to hear of his 2 children, teenagers, who were traumatized by the instant destruction their family due to the infidelity and the wicked infighting between the three adults. This Captain’s pain in losing his best friend, his wife and the anguish to his children was palatable. I really felt sorry for him.
As we flew on that trip his future ex called him to tell him she had moved in with his ex best friend.
In spite of the stress of his divorce and how it was proceeding, the details of which I heard about every day at dinner, breakfast, lunch, or when we flew, he seemed just fine operating the aircraft and making the necessary command decisions a Captain must make as he flies from A to B.. He was an excellent pilot and if the destruction of one half of his life was affecting his ability to be an effective Captain, I didn’t see it.
But, of course my life couldn’t be normal, I guess God has a sense of humor, since a year later I flew with another Captain, older”ish” than the previous one just mentioned and he too was going through a very contentious divorce. This dude was emotionally rattled and with each proclamation from his attorney as to the state of the affairs on his divorce, the lines between normal behavior, sketchy, or full blown psycho got blurred on a few occasions.
One of the most dangerous lapses in his cognitive ability was on a short flight from Singapore to Penang...maybe an hour’s flying time? On the way to the airport the Captain got a call that one of his credit cards had been maxed out by his future Ex and it was now frozen, not to mention she drained half of his checking and savings account. Steam poured forth from his head, but he didn’t yell, or scream, he just seethed and mumbled almost incoherently. I remained silent. I saw my dad, as I grew up, when he would get pissed about something and stew and I knew, I experienced, sometimes the wrath of hell that falls upon the nearest person to offer a word of encouragement to one suffering great stress…I learned that silence at times can hide you in plain sight.
So we depart lovely Singapore and enter thunderstorm hell. Singapore lies in the area of the world called the ITZ, Inter-Tropical-Convergence Zone. Thunderstorms breed here year round but “generally” don’t have the extreme turbulence that those of the mid to higher latitudes have, so flying through them, if for some reason you can’t fly around the odd storm, is not near as death defying as flying through a thunderstorm over, say France. But, the moisture, rain, in a tropical storm is beyond comprehension. As we neared Penang in our descent from the high 20’s flight levels, we were headed for the biggest, baddest looking, reddest friggin storm cell I ever saw on radar…and we were descending at 350 knots, well above our turbulence penetration speed. I was asking the Captain if he wanted to turn left, a few times, to avoid the storm but he never acknowledged me. I was tapping the NAV display, on my side, saying we needed to deviate and slow down..”Let’s turn left, let’s turn! slow down!!” with each word I was louder and more emphatic. Nothing. His gaze was locked, glassy, not moving, He just stared straight ahead, unresponsive. As we penetrated this red giant I figured we were gonna’ die and in the accident report they were going to lay blame on the First Officer since he was not proactive enough in keeping the crew and aircraft out of harm’s way, with an obviously physiologically incapacitated leader. Yup, blame was gonna fall on me.

A severe line of thunderstorms. I photographed this approaching Singapore while training on a new Captain on the B-777.

Once the extremely heavy rain started pelting the fast flying jet, the noise level in the cockpit was so extreme you had to yell just to communicate; the turbulence was continuous light chop, with an occasional moderate up or down draft just to keep you on your toes. The decibel deluge pulled the Captain from his trance and he said we needed to deviate….no shit. Problem was I couldn’t get a hold of ATC due to the weather and the static on the radios. I said just turn left and I’ll call in the blind. Initially he wouldn’t do it, but his fear of dying, like mine, was greater than the possible repercussion’s from a foreign ATC and he started a turn to exit the side of the behemoth. As soon as we exited the storm we heard ATC approving our deviation request and they sounded concerned too, since they said they lost our transponder signal when we entered the weather. The rest of the flight into Penang was thankfully normal and clear of weather.
He did profusely apologize for his behavior while on the ground in Penang and admitted that the divorce was killing him emotionally. Unfortunately we had to turn around and fly back to Singapore and hour after arriving and then we had like 10 more days of flying bliss until we were home again.
That flight was the worst episode with which he became disassociated with reality and dereliction of duty, but, for the rest of the flights/days I watched him like a hawk and he did have a running dialogue on the border sanity at times.

Pretty much what the MD-11 radar was painting on the NAV display the day I flew into the storm with Larry. This photo is from a B-767 that I was flying while going into Memphis in 2018. While it looks bad, it was mostly very heavy rain with some moderate turbulence.

He retired quite a few years ago and I never saw him again after that trip.

While flying from Tokyo (Narita) to Anchorage, Alaska I got into a very passionate and deep discussion with the Captain about UFOs. I actually do not believe in them, but as I found out, he was very religious in his belief and told me I was an idiot for not sharing in his belief. He said it was his mission on that flight to convert me. About an hour from coasting into Alaska’s VHF/ATC airspace (it was night), the Captain said, “If you don’t believe in UFO’s how do you explain that!!” He was pointing out my window.
On my right, and very high in the sky, a red dot was leaving an ionized trail; the “red dot” was moving very fast and going from west to east. It eventually disappeared over the eastern horizon which, at that time, had a slight glow since we were nearing sunrise.
Upon seeing that “dot” the Captain really tore into my disbelief saying how could I not believe in UFOs now? I responded that there is a logical explanation for that thing. As I write this I can still see the frustration in that Captain’s face when I refused to believe in aliens.
However…I was rewarded with my disbelief a hour after seeing the dot disappear over the horizon. When we reached Anchorage Center’s Airspace I had to make a VHF radio position call. Now mind you, when I tuned the VHF radio to ATC’s frequency you would believe, because of the silence, there were no other aircraft on that frequency. So when I made my position report to Anchorage, I added, “Hey Anchorage, did anyone mention a very high flying object in the sky, going from west to east about an hour ago?”
After my radio call you’d have sworn there were dozens of aircraft on that frequency since so many pilots were also chiming in saying they saw it too.
Anchorage came right back with, “Settle down guys, that was the Shuttle Atlantis entering the atmosphere on its arrival for a landing at Edwards. It successfully touched down about 40 minutes ago.”
I never talked to or flew with that Captain again. I still don’t believe in aliens or their flying machines.

On arrival into Anchorage in the morning. The mud flats of Turnagain Arm Bay, low tide. This is looking southeast

On April 19, 1995 a truck filled with explosives blew up in Oklahoma City, OK, radically destroying a Federal Government building downtown. 168 people were killed and 680 were injured. It still is the worst case of domestic terrorism in the US.

In 1995 a married and now pregnant Elizabeth flew from England to be with me in Germantown, TN. In July of 1995 she gave birth, the normal way, like vaginally, to our first daughter and my third child. At the time of Autumn-Paige’s birth I was checking out to be a simulator instructor on the the MD-11. I still flew the line, but only to maintain landing currency. Being a simulator instructor allowed me to be home much more than if I flew the line and that turned out to be very fortuitous, since Elizabeth struggled initially at raising a new born. The hardest part for her was the round the clock feedings required, particularly the 2 AM wake up calls from a crying child. My first wife (now Ex) was so natural a mother I thought every woman had that mothering/nurturing shit programed into them…ahhhh not quite. Elizabeth could be a gnarly monster when she lacked sleep, so in order to keep the peace, with all three of us, I did the early morning feedings, even if I did have a 7 AM simulator brief to give, I could handle lack of sleep much better than the wife.

Bought my first house of my FedEx years in 1995. It’s amazing to think that a few years earlier I declared bankruptcy. I was able to buy the house because I was eligible for a VA loan which didn’t require any money down and the loan was guaranteed by the government.

In order to be a Flex Instructor at FedEx in the MD-11 I had to get checked out as a Captain. I wouldn’t be paid as a Captain and my seniority remained the same, but in order to teach Captains in the simulator the company required all F/Os who were checking out as Flex Instructors to get a left seat checkout. So in September of 1995 six of us First Officers who were checking out to be Instructors flew to London to train in the MD-11 simulator that was at the London Gatwick Airport. I can’t remember who owned the simulator and we did not train in Memphis because that simulator was in constant use by upgrading line pilots. The best part of being in London then was going to Biggin Airfield, near London, for the 55th annual Battle of Britain Air Show…first time I saw a Gloster Meteor (first British jet) fly; it was pretty impressive with its high speed passes.

Around Thanksgiving of 1995 the FedEx pilots had opted to go into self-help. They (we) were trying to garner our first contract after voting to become unionized. Mr Smith, founder of Federal Express, was strongly anti- union and was fighting this collaboration of the pilots. To say it was contentious between management and the pilots is an understatement. The chances of a strike happening were imminent and the company had vowed to fire anyone who went on strike (since we didn’t have a previous contract, we could legally be fired if we struck) and the company also was taking measures to replace the pilots with airlift from other sources if we did strike.
Without knowing I did anything wrong, on the morning that we officially went into self-help (12AM), I got a call from scheduling telling me I was going to jumpseat to Anchorage, AK and sit hotel standby there for two weeks. I said I couldn’t, because I was scheduled to instruct a simulator event the next morning, for which I was being trained. Linda, the head scheduler said, “No, I’m telling you you have to go!”
I said, “I can’t, I’m teaching a simulator in the morning. Now, if you want to call my boss, Scott, and tell him what you want me to do and he says ok, I’ll go on the hotel standby, but Scott is my boss.”
She hung up.
At 7AM Clive Seal, the head of Flight Ops, upon hearing of my “refusal” to go fly, fired me. Linda went to his office and told him of my insubordination, at least according to her, as soon Clive got to the office.
At 8 AM my boss, Scott, was called into Clive’s office and was told by Clive that I was fired because I refused a trip. Linda was in the office when Scott got there and she was egging Clive on. Scott said let’s listen to the recording of the call. (all the scheduling calls are recorded). On playback it was clear that I didn’t refuse to go, just that I wanted Scott’s permission since I felt my boss should be the one to tell me I had to fly instead of doing a training sim; Linda for some reason felt she was a higher power than Scott. Clive hired me back.
So when I came in to teach the simulator event at 10 AM, I was met by Scott, the MD-11 Training Manager and he informed me that in the space of two hours that morning I was fired and then re-hired. Jezzz, glad I missed that drama.
To illuminate the EXTREME stress all the crews were flying under, a couple days after that simulator event I flew to London. There were three of us in the cockpit of the MD-11, the Captain, F/O and I was the Relief F/O. The weather upon arrival in Stanstead was sunny with calm winds, The Captain briefed, because he was so stressed out with the threat of going on strike, he was going to perform an auto-land approach and landing. Which he did. Though that Captain was extremely experienced, I felt he used the ultimate in good judgment that afternoon.
We all met for dinner at the Eagle pub in Cambridge and spoke of our own nerves and what we would do if we did go on strike.
The next morning, on my way to breakfast I saw the Captain, smiling from ear to ear, and he informed me that the disaster had been averted, and the company and union reached a settlement in principle, a TA, and it would be voted on soon (it was approved by the pilots).
That was probably the in the top ten of the greatest stressors in my life.

A later picture of Jerry, the Captain with whom I flew when we were about to go on strike. This picture was taken when I gave Jerry his last Line Check (we were on the B-777 then) before he retired. Jerry gave me my very first Captain Line check in the MD-11 in December of 1995.

1996

In October of 1996 Elizabeth popped another one out, our first and only boy. Lord he was a happy little camper right out of the chute…I guess he knew of his mother’s proclivity to moodiness when tired while doing early morning feedings, so for most of the time, Austin was a chubby, happy little butterball.

All grown up. Like me and his older brother Austin is perusing a career in aviation too, but he’s taking the civilian path, not the military. Here he’s taking me flying while in Las Vegas.

But October saw a death too. My incredibly dear and wonderful Jack DiStefano passed away of a stroke in October. I cannot begin to describe the pain I felt in his loss. This is a man that saved me from the wrath, in my high school years, of much of my father’s abuse and who offered me sanctuary in his home, his life, his world because he saw the bi-polar nature of my father and neglect of my mother; as a plus to his taking me under his wing, so to speak, he was one of the funniest humans I have ever known and all my life I have endeavored to emulate his sense of humor. He was my flight instructor when I was learning to fly when I was 16, 17 and 18. He flew down to Marathon, in the Florida Keys in the summer between my junior and senior year in high school, in a 65 HP Luscombe 8A, and picked me up from the airport there when my summer camp ended. That flight back to New Jersey is one of the greatest flying episodes in my life. When not in school or flying with him, Jack taught me the academics of aviation at the bar of a strip club while a very attractive and well built dancer, Upside-Down Norma, hung from straps and danced on the ceiling above us, topless and wearing a G string. Her favorite song was Lady, by Styx, and to this day whenever I hear that song, I think of those wild and crazy nights where beer, babes, and flying mixed well; many times Jack would drop me off at my house at 1 AM, both of us drunk; I had to be in school at 7AM, I learned very young about hangovers and spinning beds……..Styx/Lady
Oddly and most wonderfully, before his passing and shortly after his stroke I flew from TN to visit Jack in the ICU. He was, amazingly, quite talkative. When he saw me, though I’m not sure he recognized me, he asked me, “Do you have Jesus? If you don’t have Jesus you can’t go to heaven!”
He asked me a couple times before I responded because I was in shock. In all the years between he and I, in the bars, the flying, the crying (me on his shoulder due to the issues I had in living with my father), Jack never, ever talked about God or Jesus…ever. I mean this is a man who took a 16 year old kid to a strip joint…on school nights…many times, and allowed him to drink beer, a lot of it, while studying aeronautics. Who does that? I wouldn’t change those days for all the money in the world.
Getting back to that day in the ICU with the newest of prophets, Jack, and here he’s asking me if I have Jesus? I was delighted he asked me since I knew he now did, but I was blown away how he so coherently asked me. In response I said “Yes, I do Jack.”
He passed away the next day. I have great joy in my heart knowing this wonderful man is in heaven no doubt flirting with the ladies, teaching the angels a thing or two about flying, and will have a spot, and a beer, for me at the bar when I arrive.

 For more on Jack and me read…..Jack

Bill Clinton was reelected to a second term in November of 1996.

President Bill Clinton began having an affair with Monica Lewinsky, a White House Intern. It lasted 18 months and when fully brought to light culminated in the attempted impeachment of Clinton in 1998. The attempt failed and Clinton remained President until the end of his second term.

