(Author's note: This is my story. As Steve Bogner pointed out to me in an e-mail today, I totally forgot to say who wrote this. It was me, Gordy. Thanks Steve!)
Part 1 – The Adventure Begins
My aviation career consisted of on-the-job-training as a Flight Follow Observer (a special 225th SAC MOS) in Vietnam in fall of 1969. I was never a “Mohawk driver” or a pilot of any kind. The closest I ever got to becoming a pilot was when Joe Beckham, Dugan Lawrence or one of our other incredibly talented and able pilots let me handle the controls at twenty thousand feet in Double Zero somewhere over II Corps. I well remember a flight with Mr. Beck where we did very close passes around big, high, beautiful cumulus clouds in an otherwise bright blue sky over the South China Sea. Tight banking to the left and then to the right and then up and over the top, complete with a pencil floating in right in front of my nose! What an exhilarating experience for a 22 year old!
But I do know that whenever you go on a flight, you’re supposed to file a flight plan. Of course, in Vietnam forty years ago my part of the flight plan consisted of the target runs I had been assigned and our estimated time of return (plus lots of other information). For us Flight Follow guys, we plotted the target runs for all the missions we were following.
This was a really an amazing time in my life, those days some forty years ago. Now that I have reached the six-decade mark of my life (actually I am 63 now) I have realized God has had a plan for me all along, even when I was in that map room at Phu Hiep plotting targets in the wee small hours of the morning so long ago.
For a long time I have wanted to write my story to tell what Jesus Christ means to me and what he has done in my life, and put it on this blog to share in order to maybe help someone who may be looking for something more, some additional meaning to life. It kind of reminds me of that old cartoon of the guy climbing the mountain, finally reaching the summit just to encounter the old guy at the top just to discover the sage doesn’t know the meaning of life any more than he does. Well, just as I have seen with my 20-20 hindsight how Jesus has been involved in my life these past forty-plus years, I thought it would be better to not keep it all to myself.
I have been in a quandary, however, on how to present this without sounding preachy or judgmental or holier-than-thou. When I started the 225th Observer blog in July 2007 my purpose was connect those of us who had had the shared experience of serving with each other as Blackhawks or Phantomhawks at Phu Hiep AAF and Tuy Hoa AFB. I didn’t want to alienate anyone by presenting old, worn out clichés that we all have heard since our parents made us go to Sunday school when we were little, but may have rejected “religion” as irrelevant later on. Suffice it to say that this short essay has been a long-time incubating.
When I was a high school junior a friend invited me to a local church youth group called Lamplighters that was sponsored by a local Presbyterian church. You see, I had never gone to church, except occasionally with the neighbor kid when I was in elementary school, and my parents didn’t go either. My dad was sort of a Christian Scientist and my mom, well, I don’t know what she was because religion was never talked about in our family. The impression I had growing up, and it was only an impression, was that religion or church was not a thing to be involved with. Curiously, however, I can remember dad watching a Billy Graham crusade on TV and even asking me if I wanted to send away for the free literature.
Anyway, to make a long story longer, after three weeks of building up courage (why that was necessary, I don’t know) to go to Lamplighters, I went. Well, at the youth group I “accepted” Jesus as my Lord and Savior, I asked him into my heart. But no bolts of lightening came down, no life-changing events happened immediately, life just continued on.
In 1965 I graduated from high school, went one year to the University of Washington (and did miserably grade-wise), got a job in a television station and then attended community college. Sometime in the early spring in 1967 Uncle Sam (or was it Uncle Lynden?) sent me a notice to appear for my pre-induction physical. The dreaded draft notice was sure to follow, and the one thing since I was a little kid that I never wanted to do, to be a soldier, was now looming just over the horizon. To avoid the draft, I decided that I would enlist to at least get a job in the Army that wouldn’t necessarily guarantee I would die in combat. The staff sergeant recruiter signed me up to be a photo lab tech (MOS 84G20); I was to report to begin active duty to the Army Entry Station of the Seattle waterfront on June 20th, 1967, my 20th birthday!
So, almost exactly two years out of high school, I was off to North Fort Lewis, Washington, for eight weeks of Basic Combat Training, and then on to Fort Monmouth, New Jersey, the Army’s Signal Center and School for four or five months of photo lab training. In February 1968 we took a day trip to Fort Dix for Vietnam orientation (in a snow storm!), and I received orders for Vietnam, along with the rest of my photo lab class. I took a couple of weeks leave to come home to the Northwest and then I was off on a flight to Oakland Army Terminal for shipment to Vietnam.
All the while, I had no clue that Jesus Christ was watching over me, putting people in place ahead of me who would have a profound effect on my life. He was setting the stage for my great adventure in life.
To be continued....
