Class Of 1964 USAF Academy

Karl's History

In the process of completing this assignment, I uncovered a bunch of memories and new realizations. There were so many images that came flooding back that I could only capture a few of them or risk going on ad nauseum. I certainly began to think about how influential the USAFA experience, the people I met there and an AF career was to where I am now. I consider my most significant historical life events to be the following: Growing up in Glendale, California, attending USAFA, becoming a military aviator, marrying Susan, experiencing a career in the USAF, having 2 daughters and now 2 wonderful grand daughters. USAFA provided the academic and self-disciplinary foundation that I would not have obtained elsewhere. At the time I entered the Academy, college was not extremely expensive but my parents were of very modest means and could not help financially with tuition, so, it was going to be necessary to work my way through. Which, of course, happened anyway at the Blue Zoo.

Glendale California and Grand Central Air Terminal in Post WW II America

Glendale became famous for aviation through the Grand Central Air Terminal. My younger brother, Steve, and I would ride our bikes over there and frequently watch the airplanes take off and land. We had been told that Charles Lindberg, and Amelia Earhart had flown in here. Charles Lindbergh, piloted the nation's first regularly scheduled coast to coast flight from Grand Central's runway as organizer of Transcontinental Air Transport.

My Father had joined American Air Transport Company in Fort Worth, Texas as a mechanic in the 30s. The president, C.R. Smith, sent him out to Glendale to begin a base for wider west coast flight operations for what eventually became American Airlines. There, in Glendale, he met and married my mother, who was born in Helena, Montana.

When Pearl Harbor was attacked on December 7, 1941, Grand Central Airport (like all other west coast airports) was immediately closed to private aviation. (The remaining airlines had already moved to Burbank.) The government moved in, heavily camouflaged the place, and converted it into an important defense base for Los Angeles.

A P-38 training base was built on the west side near the Los Angeles river which prepared the 319th Fighter Wing for action in Europe. Hundreds of P-51s, C-47s, B-25s and other aircraft transitioned Grand Central Airport in Glendale for refurbishment and reconditioning for many years after the war. So, aviation and airplanes have been my interest since I was a child. Both my brother, Steve, and I loved the look, sound, feel and smell of airplanes.

Our family was able to fly non-revenue all over the American Airlines system even down to Mexico City. Back then everybody got dressed up to fly and the food service was terrific. Occasionally, we'd fly down to Tucson to see a rodeo, out to Midland/Odessa to visit relatives, or sometimes travel non-stop to New York on the new transcontinental DC-7s. When we'd fly, my Dad often knew the pilots and they would call us up to the cockpit and we'd watch what the pilots were doing. They'd explain everything to my brother and me and answer all our questions (What's that thing do? That's a clock.). Not many other kids of that era had the opportunity to be up in the cockpit of a commercial airliner, see all of these gages and lights and watch what pilots do all day.

School Years in Glendale, California

We lived close to our schools so my brother and I could walk easily to class from the time we were in grammar school all the way through High School. My high school class was about 500 in size and consisted of kids from mostly middle class families. I took college prep classes throughout High School and was on the track team running hurdles, the 220 in the 880 relay and the 440. It was in Jr. High that I first Met Susan Greenhalgh. We dated in High School and she came to visit me at the Academy before she entered into the Peace Corps.

Early in my freshman year I met Dean Haddon through the Methodist Church. Dean got me to join the Glendale branch of the Reaction Research Society, a group that was building and launching rockets out on the Mojave desert. I built and launched several rockets and returned payloads with altitude activated parachute systems. The September 1958 issue of Popular Mechanics documented what we were doing. In my senior year, I was working on a rocket that was to be propelled by superheated water that would flash into large volumes of steam when pressure on the heated water was suddenly released. It was amazing that none of us were seriously injured given the dangerous mixtures we were concocting and the dubious techniques we used. There were lots of spectacular explosions on launch. Tragically, In my senior year, Dean was killed in a rock climbing accident. He had been accepted at Cal Tech and this was a devastating loss to his family, his classmates and likely to science and the space program.