1997

On January 9th, 1997 as Elizabeth backed out of the driveway of our home she felt a rather large bump. I heard what sounded like a watermelon hitting the ground as I bent over to get a hidden key near the front door of our house while Elizabeth backed out. Elizabeth stopped after feeling the bump and I looked up after hearing the sound.
To my horror, lying face up on the driveway was Autumn-Paige, dying. I immediately ran to her and picked her up. She had a tire track on her face and blood emanating from her mouth, nose and ears….her heart beat was fast, but she could not breathe, her chest being crushed. She was dying and there was nothing I could do to stop it.
The pain. The absolute pain, beyond anything you could image there was pain. Seeing my daughter’s bloodied face and the beautiful pink of her skin go to blue and ashen was suffocating me in emotional hell the likes of which you’d have to experience to understand; not a day passes where the memory of her bloodied face doesn’t at least once creep into my heart.
Paramedics took Autumn-Paige from me 10 minutes after the call and then life flighted her in a helicopter to Le Bonheur Children’s hospital. She was dead on arrival.
I could drag the emotion out in my writing here, the pain Elizabeth and I felt and the incredible difference in which we grieved, but I’ll spare you the drudgery of reading about it. I’ll leave you with this though….if ever in my life I could even remotely understand and feel the separation that Jesus felt on the Cross as he died and took the sin of humankind upon Him and His consequential separation from His Father…causing him to yell, “Eli, Eli lama sabachthnani?” (My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?)” (Matthew 27:27-51). Well on the day Autumn-Paige died, I felt a separation from God and a darkness in my soul, that I never want to feel again. I want to be clear…in no way do I claim to know what Jesus felt on the day he died, He was perfect and God in the flesh. I am nothing short of a hugely imperfect and riddled with sin human, but I do have some slight inkling of the darkness that Jesus felt when He became separated from His father.

Autumn-Paige 2 weeks before her passing.

Two days after Autumn-Paige’s burial, her uncle, Malcolm, had a vision of what he swears was Autumn-Paige riding on the back of an angel as they flew in the skies of Heaven. Malcolm was in his home in Southhampton, UK when he saw in his dream what he saw and felt. To explain the entirety of his experience would bore you, but he was so moved he immediately flew back to the states to talk to my Pastor about how deeply he was affected by seeing/feeling what he experienced. One of the over-riding elements in his vision he said was how beautiful the sky was in his vision. He said the pastel colors were very soothing. On a flight with a friend of mine, Darryl, as we headed to Paris and were over South Central China, we flew through, around, and between an extensive area of severe thunderstorms. Just as we broke clear of the last of the storms I chanced to take this photograph. When I showed it to Malcolm he said the clouds, the colors, reminded him of what he saw in his vision. Nothing is by chance…I believe God wanted me to see that.

Three weeks after Autumn-Paige’s passing I couldn’t stand being at home, mourning her loss with a wife who seemed to have contempt for me. So I asked my boss if I could go back to work…reluctantly he said yes. My first work assignment was to fly to Helsinki, Finland to train two prospective MD-11 First Officers, Terry and Marcell. We were using FinnAir’s MD-11 simulators because the simulators in Memphis were too busy training line pilots or giving recurrent training to those already trained, but needed the annual refresher training all pilots must get.
I was supposed to be in Helsinki for 17 days. At some point in my first week there Elizabeth flew over. She stopped in London first to drop Austin off with Elizabeth’s mother and then came to Helsinki, the thought being Elizabeth and I needed some time alone to heal, since our marriage was rapidly falling apart. After 4 days with me, Elizabeth decided to go back to the UK and stay with her parents for a few weeks before returning to the USA. When I dropped her off at the airport I noticed her wedding and engagement rings were not on her finger. I asked her why. She said she was going to go out with her girlfriends when she got to England and find some guys to fuck; she then turned and walked into the terminal.
Beyond words I was devastated.
I need to add here, and this is deep and revealing about me, at that point in my life, due to the dysfunction in which my sisters and I were raised, I had huge fear of abandonment issues in relationships (years later a shrink helped me to understand why I had those abandonment fears and helped me to learn coping mechanisms). I was so desperate in wanting to be loved by Elizabeth (actually this started while dating), but she had always been so distant and unaffectionate in almost every aspect of our relationship, I craved whatever tidbit of affection she would throw my way; her crumbs kept me hopeful that much more was coming, but the love never really came (Again a shrink helped me to see that Elizabeth was like my mother…very often we marry a person who was like our mother/father, in all their possible dysfunction)
For her part Elizabeth knew so well how to push my emotional buttons that she literally controlled me.
The next day as I was briefing Terry and Marcel for a simulator session they could tell I was upset about something and asked me what was wrong. I then told them what my wife said the evening before. What the one former Marine Fighter Pilot and the former Air Force F-117 Fighter Pilot did after hearing of my emotional plight goes down in my life as one of the most sensitive, caring, and warm reactions as any I’ve ever heard, witnessed or personally experienced from another human. For two weeks, until we left Helsinki, those two “macho” men helped me to keep it together and kept me from having a complete breakdown…pilots are people too.

1998

As 1997 continued from ‘97 through 98, Elizabeth’s and my marriage continued its spiral into hell. We were each seeing a shrink every week, different ones, and once a month we had a big pow wow of all four of us. I saw no improvement in our marriage so after a couple of years I stopped seeing my doctor. The guy was a moron, self absorbed, and more concerned about flirting with my wife when we did meet as a couple than in understanding that my wife was planning for a divorce and using the psyche sessions as a way to show the court and others “she tried.”

It was early April and I was flying with a very infamous Tiger Captain, Al (K). We were arriving from Europe intending to land at Newark, NJ. It was the first week in April and a late winter storm was dumping very heavy, wet snow on the Northeast. About a mile from landing, just as we broke out of the clouds, Newark Airport went dark…(it was around 4 AM)…they lost power. Tower didn’t need to tell us to go around, since Al hit the TOGA button as soon as the lights went out. I called tower and told them we were on the go. Tower directed us to maintain runway heading and climb to 3000 feet. Upon contacting the departure controller, once we got the missed approach squared away, they asked what our intentions were? Al told me to tell the controller we wanted to divert to Kennedy, JFK, Airport, which was, maybe 10 miles away. Al had briefed earlier that if we could not get into Newark, due to the heavy snow (I don’t think he thought they would lose power though), we were going to go to JFK (our paper alternate, the one the dispatcher had filed us for was Dulles). I kid you not, as we cleaned up on that missed approach and when I told the controller we wanted to divert to JFK, in three turns, vectors, from him we were on an intercept heading for the ILS to runway 04R. We landed less than 10 minutes after our missed approach. That was a personal best in my life, let alone in my FedEx years in the length of time from missed approach to landing at an alternate.

The eastern side of the Grand Canyon.

The affair between Clinton and Monica Lewinsky leaked in 1998 and turned into a full blown crisis as the year dragged on. Clinton’s famous quote, “I did not have sex with that woman,” turned out to be not quite accurate. However, since Bill was an attorney, his defense was that his definition of sex wasn’t exactly the same as what was his wife’s, or the general public’s for that matter. Eventually Clinton was impeached by the House on perjury and obstruction of justice. The Senate later acquitted Clinton of both charges.

The Kosovo War began in early 1998 and ended in March of 1999.

At some point FedEx started a new route, flying to Shanghai, layover, and then next day fly to Beijing, turn, and fly back the same afternoon to Shanghai. The first time I flew the trip that had these sequences of flights embedded in its 12 day total trip length, was with a rather dashing Lou. He was an excellent aviator and very fun to be with while not flying. On the early afternoon when Lou and I showed up at the aircraft in preparation for the flight to Beijing, the ramp agent told us we were delayed 4 hours due to severe weather between Shanghai and Beijing. It was insufferably hot and humid on that day, and the APU on our jet was inoperable. So, after preparing for flight as much as we could, loading the flight plan, preflight checks, etc, we had 3 1/2 hours more to kill until we could leave. Since the cockpit, even with the side windows open was so hot, I changed into shorts, tank top and sandals since I was drenching my uniform with sweat while we waited. Shortly after changing Lou did the same. He also brought out his CD player and put on some Jimmy Buffet music. While not cooling us down, the music changed the mood in the cockpit and brought our spirits up. 45 minutes or so after “chilling” to Jimmy’s Beach, Boats, and Ballads CDs, the ramp agent ran into the cockpit and said we had to be airborne in 20 minutes….I mean you’re in communist China, when they say go, you go. So we went. We didn’t have time to change into our uniforms so Lou and I flew to Beijing, in a FedEx MD-11 in sandals, shorts, and a tank top. How cool was that? To read more on that click here: Flying with Jimmy Buffet

1999

In early 1999 my third child by my second marriage was born. Amber was the result of a mother who wanted to replace the loss of her first child. Elizabeth threatened to divorce me if I wouldn’t have sex with her in order to procreate another child; she wanted a girl. Since the only sex I had with Elizabeth was before Austin was born I was willing to try for another child and I didn’t want a divorce. Immediately Elizabeth got pregnant, the sex stopped, and Elizabeth planned her departure from our marriage.
I will not claim to be an angel in all of this and I had my issues, so please I am not blaming all of the issues in our marriage on Elizabeth. Quite simply she and I should never have married. A jet set dating life did not give us a clue as to how we would get along when not in a hotel and living it up. After marriage and when the dust settled we realized we had no connection on any level, nothing in common and we were separated by my faith and a lack of one with her. For me it was as close to living in hell as you could get with the exception that I loved my kids dearly, so I dove into raising them, as did Elizabeth. I must note that from 1995 through 2000 I was seeing my kids in New Jersey for one weekend a month; Paula would not allow Christina and Kyle to fly out to TN, so I always to go them.

After many years of wondering about my Aunt and Uncle, I finally located them in Vero Beach, Florida. My mother and her sister, Aileen, were not very close while growing up in Northern New Jersey. In fact after graduating from high school my mother got on a bus and headed along Route 66 to Los Angeles, hoping, like thousands of other women, to be discovered. She got discovered all right, by my father when he interviewed her for a Stewardesses position at a hotel in Hollywood. The catch was the job was based in Teterboro, New Jersey. My father was Chief Pilot and Head of Flight Operations for a non-sked Airline, Meteor, that was based in Teterboro.
So my mother was back in New Jersey, but this time she was the wife (they quickly got married after my mother began to fly the line with my father) and she felt she was “somebody.” Thusly, with this new found status she felt she could associate with her older sister, Aileen, on equal footing, since I believe my mother was always jealous of her sister. They were both beautiful woman.
My mother, never, ever, ever, while growing up would talk about or want to discuss my Aunt and Uncle. I mean like, never. I usually had to ask my father about them and he said he liked them, but for some reason he said, “Your mother hates her sister.” No explanation was ever given.
So armed with the internet’s more advanced searching tools in the latter part of the nineties I was able to locate Aunt Aileen and Uncle Billy.
I wrote them a letter and they called after receiving it. Two months later they were in my home in Collierville. I flew Linda down from Watertown, NY so she could visit with them too. It was a wonderful visit.

Many questions about my mother and father were answered in that visit, the biggest one being why did my sisters and I go to my Aunt and Uncle for a year (they had moved to Denver) right after I was born. Stay tuned for the answer…there’s more about my Aunt and Uncle in later years.
Oddly, when Aileen and Billy were leaving to head back to Florida, Aileen pulled me aside and said I was always welcome to visit them, but my wife was not (welcome); Aileen and Billy did not like her…at all.

Made Captain on the MD-11, seniority wise, in 1999. I continued instructing as a Flex Instructor though.

In mid December of 1999 I left Memphis with my F/O, Kit, on an around the world Millennium trip. We were scheduled to be in Hong Kong when the clock ticked from 1999 to 2000. There were predictions that all of the old computer equipment, which wasn’t programed past 1999 was going to cause computer mayhem throughout the world…I wanted to be in Hong Kong if that happened since I thought I might get a long layover there if computer armageddon happened and caused the ATC computers, and the world, to shutdown for a few days.
Nada. Nothing. If any computers, anywhere in the world had a software conniption, I never heard of it. I was so disappointed.
On the bright side, New Year’s Eve night and into New Year’s day in Hong Kong turned out to be the biggest friggin’ party I have ever been to…I swear the entire population of Hong Kong and Kowloon was out in the streets partying that night. Times Square in New York on Christmas Eve had nothing on Hong Kong that night.

2000

George W Bush is elected the 43rd President in a very contested, “hanging chad” kind of election against Al “Inconvenient Truth” Gore.

Arrived home from a trip in early 2000 and went to open the door to my house. I couldn’t, the locks were changed. Elizabeth changed them, emptied the bank accounts and canceled the credit card; she said she wanted a divorce and had seen a lawyer and was filing.
I had 24 dollars in cash in my pocket. I asked to stay in the house for the night and she said no. I had a legal right to stay but didn’t want to fight her since my son was present and I didn’t want to upset him. I had no money for a hotel, since the credit card (we only had one) was cancelled. It was late, and I didn’t want to call any friends and ask for the use of a couch, so I went to the local hotel parking lot and spent the night in my car…homeless and broke as a MD-11 Captain; it was not a good night nor a great way to start the millennium.
The next day I moved in with a friend and his wife and spent the next 5 months rehabilitating with them until I could get on my feet financially and emotionally. And it was not Darryl with whom I moved in since his wife was good friends with my future Ex and she said she didn’t want the appearance of favoritism in the divorce.
A week after being barred from my house I was doing a stand up academics class, teaching recurrent training to about 15 MD-11 pilots. About 10 o’clock in the morning there was a knock on the door to the room and a sheriff’s deputy came into the room and served me divorce papers…in front of the entire class. The hits just keep on coming.

Morning departure out of Newark’s Liberty Airport. Heading to Paris. FedEx B-767

In early summer of 2000 I was selected to be an MD-11 Aircraft Instructor, as in I would be training new Captains and F/Os how to fly the actual aircraft, on the line, and not just training them in the simulator. A FAA Designee on the MD-11, Steve (B.), gave me most of my line training in my aircraft Instructor checkout.
I cannot say enough great things about Steve…outstanding pilot, husband, father, human. He had such a tragedy that summer. His house was struck by lightning while he and his wife were watching TV. After the vicious lightning strike pummeled the house and briefly caused the lights to flicker, accompanied with a deafening thunderclap and bright light from outside the house, Steve went upstairs to check on things. As he opened the door to the attic he saw smoke and flames. He ran downstairs, told his wife to call the fire department and he went into his office to grab as many important things as he could…tax stuff, birth certificates, etc. In 20 minutes the house was completely engulfed and it burned to the ground; pilots are people too.
Probably the best moment I had with Steve was on a LA layover. We had about 36 hours there and arrived in the late afternoon. Our hotel was in the Marina Del Rey area and for dinner we walked to Venice Beach. I like a restaurant there that had an outdoor dinning area on the promenade. It was a great place to people watch while eating and talking. Leaving the restaurant, much less sober than I arrived, and as Steve and I were stumbling back to the hotel, I saw a tattoo parlor (It’s still there). I told Steve I was getting a tattoo (My future Ex wife HATED tattoos, so I thought, “Fuck it, I’m getting one!” just to piss her off).
Steve was literally pulling on my arm saying, ”You can’t get a tattoo when you’re drunk!!!”
“Who says?” I shot back with.
“I don’t know, but isn’t it like some unwritten law!”
“I’m getting a tattoo”.
There was literally a sign on the wall in the tattoo parlor that said if you are visibly intoxicated we will not let you get a tattoo. Well they must have put that up for appearances because if anyone was visibly intoxicated it was me and they put three tattoos on my right shoulder blade/back…A cross, the name Autumn-Paige, and a supposed Chinese symbol that means “in heaven.”
There was great satisfaction when I went to pick up my kids from Elizabeth, wearing a tank top so she could see the tattoos.

