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Welcome to the war

In March 1967, as I finished my first year as a draftee in the Army, I kissed my wife good-bye in Tulsa and flew to San Francisco to go to war. At Travis, we boarded a chartered DC-8 airliner for the flight to Vietnam.

Cow pasture pilot

Beaumont, Kansas, is known as home of the Beaumont Hotel and not much else. Those of us who have it listed in our logbooks remember the unique experience of landing in a grass field at the east edge of town, taxiing onto the road, stopping at the stop sign, and parking under the trees south of the old hotel.

License to learn

I never knew what answer to give when someone asked how long it took me to learn to fly. My first flight was with my uncle at the age of four, and I spent a lot of time hanging around the airport with a friend in my pre-teen years. A World War II BT-13 training plane was rotting away behind one of the hangars, and we spent hours sitting in the seats.