Besides two uncles that had fought in WW II, no one in our family had any connection with the military. We had seen military P-38s at Grand Central but that was about it. During visits to my cousins in Texas I became aware of the Air Force and the opportunities through the Aviation Cadet program then in place to train navigators. My cousin, Noel, was going to enroll after completing two years at Odessa College. I became interested in this path and while gathering more information, I found a catalog in the Hoover High counsellor's office for the newly established Air Force Academy. I decided to apply along with an application the NROTC program and Texas A & M. Then all of the testing and physical exams started for the congressional appointment and for the Navy. Flight Surgeons, during the first Air Force medical exam at March AFB, discovered that I had a heart murmur that required further diagnosis. Doctors finally decided it was a "functional murmur" and I was cleared to proceed.

One day in May of 1960, a guy from Western Union delivered a telegram to our house from H. Allen Smith, Congressman for the 43rd congressional district in California, asking if I would accept an appointment to the Air Force Academy if offered. I immediately answered "Yes".

Arrival at USAFA

The period between high school graduation and departure for the Academy was extremely short, about a week or two. Somehow I got on a Continental flight to Denver, stayed overnight there with friends who took me to the Trailways bus station the next morning. I was wearing a graduation suit, dress shirt and tie more suitable for cool California than hot and dry Colorado. I didn't see anybody else who looked like they were going to the same place I was. I remember sweating profusely during the bus ride and, for some reason, noticing the speed limit. The bus pulled into the South Gate and dropped me at the modernistic glass and red tile Services and Supply building. The sun was exceedingly bright and hot, the air thin and dry, and the grass was so green it almost seemed blue. The suit I thought I should wear was totally inappropriate for these conditions. An NCO in the building told me that the academic area was quite a ways from here and that a blue base shuttle bus would be along to take me to the cadet area for check in. There was absolutely no indication at that point that the rest of the day would be nightmarish. Fortunately, I was in decent physical condition and quite naive.

The Blue shuttle bus dropped me at the base of the Ramp and I found my way up the stairs to a glass enclosed Terrazzo level day room on the east side of Vandenburg Hall. There was a hum of administrative activity going on behind tables that had been temporarily installed. Alpha rosters were checked, identities confirmed, everything very efficiently accomplished and a lady gave me my new cadet serial number, 2847K. She said, "You're going to need to memorize this real quick because just outside the door you're going to be greeted by that guy in Khakis out there and he's going to ask you for it. If you can't remember it, it's not going to be real fun for you." I did as she suggested and ran outside into the glaring sunlight to report all this to the tall guy in heavily starched khakis, and at that point my memory gets hazy about what transpired next. I recall multiple reps of push ups being involved throughout the rest of the day and collapsing into my "Blue Monster" more tired, dazed and confused than I'd ever been in my life.

Two people stand out in my memory of those early days. One was Dan Trial who, fortunately, was my Dooley Summer room mate. He knew the drill and got me through it. The other person in my provisional squadron was John Denko who was an accomplished gymnast and all around excellent athlete. He was inexhaustible on the runs and spectacular on the obstacle course. He was always in the lead during practice and when we ran it for record. So, I just tried to keep up with John and got pushed well beyond what I thought I was capable of. John's physical courage served him well as the Director of Public Safety in New Mexico when he chased down and captured armed escaped criminals.

The USAFA Academic Years

The academic requirements were way above anything I had experienced in High School so I made it a habit to find and and frequently check the Academic Probation and Turn-out lists posted in each squadron, expecting my name to be on it any day now. Probably because I was scared to death of failing those courses, I got through the first year on the Dean's list, but that was the last time that ever happened. Doc Fargarson was the smartest guy in our class in the 8th Squadron and he and Gerry Zionic got me through Archie Higdon's free body diagrams, Astro, and EE. To this day and at this age, I still have dreams about being woefully unprepared to "go to the boards" or for GRs at USAFA.

To keep from going insane, a Zoomie needed to get out of the Zoo for a period of time during the academic week. The USAFA Ski Club was essential to surviving the Colorado winter and introduced me to an activity that I share with my wife, daughters, and granddaughters today. Jim Young brought with him from his army experience a veritable armory consisting of all kinds of small arms ammunition and equipment. He sold us firing pins and ammunition for our M1s so Wally Wolniewicz and I would hike in the mountains and periodically go shooting.

I Introduced Wally to Gretel. I had met a girl on a blind date from Middlebury College in Vermont who was living with several friends in an apartment in Colorado Springs. I picked her up for an outing in the Springs and met the other girls she was staying with, one of which was Gretel. I told Wally of Gretel. They met, dated and ultimately married. I remember flying out from Webb AFB to attend their wedding.