For six months after I was served divorce papers I asked Elizabeth if she would please stop the divorce and let us try and work things out. I was seeing a shrink again, trying to figure my shit out and I did not want the divorce, even though Elizabeth and I really were not “meant” for each other. For six months Elizabeth said, “No, no, no, no, no, NO and stop asking me!!!” (she had begun dating an ATF agent in early July). After her last proclamation of “No,” by an odd occurrence that night, while I was attending a divorce recovery group meeting at the church I went to, this smoking hot blonde waited for me after the meeting was over. She said she wanted to talk, saw me the week prior and understood the emotional trauma I was going through; it took awhile but she eventually would be wife number three.

On December 7th, 2000 while visiting my kids in NJ, I stopped in to say hello to my mother and father since I had not seen them in a couple of years. My father had retired from the FAA, after 37 years, in 1997; his last flight as a Captain in an aircraft, a B-727, occurred in 1995; he was 75 years old on that last flight.
When I saw my mother on that December 7th, she looked like shit and literally smelled like it too. I took her to the ER since she was acting very strange. Consequently, a CAT scan showed that tumors were taking over her brain as well as her lungs (for as long as I knew her she smoked 2 to 3 packs of cigarettes a day) and she was given 3 to 5 months…she died on Jan 1st, 2001, the doc was a little off in his estimated DDD.
After my mother’s passing and burial, I had to now pack up my father and some of his stuff and bring him to Memphis to live near me. In the meantime I took care of his very minimal estate and discovered my mother’s gambling addiction got her 35K in debt.
On the drive from New Jersey to Memphis, with my father, we discussed some of the issues that caused so much consternation in my growing years. I tried to get my father to admit that he was an alcoholic and that he had been abusive to his wife and me (Never my sisters). In spite of three DUIs, a hit and run (he caused while drunk), a loss of his driver’s license for six months and multiple mandatory counseling sessions mandated by his employer (FAA), the narcissist fought me all the way to Memphis and would never admit to any malfeasance on his part; it was all in my head he said.
I got the ornery old man situated in an assisted living home a few miles from my apartment. He hated life at this point, and me...everyone except the lady that I met at church a few months earlier and was very casually dating. He loved her…I mean like my first wife, he loved this woman. In fact one day he called her up and said that I tried to kill him and that she needed to pick him and up they needed to run away together. I kid you not, you just can’t make this shit up. The crap I had to live with when it came to him was beyond belief.
I will admit at this time in my life, I would love to have died. I couldn’t have committed suicide, that wasn’t in me, but a heart attack or a mortal stroke about then would’ve suited me just fine. I was getting my second divorce and having to deal with the stress of the lawyers asking for money or getting depositions; I was caring for a father who bitched at just about everything, including me; I has having to care for my two youngest kids when I wasn’t flying and felt I needed to keep up my visits to my oldest two kids too, so that required planning around my youngest kids, my father and my trips; in addition I was paying a small king’s ransom in alimony, child support, and support payments to my future wife, leaving me very little to live on.
Because I was maxed out emotionally I started going to a little prayer chapel in a very nice Catholic Church I used to attend when I was a catholic (I left that church after my first divorce). I would take an hour out of my day once or twice a week, when not flying obviously, to go into that peaceful little room and just sit, pray, meditate, whatever it took to feel the peace of the Holy Spirit come over me.
I get it, you might be saying, “You flew fighters in the military and you're from Jersey, you’re supposed to be a tough guy.” Well everyone has a breaking point and I was near mine. I hated where I was in life then and the only way out, for me, was to go back to God and ask for relief. Though my circumstances didn’t change a whole lot then, I did get a feeling of calm while in the storm.

2001

On June 19th, 2001 my father died in the ER (I was by his side), oddly it was on my late mother’s birthday. It was on that day, as he was dying, his heart failing, when my father told me secret he had never told to anyone. It was a revelation so profound it immediately caused me to understand why he had been such an asshole for much of his life. His revelation, once I grasped its immensity, caused me to have pity on a man who had so abused his wife and me. (to find out what the secret was you’ll have to read this book:Flying Between Heaven and Hell )
It’s hard to relate to you the animosity my mother harbored towards my father. Why she never left him for good I’ll never understand. It wasn’t until years later when I read the notes of the psychiatrists that my father had seen through the years when I found out my mother had been institutionalized a few times when I was in high school. My mother never told me the reasons why she was institutionalized, in fact she never told me she was. My father always told me my mother had left us, each of those absences being six months in length. I literally thought my mother hated my dad so much she was trying to leave him, but never quite could. I do know that she had an affair with a guy who was doing some remodeling on our house while I was in college. I have no idea if my dad ever found out.
They both lived in a mutual hell for most of their lives together. Death was liberating for each of them, as it was for me also.

My parents, in Hawaii, 1983. A happy moment.

On 9/11/2001 the World Trade Towers in NYC and the Pentagon in Arlington,VA were struck by hijacked aircraft flown by Islamic terrorists. The World Trade Towers collapsed relatively shortly after the aircraft impacts, killing around 2600 people. 125 people were killed in the Pentagon, and a total of 265 passengers and crew were killed in the four aircraft that were hijacked. 343 FDNY firemen were killed in addition to 71 NYPD policemen.
For almost five days air traffic into/out of the USA, and with-in it was severely restricted. Immediately following the attacks all air traffic with-in the USA, except military or certain medical flights, was grounded.

A year or so after the 9/11 attacks I visited ground zero. I took this picture of the only structure standing on the site. In honor of the First Responders I ghosted two images on some buildings near the site.

2002

In 2002 I was selected to be a Designee on the MD-11. It was an honor. Being a Designee meant I could give Type Rating Rides and acted as a representative of the FAA while in that capacity. My father had been a Designee/DPE while he was with the FAA and I always wanted to continue the legacy of being one too.

Elizabeth and I signed divorce papers in the middle of December, 2001. Right after the paperwork was signed I left on a trip. While walking the streets in New York City, on a layover, I got a call from my Ex wife’s (the latest Ex) best friend. She wanted me to understand that the divorce was not really my fault, but that Elizabeth told her she wanted a divorce after Autumn-Paige died, but she wanted one more child before we divorced to try and make-up for the loss of our first child, hence the reason for Amber, and wanted to increase the child support and alimony too (by having a second child).
An hour after the friend’s call, my lawyer called to say that the divorce wasn’t final, there was a clerical error and we needed to re-sign after I got back from my trip. I told Denise (my lawyer) what Elizabeth’s friend had said and wondered if we could renegotiate the terms of the divorce, since the Ex had been nefarious in her dealings with me (by nefarious…all the months of seeing a shrink and never once had any progress been made in patching things up…it was all a rouse to make it seem like she was trying to work things out, when in fact, she never intended to).
My lawyer said yes, absolutely. So, I called my Ex and said I was going to change the financial terms of our divorce and if she didn’t agree we would go to court and her little friend would be put on the stand with a judge present so she could recant what she told me. She agreed. The divorce was really final in January of 2002. Just to make those of you who are divorced possibly feel better…after the divorce was final I was paying over 100,000 dollars a year in child support and alimony between two women and four kids.

While training a new First Officer on the MD-11, Rob, and while flying back from Anchorage, Alaska, I witnessed the most beautiful sight in the night sky I have ever seen. While nearing the state of Arkansas, the air traffic controllers rerouted our flight, and others that were arriving into Memphis Airport from the west, further south in order to avoid an intense area of thunderstorms west of Memphis and covering most of central and northern part of the state (Arkansas); the storms blocked our normal, standard arrival routes.
ATC told us we could turn eastbound once we approached Northern Louisiana. As we turned northeasterly, on the radar, some of the thunderstorms that were blocking our way to Memphis formed a U….there was an intense line of storms to our left, an equal number to our right and then more of the same at the bottom of the “U”, which was in front of us about 40 miles. The storms to our left and right, where the opening of the U was, was maybe 20 miles wide and the walls of the storms to the left and right were very defined, almost straight up from the ground to over 45,000 feet. But, the very lowest part of the clouds, nearest the ground, spread inward towards the middle of the U; The best way I can describe it is to think of entering a stadium where the lower part of the stands go towards the football field and then as the stadium rises the stands retreat from the field as it rises. That’s about the closest description I can think of to describe what we all saw that night.
As we entered the U the lighting was nonstop, and I mean nonstop. I saw flashes on the left, on the right, in front us, continuously, simultaneously, never stopping. It was as if the clouds were talking non-stop to each other gossiping about the boldness this interloper (our MD-11) exhibited in flying into their world. All of us, we had two jumpseaters in the cockpit, had our faces pressed against the expansive of windows in the cockpit marveling at this beautiful display. The clouds, because it was midnight, shown either white, varying shades of gray, or almost black, depending up how near of far the lightning flashes were from whatever clouds were around. And the lightening itself was either deeply immersed, its brilliance diffused by the clouds, and illuminating their insides, like a live X-ray, as it flashed, or starkly jagged, brightly illuminating the night sky as it arced from one cloud to another. As we approached the bottom of the U, where the clouds on either side began to block our way easterly, the F/O and I found a small hole between two large cells and we slid through the electrical maelstrom with only occasional moderate turbulence and no rain.
To this day, that memory is etched in my heart; from 39,000 feet God gave me privy to a sight very few people have, or will ever, see.

Around this time I dated a Japanese lady who lived in Japan. She was a commercial helicopter pilot and was allowed to jumpseat on our aircraft. After a few months of a pretty hot and heavy romance and meeting in many Asian cities for trysts, she wanted to take our relationship to the next level... trust me I’m skipping quite a bit here… but, after a few months of seeing each other she wanted to get married. I guess when you tell a woman you love them, that’s as good as asking them to marry you, so she thought, and we were headed down the aisle. But, when I rebuffed her marriage innuendos, she took it up a notch. She said she was pregnant and that it was mine. I didn’t believe her. I tried to call her bluff by ignoring all contact with her until one day I got an email, on my work email, from someone I didn’t recognize. When I opened the letter it was from a friend, supposedly, of this lady I had been seeing and she said that “Juko” had attempted suicide and was in the hospital, recovering. She said that she was despondent because I didn’t want to continue our relationship. This is the second time in my life I’d had a girlfriend attempt suicide and let me tell you…it’s not an enjoyable emotion to experience.
After reading that email I now had to fly a ten day trip with a new Captain I was training. The emotions I had as I flew around the world, trying to sort out my my life due to the failure of my second marriage, the still ever present burning in my soul at the loss of Autumn-Paige, the recent deaths of my parents and Jack, the financial burden of my divorces, and now Juko’s attempt on her life…because of me…well, by only by the grace of God did I not deconstruct in every way.
I must warn you, reader discretion is advised for the next few paragraphs due to graphic sexual content...things are about to get pretty gnarly.
I emailed Juko a couple days after starting my trip to see if she was ok. She responded, very quickly, that she was recovering. She never said how she tried to kill herself, though I asked; said she didn’t want to discuss it because it was too emotionally painful.
After a few back and forth e-mails with her I came up with a plan.
As I neared the end of that ten day trip I asked Juko if she could meet me in Anchorage. She agreed and about a week later we were in bed together. Juko had a habit, if that’s what you could call it, of peeing in my face when she orgasmed while I gave her cunnilingus. It sounds gross, and the first time it happened I was disgusted but thought it was a one off thing. But, when it happened the second time I decided to not try for a third. Needless to say I avoided that aspect of my physical endearment with her. Not to be too gross, but you were warned, her pee was so forceful a lot of it went in my mouth. As such I’d immediately go to the bathroom, spit out the piss, rinse my mouth out and then brush my teeth; we’d then resume with other aspects of lovemaking.
Oddly Juko never apologize for pissing on me, and I never mentioned it as being disgusting, I just figured since she’d had a child that her bladder control was weak; if that’s a wrong assumption on my part, so be it. It was what it was and I really didn’t think badly of her for that odd aspect of lovemaking.
However, I did think, if I could get Juko to pee in my mouth, again, while I was going down on her, I could collect her pee in my mouth, rush into the bathroom and then, having hidden a pregnancy test in my shaving kit, I could spit the pee that was in my mouth on the test applicator.
Everything worked as advertised except the test results…they were inconclusive. Crap. There was no way I was going to do that again, so I just accepted that she was pregnant.
After that one night of sex, we didn’t sleep together again, though we did spend a couple of days touring Anchorage and it’s immediate environs, talking about life as our tryst came to an end.
In the end, Juko admitted she lied and had a friend send the email pretending to the suicide attempt.
The best thing that came out of my relationship with her, and not coincident with our last visit, was the fact that I got to visit Hiroshima, Japan, the site where the first atomic bomb was dropped in war. It was always on my bucket list to visit ground zero, the still standing but mostly destroyed observatory over which the bomb exploded and to visit the very jaded, against America, Hiroshima museum.
But, here’s the odd thing that has always stuck in my head after I told Juko I wanted to visit Hiroshima (I had a four day layover in Osaka on that trip).
She said, “Why do you, as an American, want to visit a city you bombed?”
I was stunned. My immediate retort was, “You Japanese visit Pearl Harbor by the droves and yet you guys bombed the shit out of it. What’s the difference?”
I don’t think she could equate the attack on Pearl Harbor vis-à-vis Hiroshima. In her mind the atomic bomb was far worse. I just told her if ya’ll never started the war in the first place, Hiroshima would not have been nuked. In the end we agreed to disagree.
In retrospect, as I write this, Juko was a beautiful woman who came at the wrong time. A Japanese lady I knew, told me it was not uncommon for a lady in Japan to use pregnancy as a way to get a man to marry them; honestly though I don’t that applies only to Japan. The fact that she was a pilot, SCUBA diver, loved boats and rode a Ninja motorcycle was a big positive, plus she was very intelligent and had great sense of humor. Unfortunately I was not ready for marriage then and wasn’t going to be pushed into it; been there done that, got the tee shirt.

While enroute to Almaty, Kazakstan you fly over/by some seriously high mountains. Our terrain map, displayed on our NAV Display showed these mountains went up to 24,000 feet.

Then there was the Russian lady I dated, ever so briefly. I met her in Hawaii on a layover. She said she was on a divorce recovery date and just wanted to have fun. For four days we hung around with each other…no, we didn’t have sex…and had a blast being tourists.
After four days she left for Canada where she lived and I went back to Memphis.
Shortly after parting, we began emailing and then calling and then I went to see her in Vancouver for a few days. We never went to her house, just stayed in a hotel, went skiing, roller blading, and hiking; she was a very fit and outdoorsy lady with black hair and blue eyes. She was stunning, not beautiful, but she had a very toned and muscular body that I attribute to all Russians, ya know, hardy.
After I got home from that visit she called me a day after I left. I’ll spare you all the conversation it took for her to convince me, but she desperately wanted me to pull over and park so she could tell me something. I finally acquiesced and parked in a Target parking lot so she could tell me something she felt so passionate about and which required my undivided attention.
“Do you remember when I told you I was divorced while in Hawaii? She began once I said I was stopped.
“Yes”
“Well I wasn’t quite honest,” said the femme fatale.
“OK, so you are getting a divorce?” I arrogantly responded.
“No, to cut to the chase, up until you visited me, my husband thought we were happily married. Now, he realizes I wasn’t, and let me tell you, he is REALLY upset. He knew something was up after I got back from Hawaii and was monitoring my emails. The afternoon we met when you came to Vancouver we were followed. The whole weekend we were observed. My husband knows everything there is to know about you…place of birth, schooling, military career, financial information, including your bankruptcy, where you live and have lived…he knows your life. When I got home from work on Monday (this was Tuesday), he was very drunk, he duct taped me to a chair and he had me watch 4 hours of you and I fucking in the hotel. The video was somewhat sketchy, but the audio is excellent. He heard everything we said. The good news is in our conversation you kept calling him, “your ex husband” so he believes you think I am divorced; I told him while I was in Hawaii I told you exactly that. If he thought you knew I was married but were screwing me, he would have had you beaten by a couple of his friends. As it stands, you are off the hook, and in fact he admires you because you flew fighters in the military; as for me? We are filing for divorce.”
It took a few seconds for me to compose myself after seeing my life pass before my eyes.
Natasia and her husband did divorce, but she and I ended our relationship shortly after my first, and only, porn film. Natasha said her husband told her, to tell me, he held no animosity towards me after seeing the video since he realized I was lied to by his wife; I struggled to believe that.
I have never heard from either of them in over 20 years, but that’s the second video I wonder if it will come back to haunt me.

2003

If there was a hell on earth, besides the loss of my child and my growing up years with my mother and father, it was when I married my third wife in 2003. It wasn’t so much an issue with her per se, it was the incredible battles that she had with my second Ex, Elizabeth, and then the blending of her child and my two youngest kids.
For years in that marriage the battles that went on between my Ex and wife, with me trapped in the middle, and then my wife and her son and his issues and the issues my wife had with my son…ugh. For a period of time we went to a church group, blended family counseling group once week and what a circle jerk that was. There were couples there vomiting their issues to total strangers and illuminating some not so nice things about their spouses and their children, while portraying their own genetic masterpieces (their children) as being nothing short of either Jesus or the Virgin Mary. The moderators of that group, having a blended family themselves, sounded like they came right out of a Brady Bunch TV show; what the truth with them was I’ll never know, but they talked a really good talk, unfortunately, not all blended families are the same. Blended families, on a good day, are difficult, on a bad day, horrific, at least from my experience and what I saw in that church group.
The only thing that saved me and my wife from divorcing earlier than we did was when we started taking long, 4 day, weekends, just the two of us, every three months or so, to Isla Mujeres, Mexico. I first went to that small island (4 1/2 miles long by maybe 3/4s of a mile wide) back in 1985 when I was in the USAF. I started taking Marie there as a way of getting away from all the bullshit we were continuously going through in Memphis with the blended family stuff and the Ex’s interfering in my marriage and life. Marie said she loved the island and going to Mexico since it allowed her relax and I loved SCUBA diving a few times on every trip we took down there. It’s hard to describe the absolute relief I felt as I got onboard the airline’s aircraft in preparation to flying to Mexico. I’d sit in my aircraft seat, put on my headphones and start playing Jimmy Buffet songs, or some country and western stuff, on my walkman. I absolutely recommend that couples with kids/blended families take time to get away by themselves, frequently, to rekindle the dying embers of a love that once burned bright.

Punta sur on Isla Mujeres. Such a beautiful little island..

In February of 2003 the Space Shuttle Columbia broke up during reentry over Texas killing all seven astronauts. During launch, protective insulating foam from the external tank broke off and hit insulating tiles under the left wing. The damage, initially deemed not threatening by NASA, actually allowed reentry heat to compromise the integrity of the left wing which caused a cascade of failures as the shuttle descended through the atmosphere and broke up.

In October of 2003 the United States with a Coalition of other nations invaded Iraq under the guise that Sadam Hussein was holding WMDs (Weapons of Mass Destruction). In 2011 the US withdrew its forces after completely dominating the country and eventually killing Saddam.

2004

George W Bush is re-elected.

At some point in time after the year 2000 FedEx began flying repositioning flights from Oakland Airport to San Francisco International airport. The distance from one to the other is 9 NMs; in fact you can easily see either airport from the other as they are right across they bay from each other. I flew that short flight a few times in my career; shortest airline flights of my career.

2005

2006

At midnight of March 19th, 2006, my phone rang with the violence of a thunder clap. I had forgotten to put it on vibrate and the harsh alarm sound, at a million decibels blasted me instantly awake.
“Hello?” I said, as if adrenaline had been pumped in my heart.
“Roger, are you headed to operations?” came the familiar voice of the First Officer I was to soon train on a 10 day round the world trip.
“Durand, we are supposed to leave tomorrow night, not tonight.” I said with absolute confidence.
“Well, I’m looking at a release (Company flight plan) with your name on it as the Captain and we are supposed to block out in about 70 minutes.”
“Shit, shit, shit….OK. Dude, your first flight is going to be a baptism by fire. Print a copy of the release for me to sign, with a copy of the weather too and leave it in the folder at the counter; I’l sign it and drop it with Flight Coordination when I get in. After doing that you go to the aircraft and do as much shit as you can do until I get there, and then we’ll cover what was missed, OK?” I said jumping out of bed and heading to the closet to pack a bag.
“You bet boss.”
It was my all time record in 35 years with FedEx. From a dead sleep to pushing back for departure it took 85 minutes…we were 15 minutes late pushing back and that includes packing a bag for a 10 days around the world trip...not too shabby I’d say since I lived about 25 minutes from the airport, had to park in long term pilot parking, catch a bus, blah, blah, blah….anyway I was happy because if I had blocked out 16 minutes late I would have received a email from the company wondering why I blocked out late.

I took this picture as I approached the aircraft that Durand and I flew on the afternoon we heard the aircraft down emergency call on 121.5.

On March 21st of 2006, as Durand and I were silently gliding over the frozen landscape of Southwestern Alaska, 35,000 feet below, I heard I distress call on 121.5, the international emergency frequency. “Is there any aircraft on 121 point 5?”
“Yeah this is FedEx 18, go ahead.”
“I’d like to report the crash of an aircraft….”
There so much to this event that I don’t want to explain it here since I won’t do justice to the participants involved. You can read the entity of it on one of my earlier blogs titled Aircraft Down
On that same trip with Durand, after leaving Almaty, Kazakstan enroute to Paris and while over far Western China, we received a text on CPDLC that read, “HAVE YOU SEEN THE MOVIE BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN…WE HAVE AND WE LIKED IT”. If you don’t know, CPCLD messages are supposed to be related to Air Traffic Control Instructions, not social media opinions or declarations. Remember, this is COMMUNIST China.
After Durand and I each read the message, at least 4 times apiece, I told Durand that since he was the student, it was his responsibility to come up with an appropriate reply that wouldn’t either create an intercept by a Chinese fighter, or outright ban of FedEx from China.
“WE DID NOT SEE THE MOVIE. OUR WIVES DID NOT WANT TO GO. WE HEARD IT WAS GOOD.”
Shortly after that exchange the Urumqi (pronounced YOUR RUMP KEY) Air Traffic Controller told us to contact Astana Air Traffic Control since we were nearing Kazakstan.
Never heard a word from FedEx management after that, so I guess Durand’s response was OK.

Durand and I in Paris Ops, preflighting for the final leg home. What a trip.

I was selected to be a Duty Officer in 2006. Without question being a Duty Officer at FedEx was the best non-flying job I ever had (Although I did continue my Designee duties and had to keep my landing currency in the aircraft).
The Duty Officer is the subject matter expert (SME) in a Command and Control pod in GOC (Global Operations Control), an area of FedEx where all of the dispatchers, freight forwarding specialists, and weather specialists reside. All the dispatchers (The Dispatcher is the person that creates the flight plan for each flight under his/her control and monitors that flight from pushback to block-in; they might have as many as 20 flights they are monitoring). and freight specialists (Freight specialists, know what kind of freight is on the flights, the priority of the freight and what to do to recover the freight in case an aircraft breaks at the departure airport or diverts) surround the “pod”, maybe 90 in all; I’m guessing. In addition to me, a Maintenance expert, a Freight Forwarding Expert, a Senior Dispatcher, as well a Crew Scheduling expert, along with an ATC liaison and a Weather Specialist call the pod home during their duty day, which for the Duty Officer was a 12 hour shift.
The Duty Officer, especially during the night shift, has a lot of responsibility and authority. The issues he/she has to deal with, worldwide, could be as minor as answering a question about crew duty time, to, as in one case I had, shutting down the flight operations at an airport due to unsafe conditions (I told our pilots in our Chicago Operation not to depart until the taxiway, runways, and ramps were plowed, even though the airport was not closed. It took two hours for the city to plow our immediate area of operation). One day I intend to write a blog of all the interesting events that occurred while I was a D/O.

2007

My finest flight. A very dear friend allowed me the use of his 90 HP Cub for a month. In that time my youngest son, Austin, and I flew all around the local area, low and slow, admiring nature from above. We flow low over the Mississippi River, trying to join in with flocks of birds, exploring oxbows and marshes and then flying over the impossibly rich and thick forests of Western Tennessee. The views we had and the enjoyment of flying with my son as he ohhhhed and ahhhed at the sights only the birds see was and is priceless. The piece de resistance of the month was when another good friend asked me if I wanted to fly the cub into the Mid South Airshow (2007) and have it as a static display (among many other aircraft). In a New York second second I said yes and on the Saturday morning at 730 AM Austin and I flew into Millington Airport; we were the last aircraft to fly in...All eyes were on us as we landed and taxied in to our “spot.” Austin felt like a rock star.
You can read the full blog here….My Finest Flight

Static display with the Cub at the Mid South Air Show in Millington, TN . Such a wonderfully short flight to get there.

What’s an airshow without the Blue Angels or Thunderbirds? In this case the Blue Angels..

2008

The. worst Global Financial Crisis since the crash in 1929 began occurring in 2008 and continued until 2009.

Barrack Obama was elected president in Nov. 2008.

2009

In March of 2009 a Fedex MD-11s was landing in Narita during extremely gusty wind conditions and crashed, killing both pilots.

In 2009 I left the Duty Officer position and the MD-11 and transitioned to the B-777-200F while retaining the Designee status.
Without question, I feel the B-777 is the one of, if not thee, finest transport aircraft ever built. Boeing built an extremely safe, strong, efficient, and wonderfully flying jet.

N850, B-777-300F. Taken at the Anchorage ramp in Alaska. Note the reflection of the aircraft on the bottom of the aircraft above. Two 110,000 lb thrust GE 90 engines propel this amazingly wonderful aircraft.

Marie and I were in Mexico, enjoying some very welcome alone time, when I got a text from my younger son. In essence the text said, “Dad, you’re going to be very mad at me and I know you will punish me for this, but Justin and I had a party at the house and we borrowed some of the alcohol and there were some girls there. Justin’s mom and dad came in the house and caught us drinking and stuff. I just wanted to tell you before Justin’s mom and dad did. I’m sorry.”
Here’s the readers digest version (short) of the event:
When Marie and I went to Mexico my youngest daughter would stay with her mother and my son usually stayed with Justin, his best friend and who lived a block away. On this trip south of the border, Justin and Austin had a plan. They told Justin’s parent’s they were going to sleep over at another friend’s house, Steven’s. But, they really went to Austin’s (my) house. Consequently, Steven told his mom he was sleeping over at Justin’s house, but went to Austin’s instead. At some point five girls converged on the home where three hormone laden boys excitedly waited, thinking they pulled the wool over four stupid parents. Around 1 AM Justin’s mother woke up with a start because she realized that Steven’s mother never allows more than one of his friends to sleep over at a time. Justin’s mother woke her husband up and told him she thought the boys were “up to something.” From their bedroom window Justin’s parent’s could see Austin’s house and sure enough, as they looked at the house, they saw the garage light go on, (there were plantation louvers on the garage windows, but at that time of night they did let light sneak through) then off. Then a few minutes later the same thing happened. They got dressed, walked the short block and entered my house through the family and friend’s (side) door. Upon walking into the family room Justin was happily drunk, laying on the floor, on the his stomach and smiled as he waved to his mom when she called his name. Two girl’s was sitting on the couch, painting each other’s toe nails while watching TV and drinking a beer each. Going upstairs, Austin and Steven were trying to mediate the incessant crying of three very drunk girls. Justin’s mother told me, when I returned from my trip, that she and her husband were secretly laughing because Austin told them he learned a very valuable lesson that night: When girls are drunk, when one starts crying they all start crying; he said the party was not worth getting grounded for three months.
As for my youngest daughter, if you care to read about her foray into pissing off her father it can be found here… The Captain and his daughter

Amber and I went to Washington DC on a daddy/daughter trip. It was so wonderful to be with her full time as we explored the nation’s Capital. It was Spring Break for her and he idea to go to Washington, since she wanted to see the city and the museums. We spent five full days there and had a blast. My all-time favorite picture of her and I follows….

Amber and I outside the Air and Space Museum in Washington..

2010

Colorado Rocky Mountain High

In June of 2010 Howie, Ashley (the male version), and I shipped our motorcycles to Flagstaff, AZ. We spent a couple of days riding around Flag, particularly taking a day to ride Route 66 to Kingman and back. (My mother left New Jersey and headed to Los Angeles right after high school in 1950. She took a bus to Chicago and then the bus took Route 66 to LA.). Leaving Flagstaff we then rode to Monument Valley. One of the most spectacular sights I’ve ever seen in my life was when we crested a low ridge and entered the Valley…simply breathtaking. For the rest of the trip we toured the mountains of Colorado enjoying some breathtakingly spectacular vistas; riding into Telluride was one of them.