JD Smith was in the 8th squadron and I remember him for his feats of gymnastics, walking on his hands for great distances and his uncanny ability to wedge himself up against the ceiling between the two walls in the squadron hallway. From that perch, he would catch a Smack thinking he was unobserved, gazing. With a booming voice from overhead, JD would call out, "You, man!, gazing around, halt!" The Doolie would then be engaged in a conversation relating to individual 4th Class responsibilities and military discipline with some unseen upperclassman, somehow hovering overhead. That experience must have unnerved a number of Doolies. JD was also an ace at marbles and after he took all of yours in a game, as the penalty, you would have to lay your curled up hands on the floor, knuckles forward and he would get to fire several of the big multi-colored ones at about 200 miles an hour at your bare knuckles!

The Central European Field Trip

Steve Mayo, Pat Durick and I were together for several of the excursions. Somehow I had communicated with Maureen Devlin, a high school classmate , who was going to be in Maastricht, Holland to visit our exchange student, Olga Koppen, at about the same time as I was to be there. I arranged to meet Maureen there. When we arrived in Brussels I asked the hotel about train schedules to Maastricht and they told me of a train leaving that afternoon around 5 and returning at 1000. What I didn't understand was that the return time of 1000 was the next day! So, I had to call back to the hotel and tell the escort officer I was stuck in Holland and would be back the next day. Olga's father was sure that I was some sort of military fugitive. As a result of this little mistake, our class leader had to put me on confinements for a couple of nights during the Trip! I don't remember what I missed.

I vividly remember Steve Mayo and I going through CheckPoint Charlie in Berlin and walking together up Friedrich Strasse to Unter den Linden and seeing mostly bombed out buildings with only a few walls left standing. We also got steins of Berliner Weisse, a kind of specialty Berlin style beer, at some Stube, maybe in the Eastern Sector, although bars were few on that side of Berlin.

At the Castellana Hilton in the evening of our arrival in Madrid, I noticed that all of the Spanish guests had put their shoes outside of the room for polishing by the staff. I proposed to Steve that at about 1 AM we depart our rooms and collect all of the shoes and pile them up in the center of the hallway in front of the elevators. Steve thought this was a terrific idea and we must have gathered 200 pairs of shoes in our pile. We made sure they were thoroughly mixed. We awaited the repercussions in the morning but, strangely, nothing was said.

Graduation and USAFA in the Rear-view Mirror

At graduation, I calculated my June, 1964 net worth at $600 (computed as a result of an instructor's suggestion in the class on personal finance) and drove to Pete Field, covered my Austin Healy (the bulk of my net worth) with a tarp and Rich Grey and I got on General LeMay's airplane to fly back to DC with him. We somehow got up to Dover, caught a C130 heading to Chateauroux, France, since France was still in NATO at the time. We then headed for Paris where I had arranged a rendezvous with Susan under the Arc De Triomphe. Susan didn't show up on the first day but a group of young ladies from Puerto Rico, who were on a tour of Paris did, and Rich went over to talk to a group of them. There he met the young Rosa Blanca who told him that they were scheduled to be at the Moulin Rouge that Evening. So, we went there that evening and Rich met again with Rosa, danced with her and spent most of the evening talking to her, finding out the itinerary for the rest of her trip. The next day, I did meet Susan under the Arc Triomphe and Rich told me that he was going to follow Rosa's itinerary and would try to catch up with me later. Susan and I began a short tour through France and Spain. Somehow, Rich and I both later arrived at our Pilot Training bases in time to start UPT. Rich later married Rosa Blanca making her Rosa Blanca Grey. Rich left us and this life much too soon.

Webb AFB - T37/T38 Undergraduate Pilot Training

My Graduating Order of Merit was right about in the middle of the class so I was able to get Webb AFB, Class 66A, for UPT. The ROTC guys in the class had FIP and already knew how to fly, so the USAFA guys had to really hump to get soloed in the T37. In T38s, Bob Dempsey and I sat at Ralph Rohatch's table.

Bob would return home to Floydada over the weekends and he would often take a couple of the guys in the class with him. I remember him preparing his maroon 409 SS for the trip with a case of Lone Star long necks that just fit under the dash ahead of the stick shift. Bob taught me how to fling a long neck over the top of the car and smack it into a roadside sign as we were driving at about 75 heading north from Big Spring toward Snyder and Ralls. Critical to the success of this maneuver was precise speed and heading control and exact release point determination.