My riding buddies are ahead of me as we cruise into Monument Valley. That was an amazing two weeks of incredible scenery. Riding in a car does not do the vistas of the west justice… must see them from a motorcycle.

The three of us posing for a picture near Montrose, Colorado. A passerby took the photo.

Oh By The Way…..
After leaving the mountains behind and splitting off from the boys a little ways out of St Louis, I was all by myself on heading south on I-55 in Eastern Arkansas with thunderstorms close and all around. Imagine my surprise when I saw a crop duster (aircraft) pop into sight a few hundred feet ahead as it pulled up from behind a thick row of trees bordering the highway. I briefly followed the aircraft as it crossed in front of me, right to left, maybe 50 feet high. Then, just as I was turning away from watching the crop-duster (I was riding a motorcycle after all), it turned right, staying very low, and continued a tight right turn, crossing back over I-55, back over the trees but then continued its turn to head back over I-55. The aircraft was not more than 30 feet above me as I was beginning to pass under it. I looked above and I could see the pilot looking down at me, he was that low. (There were no cars even close to me). I waved to him/her and was immediately rewarded with a short burst of whatever substance was in its hopper. After our greeting the aircraft flew on, continuing its flight and me continuing my ride home.

Around the time of my son and his party he asked me if I could get full full custody of him. I approached my Ex wife about it and she said I could have him as much as I wanted, but she wanted the child support. To make a long and bitter story short, she and I had a custody battle, but in addition to my son, my youngest daughter wanted me to get primary residential custody of her too.
My Ex and I always had an agreement to never restrict either child from seeing the other parent if they desired, my issue was I was not going to pay child support if I had my kids most of the time. So, I started a custody battle, much to Elizabeth’s consternation.

Marie and I had bought a lot on Isla Mujeres in 2004. It was so beautiful, the little plot of land, sitting on the south end of the island and perched about 200 feet above the turquoise blue Caribbean waters that bordered both Isla and Cancun. Finally, in 2011 we broke ground on a house that we mutually designed. That house was to be our retirement home and without question was my dream. Jimmy Buffet’s, Kenny Chesney’s, and other artists that sang songs of being Mexico infiltrated the days and nights I spent while in Mexico while both relaxing and working on my forever home. We had to save up money in order to build the house since you could not get a mortgage to build in Mexico then. We actually started building it piecemeal as we got the funds month by month. Marie did an outstanding job in monitoring the cost of construction and the bills we received from Aerial (a man, the builder). He was a great guy, but, when doing things in Mexico, you had to accept a certain amount of “deception” with regards to the cost of construction.

2011

On May 2, 2011 Navy Seals killed Osma bin Laden in a compound in Northern Pakistan.

2012

Went on a motorcycle ride with the guys with whom I rode the Rockies in 2010. We had planned to ride from Fairhope, Alabama to Key West and back. The ride was pretty uneventful until we got to Homestead. As I was getting gas in my cycle there was a guy opposite me, other side of the pump, and he asked where I was headed. Now mind you, it had been raining as we rode across Alligator Highway and got to the gas station. I said we were headed to Key West, and then I added where are you headed? He looked at me with “that” look…as in you must be an idiot. He then said, have you actually checked the weather forecast for the Keys? I, we, had not. He said he just came from Key West and a tropical storm was going to pass right over the Keys the next afternoon.
Armed with this new found wisdom I went in to talk to the other two guys, they were eating lunch at the Subway which was associated with the gas station and were watching the Weather Channel as I got to them.
We made a snap decision to head up the east coast of Florida and ride to St Augustine since the tropical low was supposed to pass into the Gulf. But, before we got to St Augustine, Howie had to take his motorcycle to a Harley shop in Ft Lauderdale to have an electrical problem checked. I told the boys I was going to split off from them and continue up the highway and visit my Aunt and Uncle in Vero Beach.
I had not kept in contact with them since we parted in 1999 and I wanted to drop in and say hello over a cup of coffee.
So we split up and agreed to meet at a hotel in St Augustine that evening. As I rode on the A1A to see my Aunt and Uncle I was getting excited with each mile ridden, knowing I would be happily greeted by mom and father like figures who at one point, when I was less than a year old, took care of my sisters and me because my mother rejected us (a little over a year later we went back to my mother who promptly divorced our father, and then went to be with my father since he got custody of us).
I got to Vero Beach, and called. My uncle answered. I said, excitedly who I was and was wondering if I could stop in a say hello. My uncle then informed me that they were no longer my friends and that I should never contact them again and promptly hung up.
To say the least I was crestfallen. A few tears came from each eye. I couldn’t understand why that it was so hard for a mother or father figure to love me…what was wrong with me?
Riding my motorcycle calmed me as I headed north towards my meeting with Howie and Ashley. I did stop in Cocoa Beach at the plaque on the roadside that noted this is the town where “I dream of Jeanie” was filmed during the sixties and early seventies….Barbara Eden had to be one of the best looking women in the world back then.
The rest of the ride was somewhat boring and anticlimactic as compared to our Rockies foray two years before.

I bought my first, and only aircraft in 2012. It was a Cessna 340 and I bought it in a distress sale when 6 doctors were having an acrimonious split in their business. Honestly? I was an idiot to buy that aircraft. Yeah I was making big bucks as a B-777 Captain, but I was not prepared for the costs of maintaining that aircraft. I quickly brought in a partner to help manage the financial aspects of owning such a wonderful airplane, but I was building a house in Mexico at the time…again, what did Forest Gump say? “Stupid is as stupid does?” That would be me.

Austin and I getting ready to fly to Marathon, Fl. What an unforgettable flight.

By far the most poignant moment of owning N555PM (the 340) was when Austin was checking out as a SCUBA diver. He went to the Dive Shop of Memphis for his initial training, but had to get an open water check-out to complete his certification. The Dive shop designated a trip to Florida, Key Largo, as the place where their students could go to finish their training. Instead of taking the airlines Austin and I flew in our aircraft to Marathon airport on Marathon Key in the Florida Keys, the same airport where Jack picked me up in his Luscombe when I finished my dive camp in 1975.
As we flew down the west coast of Florida that evening a huge wall of thunderstorms had built up just over the coastal waters. Literally the entire west coast of Florida was lined, north to south, with an extensive line of storms. At 19,000 feet Austin and I flew 20 miles west of Florida and watched mesmerized as lightning streaked from thunderstorm to thunderstorm, or from cloud to ground. We were in the clear as we flew south, the air traffic controller asking us how it looked as we continued; it was magical and beautiful and I was so happy my son and I could see it together. We landed in Marathon around 9 PM, the thunderstorms stopping on the very southern end of the state where the Everglades emptied into the Gulf.

Austin getting ready for his first dive in Pennekamp Park. He is an outstanding swimmer.

I got full custody of Austin and Amber in 2012. Austin initiated the change in living arrangements actually, since I really didn’t even think about going back to court with the Ex. Austin said he didn’t want to have to see his mother, even if she wanted to. Why he felt that was had more to do with my total involvement in my kid’s activities than Elizabeth. I went to all his practices and helped out when his coaches needed it, or just watched; I loved watching him play football, baseball, tennis; he was a naturally gifted athlete. Now my big sticking point with Elizabeth was the fact that she would NEVER pay for any of his extracurricular activities. Never. I was paying over 100K on year on C/S, Alimony you’d think she would pony up a few bucks to help me since I was paying her so much. But, as the lawyer said, there is no requirement that she had to.
While Elizabeth didn’t really care that Austin was leaving, she didn’t like the fact that Amber then said she wanted to live with me too. With Amber’s announcement Elizabeth saw her Child Support potentially slipping away so she started fighting me. The kids were like 14 and 11 at this time and so, to bolster my case the Judge could have a private meeting with Austin since he was old enough to talk to the judge, in chambers and alone, so he could speak freely about what kind of living arrangement he wanted and why. Amber was in a grey area though. She might not have a say as to where she could live full-time.
So, on a Spring break day (from school) my custody attorney, Mary-Morgan, went to meet the judge for a hearing about whether or not he would speak to both kids, one, or not at all. Elizabeth’s attorney was obviously present too and both attorney’s argued their cases in front of the judge…and this was only about whether the judge would see each child in chamber’s to let them have a voice, this was not the final court case to determine custody.
In the final resolve the Judge said he would speak to both kids, in chambers and alone, if the case went to court. Instead we went to mediation and that’s when an agreement was reached where I got primary residential custody and I paid Elizabeth a much reduced child support payment.

On September 11, 2012, at 9:40 p.m. local time, members of Ansar al-Sharia attacked the American diplomatic compound in Benghaziresulting in the deaths of both United States Ambassador to Libya J. Christopher Stevens and U.S. Foreign Service Information Management Officer Sean Smith.

Obama was elected to his second term as president on Nov. 6, 2012.

This not a touched up photo. That was the color of the sunset as I began an arrival into Los Angeles.

2013

My oldest sister Linda called to tell me that my other sister, younger than Linda, older than me, was in the hospital and diagnosed with a derivative of Mad Cow disease. She was going to die. There was no cure.
I flew up to Syracuse and rented a car so I could get to Watertown, NY where my two sisters lived. The sight of my sister lying in her hospital bed, her face gaunt, lying in a fetal position, tubes abounding around and over her, was too much to take and I broke down. Linda was already crying when I reached my emotional limit so we retreated to an unoccupied room, hugged each other and cried, literally, on each other’s shoulder.
About an hour after my arrival at the hospital the attending doctor told me that the illness Gail had would slowly eat at her high functioning brain… thought, speech, reasoning….and then would attack the part of the brain that regulates breathing, heartbeat, etc. She could be fed intravenously and would probably live for a month or so before succumbing to her illness, but no matter what she was going to die.
I do believe in miracles, God can do anything, but, I could not let Gail be held captive in a body that was dying in such a horribly debilitating way. She deserved better. Linda could not make the decision, to take Gail off of life support, which basically meant letting her die of dehydration…copious amounts of morphine supposedly ease the pain; how the hospital staff know that I’m not sure. But, I did make the decision. As Linda and I visited Gail during that week of her slow passing, we laughed and cried in the evenings (Linda had to work during the day) as we remembered the funny and horrible things that occurred while we were kids or were socializing with our mother and father when we got much older.
We had a terrible upbringing. My mother was institutionalized, for a year, right after I was born and then 3 more times after that when I was in high school. When I was 33 my mother told me, over a Sunday coffee while visiting me in my house, that she wished she could have aborted her children. At a dinner in a casino later in that day, she told my sister Linda that she was too fat and that she did not want to see Linda again until she lost weight; that was the last time the two saw each other, except for Linda viewing my mother in a casket after for death on Jan 1, 2001. There are many, many more episodes of either neglect, abuse, or indifference that my parent’s subjected their kids to as we grew.
I believe that, without question, my sister Gail suffered the most, psychologically from the dysfunction of my parents. She was homeless for a few years in Los Angeles and then took a bus to Las Vegas and was homeless there for a few years, before finally succumbing to Linda’s offer for her to move in with Linda. In my conversations with Gail over the years, I asked her if men had ever tried to rape her; the look she gave was one of pain. She said she’d been raped more times that she could count; she said a woman on the street is easy pray for men and Gail said she was usually unable to defend herself against most of the men. I can’t begin to tell you, as I write this, the pain I feel, even after the fact, for my sister. She took to drug abuse in high school to medicate her emotional pain and at one point was gang raped when some boys she knew supplied her with drugs, knowing she’d be an easy mark. Gail’s life was one of pain; dying liberated her from a very painful life and I know she is in heaven. I can’t wait to see her again.

Linda (top), Gail and me, circa 1993.

The house in Mexico was finished in 2013. Marie and I continued unabated in our regular Isla visits, even as our marriage deteriorated. Having the home in Mexico, though wonderful, didn’t fix the frustration we both felt when in Tennessee. Both of our kids were growing up and her son, while on a trip to Mexico, introduced my son to marijuana. If the local police had caught them smoking the cost would have been astronomical to get them released, since that was local game with the police…if they caught a foreigner smoking dope (it was illegal) they basically blackmailed the family and charged them 5,000 dollars to keep the kids out of jail.
I was pretty angry that Marie’s son had talked Austin into smoking dope, but it didn’t stop there. Marie’s son was an alcoholic, addicted to porn and sex. To be polite he had issues, but actually he was a good kid, just confused due to issues with his divorced parents.
After living with his father (now deceased) in Eastern Tennessee for a couple of years while attending college, Marie’s son moved back in with us. It would wind up being an untenable situation due to his actions: coming home drunk at midnight more times than I can count; getting two DUI’s; drug use; totaling his Acura MDX because he was texting while driving; then totaling his next car, a Jeep after downing 12 jello shooters; his porn addiction; and finally having parties in the house when Marie and I were in Mexico, and leaving used condoms in the living room for my 14 year old daughter to find.
Blended family issues began to immediately blow the family apart after Maries’s son moved back into the house: Marie’s son’s addictions, choice of friends, and his behavior when in the house with my kids was putting a tremendous strain on us; too much to write here other than my children were being introduced to a world they were far too young to experience. While I was on a trip in Asia, Marie kicked my son out of the house because he had had a party at the house. While she said he could have a party, she found some beer cans in the backyard and asked where they came from. Austin said some guys brought beer to the party. She got pissed, and when she said her son never did that, Austin’s resentment exploded because he never told Marie all the times her son, and his friends, brought alcohol into the house while she and I were sleeping, not to mention the girls they were having sex with. Austin called me after he was kicked out, he was 16 years old and said was staying at Justin’s house. He said Marie would not let him come back home. I called Marie, we had an argument and I told her that she needed to deal with her own son’s issues and open her eyes as to what was going on in her own backyard before she totally dumped on my son.
She left a month later. Amazingly, our divorce was amicable and I believe a relief to both of us.
Her son eventually went to rehab and was able to come to terms with all the demons inside him. To the his day he is clean and sober with no lingering issues. He always was a good kid.

The view from the front yard of the Isla Mujeres house. I lost the home in a divorce; since we had two houses and I had custody of my two kids, Marie got the Isla home and me the one in Collierville. In my absolute pain she sold the house a year later, said she never really liked Mexico…I will forever miss that view (The northern part of the hotel zone of Cancun is in the distance).

2014

This is some dormant volcano on Kamchatka Peninsula in Russia. This is near the area where the Soviet Union shot down a Korean Airline 747 in September of 1983. Oddly enough, very shortly after passing this mountain a Korean Airlines 747 passed us, going in the opposite direction.

2015

Shortly after Marie and I divorced, my dear friend and my “adopted” older brother, Darryl Hannah, was diagnosed with an aggressive form of brain cancer. The pain I felt when Darryl told me of his affliction was kinda a slow burn. Darryl had a heart attack a couple years earlier while in China, though it wasn’t really diagnosed then. He left China as quickly as he could, calling in sick in the field since he was on a company trip, and was treated for his heart issue when he got home. After being out a year, and even though his wife asked him not to, he insisted on going back to the line to fly.
I was Darryl’s instructor when he checked out on the MD-11 in the early 2000s and when he checked out on the B-777 there too I was his instructor. In the case of the MD-11 we flew an around the world trip, being the third FedEx flight, in as many days, to land in Almaty, Kazakstan. We were delayed 4 hours due to thunderstorms in the Hong Kong area before we could depart. We flew on to Paris the next day after our shortened Almaty layover.
After flying the MD-11 a few years, Darryl again requested I give him his actual B-777 training after getting his Type Rating. There too we flew an around the world trip, but because the B-777 has better range/cargo capability than the MD-11 we overflew Almaty in our Hong Kong to Paris flight.

Jimmy Gist, me, and Darryl in Taipei after flying from Anchorage in the B-777. Both gentlemen were excellent pilots. Jimmy was the Relief Captain since the fight was over eight hours. I was giving training to Darryl as he was checking out in the aircraft.

Darryl was an outstanding Captain and pilot. I know he chose me to be his instructor because he knew I was a Santa Claus and since we’d flown F-4s in the same unit, our camaraderie was unshakable.
Ever since I got hired at FedEx, Darryl and socialized more times than I can count. Our usual meeting place, usually just he and I, was for lunch at a Huey’s in either Germantown or Collierville. I loved Huey’s. It was one of those Cheers, pub, type of places you could take your kids to, or your date, spouse or friend. Since they closed late I’d often take my epaulets off and stop in for a glass of wine/food or both after arriving from the somewhere in the world.
So Huey’s was our “place” and I loved our lunches, or dinners there.
Every time I met Darryl he was happy, jovial, engaged. Our conversations covered every area of possible human converstion: world politics, religion, family, friends, flying, cars, finance, dreams, goals…you name it we covered it more than once.
As I said earlier Darryl led me to Christ, though I had been saying the Lord’s prayer since I was 7, but I really had no idea of the responsibility of what being a Christian meant. It was during Darryl’s and mine talks over the years at Huey’s where he clarified many of my misunderstandings about the Bible and the Christian faith.
Let me EMPHATICALLY state….even after I committed myself to being a Christin I still screwed up magnificently (still do, but not as often or egregious, now). I have no doubt God was pulling his hair out in my earlier years as He saw my self-centered ways as I went from wife to wife, girlfriend to girlfriend. I’ve spent almost as much time asking God to forgive as I have in asking a woman to marry me.
Darryl had an operation that removed 95 percent of the cancer. I was in the hospital to see him as soon as friends were allowed to see him. As usual he was upbeat, chipper and energetic. He was always a good role model to me in remaining upbeat and positive.
As in many cancers, removing 95 percent of it still leaves that 5 percent to continue to grow. Initially the growth shrank, stopped and there was hope. Once he was allowed out of the hospital we would meet at our usual Germantown Huey’s and talk about the usual topics. He did not dwell on his prognosis, the fact that he had cancer and never complained “why me God?” Never any negative talk, no tears, no crying, no complaining never. Even as he entered hospice a few months later, and I spent many nights by his bedside, talking to him, to God, to both of them, praying secretly, pleading to God for the best friend I ever had not to die, giving him water many times in the wee hours of the morning because he was dying of thirst….never once in all those last days and nights, never, did he complain.

“D” (I used to call Darryl D) after his surgery. Not once, since he was diagnosed with brain cancer and until he passed away, did I ever hear him complain or lament about how it wasn’t fair that he got cancer.

The pain I felt while he was in hospice was worse than when he actually died. I saw the suffering he went through those days and nights as the cancer rapidly invaded his brain. Upon death he was finally free of that horrible affliction and I knew he was in heaven…happy, smiling, meeting his Father, his real Father, the one who saved him because he believed in His son.
To this day I miss him so much; our lunches, his wisdom, guidance and humor and flying with him. He was the big brother I always wanted. He left the planet far too soon.

Darryl. I was givng him B-777 training, but really, I was the student.

I became reacquainted with my Aunt and uncle in 2015. I sent them some photos of my kids and apologized to them for whatever it was that I did to cause them to not want to associate with me. I did tell them I had long since been divorced from Elizabeth. Upon receiving my correspondence, via regular mail, they contacted me and we began a very lovely and close relationship which continues to this day, though my uncle passed away a year or two after becoming reacquainted.
So many questions have been answered with regards to my mother, father, sisters and I in our early years and some of the genesis of dysfunction between my parents was revealed.
One of the biggest (questions) was why did we, my sisters and I live with them (Aunt and Uncle) for a year right after I was born. Turns out my mother decided she didn’t want kids or her husband, so she tried to dump the kids on her sister (obviously the Aunt) and she divorced her husband. Lovely.
The happy ending is my Aunt is the closest thing to a loving mother I’ll ever have. She is 93, and lives in an assisted living facility in Florida. We communicate daily. She is sweet, loving, and such a blessing to me. I’ve never been loved unconditionally by a human until her arrival in my life.

My mother (left) and Aileen back in the day. Their mother divorced their father and moved in with a bartender. They lived a gypsies life, moving from one small apartment to another until they both left home after high school. Aileen is the older of the two.

2016

The best thing about marrying my fourth wife, was the fact that I was able to get all of my children together in one area at the same time. A rare occurrence. Kyle, Christina, Austin and Amber, left to right. The marriage turned out to be a living hell. We split 4 years later.

After meeting an old girlfriend from my early high school days online, we quickly became enmeshed and married in March of 2016 after after a short courtship. The marriage was, without question, the most horrible relationship I have ever had in my life. This lady was/is extremely narcissistic and no doubt an alcoholic. Right away we had the most horrific verbal fights, reminiscent of my mother and father’s (fights). If you’ve never associated with a narcissist, you can’t win. You will be left clueless after every argument because every argument was always your fault and you were left, after the fight, wondering why it started in the first place. The difficult part is not one person would ever believe that your spouse could be so cruel in emotion, ignoring you for weeks on end if they were dissatisfied with your nonconforming to whatever it was they expected you to be. One time we had a big fight because she said I wasn’t doing enough around the house, fixing this or that that was broken. Since I traveled at least half the month I asked her to give me a “honey do” list of what needed fixing, etc. Thinking she would love this idea and it would make her happy, unfortunately it had the reverse effect. She got VERY upset because she said if I was a “real man”, I would know what needs to fixed. It was an ongoing argument until a therapist agreed with me and said she thought it was good idea and that many couples did what I suggested. Because the therapist agreed with me, she said the therapist was biased against her and she didn’t want to go back. There was no winning, not that I wanted to win, I just wanted transparency, honesty, and peace.
The odd thing is this lady was/is very well off, being a multimillionaire with 3 homes, having acquired a large sum after divorcing her first husband. She had nothing to want for but she was never happy.
Marrying her is, without question, one of the biggest regrets in my life. It was wasted years, money, tears and Lord knows detrimental to my health since I had consistently high blood pressure while married to her.

The motorcycle trip of my life

My youngest son was due to enter the Navy Special Forces Training in late September of 2016. Since he and I both rode motorcycles we decided that we would do the ultimate in father/son bonding time and take a 17 day motorcycle ride. The terminus would be San Diego.
After much planning and extremely critical thought given to packing. we blasted off from our house in Collierville, TN in mid August.
That ride, in an of itself could be a short book, but I’ll spare you the details since there were so many wonderful memories of that ride.
One of the most memorable days, however, was when we rode from Oklahoma City to Las Vegas, NM. We had to briefly stop in Tucumcari, NM in the late afternoon for some thunderstorms to pass, but after they departed we rode north and headed along a very bleak and lonely stretch of road to Las Vegas as the sun slowly settled. From Tucumcari to Las Vegas we saw exactly two cars. Once we climbed a series of switchbacks to rise from a lower plain to the one (plain) that Las Vegas sat upon we were greeted with one of the straightest and most well paved two lane roads I’ve ever driven upon. It was on that blacktop Austin decided to wring out his motorcycle and achieved 120 MPH as we saw the lights of Las Vegas on the very distant horizon. Once speed racer slowed to sub light speed (I maintained a “sedate” 85 MPH (the legal limit was like 65MPH, but, really?) and got near me (we had blue tooth connections so we could talk/listen to music) I told him his panniers (luggage carriers) were limited to 85 MPH. Ooooops. Well we now knew the speed envelope had been expanded to 120.
What a wonderful 17 days.

 

Top to bottom. Leaving Collierville. My ex wife stayed in the house and watched Amber while Austin and I rode. The 2nd picture shows the road out of Tucumcari to Las Vegas, NM. That car in the distance was one of only two cars we saw on the two hour ride north by northwest. Our destination in Las Vegas, the famous Plaza Hotel. We had a nice night there. leaving Las Vegas we rode over the mountains that populate northern NM; beautiful scenery. Last picture is Austin and I with a celebration scotch in San Diego. 2400 miles later. The route: Collierville to Oklahoma City to Las Vegas, NM to Durango, CO, to Page, AZ to Las Vegas, NV to Venice Beach, CA and then finally San Diego, CA.

Donald Trump, in a total surprise to almost everyone, beat Hillary Clinton in the election on November 6, 2016.
My student, I was checking out a Captain on the 777 on that day, and I were flying from New Delhi, India on the evening/night of that day (it was actually November 7th where we were) We were bound for Dubai, UAE. As we flew we were getting updates, without asking BTW, on how the election count was going since other airliners that were flying that day were making random announcements over the 121.5 frequency (the 777 has, like, 5 radios, not including the satellite com). As we descended into Dubai, getting vectored by Approach Control, someone announced over 121.5 that Trump won, Hillary had conceded. That was a very surreal experience those voices over 121.5.

2017

I transitioned to the B-767 and 757. I was tired of round the world flying and realized that the older I got the harder it was for me to sleep on the flights when I was “off duty” on one of our 15 hour legs and the fact that jet lag was kicking me in the ass on layovers. When I was younger I could easily deal with the jet lag stuff, but as I aged it was getting harder and harder to sleep on layovers and then, when I got home, I couldn’t transition to a decent sleep cycle there either. I was perpetually fatigued. Also, In the 8 or 9 years I’d been on the B-777 I NEVER flew without a student…on every trip I flew I was training a student…it got old having to teach on every flight. I just wanted a break and to fly for the pure sake of flying, not in having the responsibility of training someone. If you add the years I was a military instructor to the years I was instructing at FedEx I’d been teaching for something like 30 years. There was extra pay involved in the FedEx training gig, but I just began to feel the extra money wasn’t worth the toll it was putting my attitude and spirit; I began to dread every time I had to go fly a 777 flight. I never thought it was possible to dislike flying but that was the reality after flying 8 years on the 777, so I bailed and I have never regretted it. Big loss in pay but the boost in my spirits as I was began forward to flying again and not having to instruct.
Back when I went to the 767, you actually got trained first on the B-757, then after getting your Type Rating, you got differences training on the 767. I can’t say I liked the 757. We had an intermix of 757/767 flying on the monthly bid lines. The good thing was I was pretty senior so the lines I got with 757 flying were very short flights, usually an hour or less to your destination. Not liking the 757 probably will come as a surprise to many airline guys who have flown it, but I think after flying the 777, every other aircraft didn’t measure up, though the 767 was not bad.

My favorite routes while flying the 767 were the intra-Europe flying. Usually I’d deadhead to Paris or Dublin on one of the major airlines and then from either of those two cities I would operate to London, Milan, maybe Madrid or East Midlands, UK and then back to Paris, Dublin, etc. The above photograph was taken as my F/O and I flew over the Alps, having just left Milan and bound for Paris.

Another F/O on a different trip taking a picture of the Alps as we climb above them. I never got tired of seeing that mountain range as we flew over it

Looking out the HUD (Heads Up Display) as I climb out of the New York City area and head to Europe. Views like that morning never got old.

My youngest daughter, while attending UNR (University of Nevada, Reno) was date raped, the boy taking her to a nearby hotel and leaving her there after he took advantage her. How do you, as a father, deal with this? How? Amber’s rape was not my first experience in coming face to face with someone who was raped. My sister Gail was gang raped as a senior in high school, and I discovered a girl in the woods when I was walking home from a high school dance one night who had been gang raped; I walked her home, never knowing what happened to her after that. In each instance I had no idea how to reach into each of the ladies’ hearts and soothe them. Amber dealt with her rape internally and only finally, 6 years after the event, is she coming to grips with it mentally, but still, even though she and I are close, I still don’t know what words to say to help her resolve her hurt, embarrassment (she thought it was her fault) and emotional stress.

A month after Amber’s rape. My son flew out to Vegas so he could be with me when I picked Amber up from UNR for her Christmas break. We drove over the Sierra Nevadas on our return to Vegas and went to Santa Monica for the day/night. Amber did not return to UNR, she begged me not to go back, so she went to SBCC (Santa Barbara City College) for her Spring semester.

2017

A satellite’s eye view of hurricane Maria, showing where the “meat” of the storm is and how our dispatcher planned our flight around it in order to get to Puerto Rico.

Had an interesting flight to Puerto Rico in September of 2017. Two hurricanes had passed over/near Puerto Rico in 2017 within two weeks of each other. Irma was the first and it was a category 5 storm, devastating the island. Two weeks later hurricane Maria, pictured above, passed over the island, it was a category 4 storm as it hit the island. As the storm continued westerly towards Florida, I was the Captain of a 767 relief flight, delivering needed supplies to the island. We were dispatched to Borinquen, on the northwest side of the island.
When my F/O and I were flight planning I talked to the dispatcher, a lovely lady who I knew well (she passed away a few years ago), told me she planned my flight to the west of the hurricane in order to have more favorable winds since the rotation around a low pressure system is counter clockwise.
Once we got to the aircraft and prepared for pushback, ATC radically changed our route from flying on the west side of the maelstrom to flying on the east side which also put us in CPDLC airspace. The F/O had never down CPDLC procedures, but, since I’d flown the 777 on worldwide routes, using CPDLC was not an issue (the company had not yet authorized the crews to use the CPDLC).
Eventhough the radar/weather looks really gnarly in that picture, flying over, around a hurricane is really not that big of a deal. I’d flown over many typhoons in the pacific on either the MD-11 or B-777; the biggest obstacle was embedded thunderstorms. However, let me state, god forbid you lost an engine while flying above the hurricane and had to descend into it, since the turbulence would have been an issue.