Susan came out to visit me after returning from a year in Europe and before enrolling to finish college. When she arrived at Big Spring on a Trans Texas Airlines DC-3, I was flying, so Bob kindly went out to meet her. Later, after graduating from the University of Oregon and just before she was to go into the Peace Corps, I flew out to Eugene to see her and ask her to marry me.

T38 IP at Webb and Sheppard

All the single seat fighters were gone by the time my name came up and I wasn't interested in sitting in the back seat of an F4, so I chose the T38 FAIP job and stayed at Webb for a year or so. When the call came from ATC Headquarters for volunteers to transfer to Sheppard to start the NATO pilot training program there, and I stepped forward.

We operated out of the vacated SAC buildings at Sheppard which were much more pleasant than the far older facilities we had at Webb. When Susan returned from her Peace Corps assignment in Ivory coast we married and rented a small apartment in Wichita Falls and had our first baby, Kristina. Kristina, at birth, was given a certificate of Texas Citizenship and is a Texan to this day, she attended Baylor University and is living with her husband Scott in Houston. While I was at Sheppard, my Father fell ill and I flew out to California to see him before he died just before our first daughter, Kristina was born.

At Sheppard I was presented German Wings and given the rating of Luftfahrzeugfuhrergrad 3 by General Walter Krupinsky, formerly of the Luftwaffe. I was standing to Krupinsky's right during the ceremony and noticed that he had no ears and that the right side of his face was horribly burn scared due to a collision with a Russian fighter in WW II. He was among the first to fly the Messerschmitt Me 262 in combat as a member of Jagdverband 44 led by Adolf Galland.

Duty as an Instructor Pilot in T38s was most enjoyable. The airplane was terrific, and getting students confident in formation and instrument flying, and then graduating them successfully was a very satisfying experience. I graduated every student I had and none were ever killed or injured in an aircraft incident. At Sheppard, I volunteered for F4 RTU at DM.

Davis Monthan AFB, F4 RTU, TAC and PACAF

Here I got a taste of flying the Phantom in a tactical environment and learned how to trust the INS and the GIB after trying to do everything myself and only use the TACAN to get a flight out to the gunnery range. DM was renovating their runway so we had to operate out of Tucson International for most of the time there.

My Assignment after graduation was to the 366th Tactical Fighter Wing at Da Nang but TAC/MPC changed this just before departure to the newly formed 16th TFS in the 33rd TFW at Eglin flying F4Es. The 16th was to become Combat Ready and then deploy to SEA. Our second child Nicole was born there in the Eglin hospital, She has a birth certificate that shows her place of birth as "Niceville, FL" something invariably remarked upon whenever she tells anyone.

While in the 16th TFS, we deployed to Incirlik and to Kunsan for 6 month TDYs, and I flew several F4s over to Udorn and Ubon. At about this time the USAF ceased TDY support to Korea and established a permanent party at Osan and the 58th TFS. I helped get that outfit up and running and then did the same with the 36th TFS at Osan AB.

Graduate School at San Diego State University in Management Science (1972)

One day I was in a flying suit at Osan and a week later I was in jeans on the campus at San Diego State University in a Management Science Master's program. As you can imagine, the civilian atmosphere was significantly different from a fighter squadron, what with the civilian students relying heavily on pot to get them through the program.

Tom Rauk from 7th squadron visited one day and told me about opportunities opening up at Los Angeles Air Force Station in the Air Force Satellite Control Facility. He was pretty vague about what was going on there but told me of his experiences as a Recovery Aircraft Commander flying C-130s out of Hickham to pick up re-entry vehicles. That sounded pretty interesting so I asked Tom to put my name in the queue.

Los Angeles Air Force Station - Corona, Gambit and Hexagon (1973-1977)

LA was too expensive for a captain's salary so Susan and I found a house in Huntington Beach and I endured the hour-long commute in LA traffic everyday to LAAFS.

Only recently have I been able to discuss the work at LA because most of it was highly classified until just a few years ago. At the AFSCF we worked closely with the CIA to operate the Corona, Gambit and Hexagon reconnaissance satellites and recover the film canisters which were periodically ejected. This is what Tom Rauk told me about earlier. Early in these programs one could not even utter the words 'Corona' or reveal the name of the security classification control system then in use. These programs started during the Cold War and continued up until about 1976 or so when the existence of the program was compromised by an individual working in the 'Black Vault' at TRW in Redondo Beach. The story is captured in the book, "The Falcon and the Snowman".