2018

2019

Kyle, a Marine (he joined a year after graduating from college) graduated from Navy Flight Training at Kingsville NAS, TX in 2019. He was given an F-18 as a follow-on assignment jet.

Kyle after his wing pinning ceremony. The jet pictured in the plaque was his Kingsville training aircraft the T-45.

My first, so far, grandchild was born shortly after Kyle received his Naval Aviator Wings. Ronan was born in San Diego while his dad was just starting F-18 training. Could a baby be any cuter than this little fella??

Charlie after one of his F-104 flights. I met him in Florida, Kennedy Space Center, and spent a week there with him as he got his F-104 Type Rating.

My Dear Friend Charlie, who I met when I began flying F-16s in 1990 went to Florida and got a F-104 Type Rating. He invited myself and another one of his friends to come down and watch him go through this rather expensive process. I was down in the Kennedy Space Center, where the F-104 operation is based, for a week. In that time Charlie flew just about everyday. Seeing a F-104 close up was pretty cool for me, inspite of my fighter background the F-104 is one of those iconic fighters that causes increased testosterone production in men (maybe women too!); I would love to have taken a flight in the aircraft but the price tag was a bit too hefty for me.
Over the years Charlie and I have had many exploits together. Where Darryl Hannah was like my older brother, Charlie was like my younger brother, being 10 years younger than me. He is a senior First Officer on B-777s with American, though he recently retired after 26 years in the NYANG where he flew C-17s and then C-5s before that.
One of the more notable adventures we had was when we met in Cambridge, UK while I was on a layover there and we went to a pub and then nightclub after the pub closed. Charlie and I met a couple of rather wild and crazy university ladies at the “Fez” nightclub, one of whom wanted Charlie to ride her like a cowboy would…she got her wish. As for the rest of the details of that nigh? I’m not saying. :-)
I owe Charlie much. He has seen/been there for me when I reached the lowest of lows and went to the highest of highs. He was never judgmental nor harsh in his criticism of my stupid choices in women, in life, though I do wish I had taken his advice more seriously because I probably would have had only two wives, instead of four...cest la vie.

Charlie and a friend in the B-777 as they fly to Paris. Charlie’s past is a tapestry of flying different aircraft around the would (not just with the military or American Airlines) and dating wonderful women from around the world…a South African model, a Russian beauty from Vladivostok, Serbian Olympic swimmer and finally a Japanese beauty, and many others. If ever there was a charming, suave and debonaire example of a man it is Charlie. He is of German heritage and pedigree, with some of Americana thrown to make him more well rounded.

The boat of my my dreams.
When I was a kid my father owned a 32 Pacemaker Sport Fishing boat. It was not very sophisticated, the boat, with one HF radio and literally a portable hand held AM/FM radio that had a rotatable antenna which my father used, and subsequently taught me, for radio direction finding. He would use two AM radio stations somewhere in New Jersey for this process, triangulating the two lines of position and where the two lines intersected was our position. Cheap and effective.
Besides my lovely world of flying with the old man, going out in the boat with him was one of the best bonding experiences he and I had together; I never saw him angry, ever, while he was on the boat. Usually it was just me and him, though on occasion Linda would go. These were all day excursions…7 hours at least, leaving at 7 AM and getting to the dock at 3 PM. My father drank his beloved beer the entire time we were fishing. He loved to sit in the fighting chair, looking back at where we’d been and at the sea as it rolled by while we were trolling, waiting for the tell tale bend of one of the four fishing rods and the consequent sound of the fishing line plying out and the clicking sound of the reel’s drag. Even though I was young when we started fishing together, the old man taught me how to operate the boat, so I was always on the flybridge driving the boat and talking on the radio, using the call sign ‘Whiskey Zulu Whiskey 3510, asking the other boats where to find the fish.
My father sold the boat when I went to college in 1976. He was just not using it and I had lost interest in the fishing once I had begun flying. It truly was a sad day when he sold Liana; she served us well in some very seriously rough seas.
So, it was with much, much chagrin to my fourth wife when I found a reasonably priced 48 foot Hatteras Convertible/Sport Fisherman in Portsmouth, New Hampshire for sale.
The survey was completed, money exchanged hands, and so I bought “HOLDFAST” in 2019. She was beautiful. My father was with me in spirit every time I took her out.
Without a doubt the most memorable trip in her was when I took her from Portsmouth to Somers Point, New Jersey, in early June. I had my son fly out to meet me so he could take the trip also. For insurance purposes I had to have a Captain on board for the delivery down the coast, a guy name Gig, who was a real character.
We went from Portsmouth, across the Cape Cod Bay, down through the Cape Cod Canal, a canal that cuts through Cape Cod to make the journey shorter when heading down the Eastern Seaboard. The first part of the trip, up to and through the canal was in very smooth waters, but upon entering Buzzards Bay the winds began howling, Sustained 25 knots and gusting to 35. We held 22 knots as HOLDFAST cut through the 5 to 6 foot seas like a hot knife through butter. Only occasionally did we hit a boat shuddering rogue wave that blew massive amounts of sea spray onto the eisenglass enclosed flybridge.
After 10 hours on the water that day we pulled into Port Judith, Rhode Island, in a light rain, for the first night “on the road.”
The next morning we left bright and early with the intention to reach a marina on Staten Island, New York. The wind was howling at a sustained 30 knots from the northwest so we had another day of high seas and occasional pounding of the hull against the random high wave. HOLDFAST had no trouble maintaining 22 knots as her deep Vee hull cut through the water. She was proving herself to be the boat that I had read about in my research before selecting her make and model as my boat of choice.
The biggest treat of the trip, and one of the coolest sights I have witnessed in my life is when we steamed through the East River of New York City. I let Gig operate the boat while I took pictures of a lifetime (to me anyway).

The Brooklyn Bridge as seen from the bow on HOLDFAST while cruising on the East River. I intentionally edited the picture to black and white for an old time effect.

The Manhattan skyline as we head further south.

The next leg, third day of the trip, brought calm winds and seas with bright blue skies. Cruising just off the coast of the Jersey Shore with my son reminded me of the days with my father in his boat, although the technology over the years has vastly improved and made navigation easier.

Austin operating HOLDFAST as we near our destination.

Such a beautiful boat and such a wonderful flashback to my days of going out on the water with my dad. Austin and I preparing to leave Staten Island on the last leg of the trip.

My sister Linda was diagnosed with uterine cancer in the summer of 2019. It actually was more extensive than her uterus only because, even though she had been feeling internal pain for a few months prior to the diagnosis, she refused to go to the doctor. Eventually her pain was too great and her boyfriend took her to the ER where it was discovered her gut was riddled with cancer. She died a couple months later. I was sleeping in a chair next to her the night she passed away.
Yet again another person whom I loved dearly and to whom I was very much attached passed away; and so young too. Losing Linda was far worse than losing either of my parents. She was my confidant, my friend, and we had an indestructible wall that guarded our hearts from outsiders. We both had been very hurt emotionally while growing up and had a brother sister bond that very few siblings have. When Linda was just seven she had to take care of my sister Gail, who was five, and me, two. My mother would go out during the weekends with whatever guy she was dating at the time, sometimes staying out all night. Linda was seven years old (at that time my mother and father were divorced; they remarried 3 years later when I was five). No matter who I married, or dated, during our years together she would always vet the ladies, however she was very reluctant to say what she felt about some of them for fear of hurting my feelings. I could tell her anything and everything, and I did, and she listened without prejudice, just listening, never really offering advice. Like Darryl, Linda was almost always happy. But, the one key difference is just below the emotional surface Linda was deeply scarred due to our mother’s life long dislike and neglect of her. I mean my mother was outright mean to Linda, even when she was just a child. It was my Aunt who told me that after I was born my mother told her husband, my father, that she didn’t want us kids and sought to get rid of us to anyone that would take us, including my Aunt and Uncle.
There were times when Linda and I would talk on the phone for a couple hours telling stories of our dysfunctional family and laughing at the now funny, but not then, calamities that occurred. Although Linda’s laugh was contagious, what amazed me is how instantaneously she would burst out crying when she thought of our mother’s anger towards her…She would immediately sob when recalling our mother’s abuse and indifference, but then almost as fast as she cried she would compose herself and start laughing when I told her tales of my father’s abuse on me, which I spun into humorous stories. She is the first person to love me unconditionally, though I wouldn’t realize that until after her passing. She stood by my side through 4 marriages, 3 divorces, the loss of a child, the death of my close friends Jack and Darryl, not to mention the mutual assaults we both had to endure from our parents.
Like Gail, Linda was Christian, if only because of our many conversations over the years about how you get to heaven. Her mantra used to be that she was a “good person” and that entitled her to get through heaven’s gate. I told her it took more than that, the acceptance and belief that Jesus was Lord and Savior in your life, not being “just a good person,” as she would say when she was younger.

Linda a couple years before her passing. My youngest son is on the right.

While on a flight from Memphis to Campinas, Brazil and just after passing south of Jamaica, the oil on the number one, left engine, on the 767 I was the Captain on, decreased to zero…we lost all the oil. Since we had supporting indications of the loss of oil, high oil temperature and low oil pressure, we complied with the QRH (Quick Reaction Handbook which contained the Emergency/Abnormal checklists). The left engine was brought to idle, since there was some residual oil in it somewhere, and at that point, we had to decide where to divert to, since we essentially were single engine and could not continue another 7 hours to Campinas.
The three of us, me, the F/O and the Relief Captain, after much discussion, decided to divert to Panama City Airport, Panama. It was 340 NMs away. The weather was clear all the way from our position over the Caribbean to Panama, with the exception of a couple of thunderstorms over eastern Panama, which were easily avoided. On downwind for runway 03R, the controller cleared me to maneuver at will in order to set up for my approach and landing, which I did, by hand flying, clicking off the autopilot once cleared for the approach (visual backed up with the ILS) and landing.
The aircraft sat on the ramp in Panama for a week as they changed the left engine. Turns out the oil scavenger pump’s bearings failed and the pump disintegrated, shedding parts into the oil lines and clogging the oil filter screen; the oil backed up in the system and was dumped overboard.
Oddly, two years later I was flying from Dublin to London and had the EXACT same thing happened. I landed in London single engine with the left engine shutdown. The EXACT same issue with the scavenge pump. What are the odds??

The upper picture was the flight planned route for our flight to Campinas, Brazil. The second picture is from Flight Aware and shows our actual ground track to Panama, PTY after losing the left engine.

2020

COVID hits America in January of 2020. I have no doubt many studies will be conducted to determine the effects of the pandemic and which responses to it were correct and which ones weren’t. By far, beyond the mandatory wearing of ineffective masks which were supposed to stop/slow the spread (they did not) of the virus, the issue of getting the vaccine (mandatory by some employers, the military, hospitals, government workers), which was supposed to prevent/stop the spread of the virus (it did not) weighed heavily upon the public. In the end the vaccine appears to offer detrimental effects to many younger men due to heart issues, while never slowing/preventing/stopping the spread of the disease.

My youngest son moved in with my wife and me in July of 2020. He’d begun attending UNLV (online) and was beginning to take flying lessons, with a desire to be a professional pilot.
Austin’s living with my wife and I precipitated our divorce less than a year later. My wife, at that time, could not stand my son in her life or in her house. This is the same woman who said, when we were dating, that she loved my kids as if they were her own. I will not even assign a false name to her as it presupposes she is human.
My youngest daughter, after leaving college in 2018 and moving back to Tennessee, told Austin that my wife was pure hell to live with. Even so Austin decided to move in with us. I had told my wife that I was OK with him living with us as long as he was attending college and that he needed to get a job. Getting a job at the beginning of COVID was a challenge, but he did work off and on as COVID’s effects waxed and waned in the business community and country in general.
The penultimate fight occurred in my wife’s house (She owned the very modest home in Henderson before she and I got married. I always hated that house but she would never agree to sell it so we could buy a house we both liked) that caused me to leave my wife occurred in very early January. The fight started with her, the wife, giving Austin grief because he threw out a razor blade in his trash can in his bathroom. She said it was irresponsible of him to throw the blade in the trash because her 4 year old grandson may find it and cut himself. The fight started with just the two of them while I was in my bedroom, trying to avoid being collateral damage…I must add, my wife, by the time of that fight, 9 PM, was intoxicated which exacerbated her continuously hostile feelings towards my son. After a few minutes the fight moved into the room I was in whereupon I was brought into the melee. When tensions, emotions reached their peak, I told Austin we were leaving, in order to avoid anything getting physical, and we never returned, though my wife did want to get back together with me a few weeks later.
I know as a professing Christian where my responsibilities lay in being married and I will admit I bear much fault in my divorces. I will always accept responsibility for my matrimonial failures. God will be the judge when I die, and I have asked Him for forgiveness for my failings over and over again….I am a broken man.
But, my divorce from my fourth wife needed to be. My marriage was killing me, literally. My blood pressure was through the roof, I couldn’t sleep and emotionally I was a mess because of my wife’s narcism, which I am sure she would never admit she has. If I never see her again, it will be too soon.

Joe Biden is elected president in what will most likely go down as one of the most contested elections ever. There was much attention given to irregularities in the voting machines and possible software tampering as well as many illegal absentee/mail-in ballots that were supposedly dumped into the system in favor of Biden…no doubt time will allow the truth to percolate to the top.

2021

2022

My Son and his girlfriend, CJ, got married on Nov. 11th. They had moved to Longmont, CO for a year so Austin could get some flight training, hoping he could do it cheaper and faster than in Las Vegas. While those plans didn’t work out to well, his impromptu marriage planning did as his mother, sister and Dad were able to attend.

The family..Left to right (disregard people next to the window) Jacqueline (step-mom), Dad, Sister of Austin, mother of Austin, Austin, CJ, Foreground, (right to Left) Reagan and Bailey (Step children to Austin)

2023

After my fourth wife and I split, early 2021, Austin and I initially moved in with my oldest daughter, who was engaged and living with her fiancé in Pahrump, Nevada (about 45 minutes West of Las Vegas). I had contracted to build a house in Las Vegas (2021), thinking my divorce with my fourth wife would come quickly since we had a prenup, no kids, and were married four years.
It’s hard to know, when you are as fucked, (I apologize for that word, but simply, that is exactly what I was then) up emotionally as I was right after I split from my fourth wife to know what the will of God is, let alone what my next steps in life should be when I was struggling, just trying to survive each day. I was in the throes of my fourth divorce, I was 62 and so close to retiring and now I had to refigure out my retirement’s financial plans after four wives and five kids and multiple homes, toys, colleges, cars, etc; my financial future looked bleak.
Escaping from the narcissism of my fourth wife was both a blessing and a curse. On the one hand my blood pressure came down to normal levels since I didn’t have to experience the persecution, fighting, and emotional torture that I lived with, but now I was now scrambling to figure out how to live, financially after retiring since the future Ex was so wealthy and I didn’t have to worry about finances when we were married. I was hoping we would get a new union contract with my airline, that would have boosted my company sponsored retirement, but no such luck, the contract is still being debated between the company and union (and as of this writing, Dec, ‘23, still is). I increased my contributions to my retirement account, but in two years only so much can be done. …but I kept on flying, which had always been my escape, like my father, to life’s problems.
I am a loner, and like an injured cat, (although I am more of a dog lover) when hurt I run away and hide away from the world. I accept the pain and suffering as a normal part of my life, believing everything bad that occurs in both in my life and my kids’ is always all my fault; yes there is a certain narcissism in that belief, I have been fighting that aspect of my personality since the loss of my daughter.
When I was 29 and going through my first divorce I was so optimistic about my future, since I had time on my side…at 62, I had lost all hope of ever recovering. My only goal at that point was to help my youngest two kids, particularly my son, since we were in the middle of an economically destructive and job killing pandemic and he was having trouble finding a job while going to college; I was fully supporting him financially, not to mention helping my youngest daughter too.
As the year of 2021 continued I decided I needed to move out of Christina’s house and was looking for a place to stay until the house I had contracted to build was finished. I decided to move out of my daughter’s house for two reasons: 1. Christina, who was living with her fiancé, was having relationship issues with him and I saw how cold she was treating him. It was breaking my heart to see the angst between them, since I was the one who set up their blind date. Her fiancé is such a nice guy it was killing me to see how harshly she was treating him; 2. My son, who was living with Christina too, was spending a lot of time at his girlfriend’s house in Vegas. Also, he had the option to live in UNLV housing, or in a studio apartment near the college. I wasn’t worried about him getting along in life at that point, he was young and smart.
In addition to a place to live, I had also begun to look for a new publisher for my first book. My contract with the first publisher expired and I know they had screwed me out of a large amount of royalties.
I did find a lady online who had a small publishing company. She lived in Scottsdale, AZ, a five hour drive from Pahrump. Before I decided to go see her, we spoke at great length on the phone about a multitude of things and in those conversations I revealed to her just how F’ed up I was. Being a lawyer she gave me excellent legal advice and agreed to look over my prenup.
Sadly, while I was flying a trip in Europe this lady told me that there was no way I should have contracted to build a house, (my real estate agent should have told me but didn’t) while going through a divorce, since my future ex wife would own half of the house, since my prenup was very one sided in favor of my future ex. I reluctantly called the builder and told him I needed to cancel my contract since my ex wife would have claim over it too; he was sympathetic to my plight and readily returned my earnest money. It was really hard to let go of that house.
In March, 2021, I flew to Phoenix, AZ and met this very compact and feisty publisher. She was a widower, having been married 30 years before her late husband tragically passed away a few years prior to our meeting.
We immediately hit it off, in almost every way, so I agreed to let her publish the one book that I had written and told Jacqueline, of Road Scholar Publishing, that I had two more books close to being ready for publishing. She agreed to publish them too, when the manuscripts were finished.
Jacqueline, having a French father and Turkish mother, was initially raised in Casablanca (yes THAT Casablanca) but attended high school in Southern California when her parents moved from Morocco. After high school she went into cosmetology. At 21 she bought her own salon in Venice Beach California and was one of a very limited number of women who were allowed to work out at Gold’s Gym in Venice Beach. She regularly worked out at the same time as Arnold Schwarzenegger, Lou Ferrigno, and other notable body builders such as Corinna Everson, a Ms Olympia winner.
In her mid twenties Jacqueline was accepted to UCLA and received a degree in Psychology, graduating with honors. Initially she had intentions of becoming a psychologist. However, after graduating from UCLA she was accepted to law school and received her Juris Doctor, JD, degree after three years of study. She continued to operate her salon after all her schooling and then became a consultant for a couple of major hair product manufacturing companies located in Southern California.
Jacqueline started her publishing company when her husband began writing business books after they started a consulting business when they moved from Southern California to Arizona. In addition to helping her husband publish his books, she ghost wrote a few (books), handled all the legal aspects of the company, and continued her consulting work with the hair products companies in LA while still managing her hair salon in Venice Beach. Finally, as if all that wasn’t keeping her busy enough, Jacqueline started to sell real estate and particularly focused on speaking to single mother’s/ladies’ groups, empowering the ladies with knowledge on how to acquire their own homes when they thought they couldn’t.

Of French and Turkish parents, and raised in Casablanca, Jacqueline has traveled the world. A lawyer by degree, she is extremely well read and has published my three books, in addition to other’s before me.

After meeting Jacqueline and dumping my life’s story on her, she said I could stay in her house, since she had a large home. I did agree and moved whatever little stuff I had, it fit in my truck, and moved into her guest room.
I remained at Jacqueline’s house until we married in late 2022 in a private ceremony.
To say I was hesitant in getting married again is an understatement, but, in all my prayers and supplications to God, laying on the floor, not once did I feel an ounce of “no” from God. Jacqueline was/is a devout Christian. Simply put, she is the greatest woman and friend I have ever known/had. Her wisdom with regards to human issues and her emotional IQ is beyond anything I have ever experienced in a person. We have so much in common and she is so patient with the emotional baggage I carry it’s hard for me to wrap my head around. Her psychology courses in college and continuing education (she has always remained interested in psychology, even after graduating) have helped her to help me better understand me, particularly the debilitating aspects of living with a narcissist. I am convinced that Jesus Christ hand picked an unfortunate angel in heaven and sent her to Shepard me through the rest of my life…if you ever saw the movie ““It’s Wonderful Life,” where Clarence had to earn his angel wings by helping George see his worth as a man, Jacqueline is my angel, helping me to see value in my life, when all I want to do is crawl under a rock and die.

While in her twenties Jacqueline took up body sculpting, being one of a very small number of women allowed into Gold’s Gym in Venice Beach, CA; the same gym where Arnold, Lou Ferrigno, and other famous body builders got their start. Her arm is not fat, that’s muscle.

I retired on May 19, 2023. I was ready to go. For a full year prior to retiring I was telling myself that I needed to take pictures, smell the smells on the layovers, observe the sights and sounds of each city and fully embrace the experience of my position as an airline Captain before I retired.
My genesis for my desire to become hyper aware of my last year of flying was due to my observation of Darryl and some other Captains who I saw retire kicking and screaming; they simply had trouble accepting that they were going to/had to retire. I wanted to walk away from my career on my terms, feeling that I had fully experienced all that there was to experience and that it was time to go gracefully and with eloquence.
So, having seen the reluctant retirees go with regret and remorse I can say that I learned from them and did not want to leave my position in pain. So, I did fully enjoy my last year of flying. I took many pictures while in the cockpit or on my layovers. In flight there are so many wonderful sights only an aviator can see. Most of my flying was done in Europe, flying to Milan, Paris, Madrid, or London, but with Copenhagen and Istanbul thrown in for good measure. Domestically in the USA I flew between Phoenix and Oakland, Ontario, Indianapolis, and Memphis. Most of my flying, either in Europe or the USA was done at night, like the majority of my FedEx flying, except for the worldwide flights on the MD-11 or B-777 where much of those flights transitioned between day and night.
One area of my position that I really began to hate, was the bag drag of leaving one hotel and checking into the next. I don’t know why but I began to loathe bringing my suitcase with me between hotels; going through security having to take off my belt at times, having my backpack searched in some cities, laptop out, laptop in, etc, etc….not sure if I am the only pilot that hated that as their career progressed, but, wow, I really hated that aspect of airline flying as my days came to an end.

My last flight. Actually we had landed in Paris and this was after the last flight. We had arrived from Milan.

My last flight was on the 12th of May, from Milan to Paris. There was no pomp and circumstance, no water cannons across my aircraft as I arrived in Paris, and no congratulations from ATC as I flew my last flight.
The next day I spent enjoying Paris with my good friend Charlie who flew over to meet me and celebrate a career of 35 years and 3 months.
The day after my day in Paris with Charlie I boarded a Delta A350 and flew to Atlanta and then got on another Delta aircraft, the make and model I didn’t even care to notice, and flew to Phoenix, AZ and then Uber’d home.

Paris, the day after. Charlie flew over to spend the day with me as we celebrated the end of my 35 year career. That was a really nice day and it was really nice of Charlie to fly over.

Some facts about my 35 years, in brief:
No violations/incidents/accidents; aircraft flown…flight engineer on the B-727 and the DC-10, Captain on MD-11, MD-10, B-777, B-767, B-757; 6 engine shutdowns with consequent emergencies declared; approximately 22 missed approaches/go arounds (most of them on the MD-11 while training students); 2 diverts, one bone jarring landing in Denver on the MD-10 while training a new F/O; one down to minimums approach on the IGS to runway 13 in Hong Kong’s Kai Tai airport; At least 20 no kidding CAT 3 approaches to autolands, and without question half of them while going into Paris (Charles de Gaulle Airport)…one night we had to taxi 3 miles in Paris (FedEx ramp for a T/O on runway 26 Right) with 500 feet visibility; One severe MAP shift going into Kai Tak on the MD-11 (pre GPS days) with Tom Witts as the Captain; multiple max crosswind/very turbulent landings on either the MD-11 or B-777 at Narita, Paris, Beijing and Dublin, and others; countless holds on arrivals into more cities than I can remember due to thunderstorms or poor weather at the destination city (25 minute going into London one night); one minimum fuel landing in Singapore because of a runway shutdown due to a Quantas A-380 losing it’s number two engine with an un-contained fan separation which caused multiple punctures in the aircraft’s structure…the “conga” line on that arrival had to seen to believe; one VOR approach flown, while on my MD-11 IOE and going into Manila with Mike Danosky(sp) as my Instructor. That arrival and approach is significant because a typhoon had passed over Manila 6 hours prior to our arrival and another typhoon was due to hit 6 hours after our departure; one memorable localizer approach was flown with heavy snow into Anchorage on runway 06 Left with moderate to severe turbulence on arrival (I flew the approach and landing since the Captain said he’d just come off of vacation and said he didn’t feel current); an unknown number of MD-11 Type rating rides given with only one failure; an unknown number of MD-11 system orals given with only one failure; countless Line checks performed with only one failure; 3 ice events and 2 snow storm events occurred while I was a Duty Officer and one time I shutdown flying operations for 3 hours in Chicago due to heavy snow/ice (totally pissed off the Managing Director of the Dispatchers/Freight specialists) fouling the FedEx ramp area and taxiways leading into our facility; I was an instructor for 23 years…A Flex Instructor, Line Check Airmen, Designee (MD-11), Aircrew Program Designee on the B-777; Countless students trained on the MD-11 and B-777; In the 8 eight years I instructed on the B-777 I only had TWO flights when I wasn’t instructing a student; my most memorable student trained on all of my flights was a lovely Captain named Natalie Lademen (sp)…she was coming from the DC-10…on arrival into Beijing, her second flight in the 777, we had 4 runway changes as we were vectored in a extremely busy terminal environment, finally ATC gave us runway the far left runway, 36 Left? The crosswind was steady at the 777s max crosswind limit (31 knots)…Natalie did a fully crabbed and unbelievably smooth 2nd landing…she was an excellent aviator and a classy woman; One psychotic RFO jumped on my shit while I was giving a line check to a new Captain on a flight from Standstead, UK to Memphis. I mean he went off on me, dressing me down on the crew bus as we drove to the airport from the layover hotel…we had a very serious conversation at the airport before we got on the aircraft where I gave him a choice to either calm his shit down or he was staying at the airport….for the next 9 and 1/2 hours on the flight to Memphis, he apologized no less than 5 times…it got to the point the apologies were disingenuous; 15 total moves in my 35 years; longest flight was from Shenzhen, China to Memphis…15 hours and 40 minutes block; multiple severe turbulence episodes; one severe icing episode while going into Manchester, NH on the MD-10; highest altitude achieved was in the B-777. being flown while very light and from Narita to Inchon…FL 430. I was giving training to a new Captain and we were seeing if we could climb above the strong winterly jet stream which was from 200 knots on the nose; fastest I’ve flown was 365 knots indicated on the MD-10-30 and MACH. 88 on the same aircraft; longest ground wait for takeoff was in EWR (Newark) when we called for taxi we were told we were the 94th aircraft in line for departure (they were departing on runway 4 left so we asked ATC to give us a heads up when the aircraft we were following approached the FedEx ramp (the taxiway to RWY 4 L went right by the FedEx ramp). We were at the exit to our ramp with both engines shutdown and we started them when ATC told us the guy we were following was approaching; Shortest flight was Oakland to San Francisco, 10 minutes in a MD-11 (yes we did raise the gear!).

Looking back over the past thirty five years. Flying with Federal Express was a blessed experience. For a little boy who wanted death more than life when he was growing up because of his parents’ incessant fighting and his father’s abuse, God laid a path to success that I never could have planned myself. I have flown around the world more times than I can count, laying over in some of the greatest cities on this planet. I was the Captain on the B-777, MD-11, B-767 and finally the B-757. I’ve seen sights from my Eagle’s nest that are indescribable and I swear, there were times I got a glimpse of what the skies of heaven must look like look.

“In their hearts humans plan their course, but the LORD establishes their steps.”
Proverbs 16:9, NIV

It has taken me about 7 months to write this. It’s been the most the difficult writing I’ve had since I first began writing in 8th grade.
First, what do you put in as “major events” for each year? I’m sure we can all agree on some of what I put in as headlines that deserved mentioning, but there are probably other events that you think I should have included but didn’t. Sorry.

Second, there were many other events in those 35 years that I didn’t include just for the sake of brevity, and I say that with a smirk because this story is way too long to begin with, but then again so was my 35 years long; I tried to strike a balance. At least I hope the pictures kept you entertained.

If you are wondering, I do not miss the trips. Period. After 35 years of bag dragging I wanted to vomit that last year. I loved the flying, but not the packing and unpacking, the TSA, the incredibly non-standard security checks in each of the European airports…belt off, shoes off; belt on, shoes on; sometimes liquids taken, other times not; sometimes, laptop out, sometimes it was ok to leave it in my backpack…WTH (By far Dublin’s security was the most strict, can’t tell you how much toothpaste, deodorant, etc they took); At least the TSA in America is consistent.

Finally, I have gotten my 3rd class FAA flying physical and got checked out at the Scottsdale Airport with Flightworks Aviation on their Cirrus SR-22 G5 turbos (they have 7). It is a remarkably capable aircraft with an avionics suite that rivals what I flew in my airliners…flying is in my blood, it’s what saved me from my hell on earth. Pilots are people too.

COPYRIGHT December, 2023 Roger Johnson, All RIGHTS RESERVED