Gambit and Hexagon were absolutely instrumental in informing our intelligence analysts and National Security policy makers about the nature of the Soviet missile threat. Hexagon was able to obtain detailed mapping of huge expanses of the globe that had been denied territory. Now, all of this kind of work is done by the National Reconnaissance Organization. These programs kept the cold war cold and I am immensely fortunate to have been able to contribute to their success in some small way. This was a direct use of my graduate Management Science work at SDSU.

Hq 5th Air Force, Yokota AB, Japan (1977 - 1981)

In the Air Force it seems like one gets into an Asian or European orbit and pretty much stays there. So the next stop was not back to Korea but to 5th Air Force Headquarters at Yokota AB, Japan on the operations staff there. The Japanese constitution at the time prevented any kind of offensive operations by any branch of their military but, through lengthy and detailed negotiations, we were able to establish a quarterly exercise with the JASDF flying Dissimilar Air Combat Tactics exercises bringing together Air Force fighter squadrons and JASDF fighter squadrons for the first time. These Cope North exercises were immensely popular with the aircrews from both countries and probably enhanced JASDF air to air proficiency and tactics.

Our two girls, Kristina and Nicole, were grammar school age, we lived in the small Japanese neighborhood of Hinode about 6 miles west of Yokota. The Hitachi corporation had established This neighborhood for its employees working at Hitachi sites near Tokyo. Most all of our neighbors were PhD scientists working on some esoteric research project for Hitachi, usually associated with color television transmission or semiconductor fabrication. At the same time the moving truck arrived with our household goods, all of the Japanese kids in the neighborhood were standing outside our front door asking our girls to come out and play, which they promptly did. They learned spoken Japanese very quickly and one mother reported that she could not tell whether it was our kids or theirs who were talking when they were in a group. Our neighbors soon began asking me to proofread their research reports and presentations in English that they were giving all over the world, which I gladly did. Japanese sentence structure is complex and can lead to ambiguities not welcomed in a scientific community. I think that over the 4 years that we lived in our Japanese neighborhood, I probably helped our Hitachi researchers get their findings more clearly and directly articulated.

The Yokota AB Housing Office called me on numerous occasions with the news that they had a house on base for us but we refused every time. We count among our very best friends the neighbors we had in Japan, some of whom have visited us in the US and when we later lived in Stuttgart, Germany.

Developing the Consolidate Space Operations Center, Colorado (1981 - 1985)

Sunnyvale AFS was located in a crowded part of San Jose and subject to increasing encroachment by local industries rendering security for the facility increasingly difficult. At the time I was to rotate out of Japan the Air Force decided to move the functions of the AFSCF to a mid CONUS location in Colorado. The new facility was to be called the Consolidated Space operations Center and was later to be renamed Schriever AFS. I returned to Los Angeles to establish the Program Office to build CSOC. Initially, the staff was pretty skimpy consisting of me and the acting program manager until more sufficient funding was obtained.

To get all of this right, the Deputy PM, Jim Higgins, sent me off to Ft. Belvoir to the Defense Systems Management College. Will Stackhouse and I were in the same section. DSMC would prove to be a distinct advantage in my second career and was absolutely essential to getting the whole CSOC acquisition on track. This was an enormous task, bringing together the Army Corps of Engineers, NASA, the Air Force, the Army and Navy and the State of Colorado. I recall a visit to the site when it was simply a deep gouge in the Colorado soil east of Colorado Springs and then later at its commemoration as part of the Space Wing of the USAF.

On a number of occasions I accompanied Brig. Gen Don Kutyna on TDYs out to the site which involved stopping at several junk yards on the road out of town so he could scavenge parts for an Opel he was restoring. I think he brought along his own tools to do the dismantling of the wrecked Opels he found. He, Bill Stanfill and I were probably the only three Air Force fighter pilots wearing both Command Pilot wings and the Senior Space badge. Somewhere I have a picture of us together at some function in Colorado Springs.

CSOC was also designed to accommodate the ground control function for Space Shuttle polar orbital missions through what was then known as the Shuttle Operations and Planning Center or SOPC. The Challenger disaster and the subsequent dismantling of Space Launch Complex 6 at Vandenburg put this function out of business.

DIA, Attache Training and the Foreign Service Institute (1986 - 1987)

It was at a casual gathering in Manitou Springs on a TDY to the CSOC that our SPO director, Col. Pete Wilkinson announced that I had been promoted to Colonel. I remember Fred Gregory being there at LA Air Force Station when Forrest McCartney and Susan pinned on the eagles. Our two girls were enthralled at meeting Fred. Fred seemed to make it a point to be at functions where our classmates were honored. He was also at my retirement ceremony at the Pentagon as well.

Air Attache, American Embassy, Tokyo, Japan (1988 - 1991)

Shortly afterward, the Colonels Group started pestering me to take the State Department's Language Aptitude Test because there was an upcoming vacancy in the Defense Attache Office in Tokyo and I had Japanese experience. Both Susan and I took the test and I somehow passed and, in short order, we were flown out to Washington to interview for the job. Susan had just hurt her knee and getting around the Pentagon was difficult for her but she got through the interview process with flying colors.

Truth be told, DIA was more interested in Susan than they were in me. Her experience living overseas in the Ivory Coast in another culture and her willingness to entertain on an international scale were probably the factors that appealed most to the evaluators. Next thing we knew, we were assigned to DIA at Bolling AFB and enrolled in Attache training and the State Department's Japanese Language classes at the Foreign Service Institute, which was then in downtown Rosslyn, VA.

Language training was brutal. Japanese is classified by the State Department as a "Hard Language". The instructors were all native speakers, somewhat older than the students, and committed to making one learn to speak, read and write this 'Devil's Tongue' or else. Or else what? As an officer, failure to pass was disastrous. You were sent off to some god-forsaken assignment with your tail between your legs, if you were lucky enough to still have your tail intact. Plus, we were in classes with 20-something Foreign Service Officers who were selected for this assignment because they had strong language aptitude and were from some Ivy League school their fathers went to. Plus, we were simply temporary interlopers into the rarefied world of the Department of State and all of its diplomatic BS. I got my first taste of this when I heard how they pronounce the word 'negotiation'. To them, it's 'negosiation', I guess like the Brits say it or something. Very, very supercilious. At any rate, the military guys, and their wives generally did a lot better than the State Department pukes, not through aptitude but through relentless hard work.

An Attache (and especially his wife) is an Intelligence collector, albeit declared, but an intelligence officer nonetheless. We are tasked to gather certain desired items of intelligence of interest to the DIA and others. We do this through a variety of means but mostly through elicitation of information from foreign nationals who are highly placed and in possession of the information we seek. Thus the language requirement. We were helped immensely in this regard by the Army attache Lee Smith, and his wife Trish. Lee was an army Foreign Area Specialist and had fabulous Japanese Language capability. They kept us going when things looked bleak and our worn out brains simply could not absorb anything else.

FSI Yokohama, Japan (1988)

The torture and humiliation at Rosslyn was followed by a stint at the FSI facility in Yokohama, where we were immersed in the language and the Japanese culture. Susan and I were assigned to a small house at Negishi at about the same time the new Navy installation commander was to show up. He was concerned that I was going to get a bigger house than he was and I was an Air Force officer. I told the housing office to give him the big house, it was just Susan and I and I was going to be studying all the time so I didn't need anything special. So, we wound up being neighbors of Commander Tom Eldridge and his wife Sylvie. Tom was on the staff at Yokosuka and vying for 'Yard of the Week' at Yokohama, apparently a career enhancing necessity in this command.

Unfortunately, Tom's new next door neighbor was this Air Force puke who didn't care how his yard looked. Tom took me under his wing and showed me how to grow the greenest grass with the fewest weeds in all of Yokohama. We are great friends of the Eldgridges to this day.

The final exam in Japanese was one of the strangest and most hair raising academic experiences in my life. It was an oral exam conducted by the Deputy Director of the FSI Yokohama Language School. I had some idea of the exam format and prepared accordingly but my preparation was poorly targeted. The Japanese economy is complex and heavily affected by their Industrial Policy. I was trying to better understand this, as well as their foreign and military policies so I read mostly in those areas. In the exam room on the table before me were four Japanese newspapers opened to a random page. As I looked them over, none were from the Nihon Keizai Shimbun, the Wall Street Journal of Japan, which I had been reading for months. Instead, Sensei-san pointed to an article on a local political campaign and asked me to read it and, in 15 minutes, prepare him a briefing, After my briefing, we would discuss the details and get some questions answered. I couldn't determine the pronunciation of the name of the lead candidate so, my plan was somehow to casually elicit that from Sensei-san. I was able to get out a high level briefing on the campaign and during the discussion following tried to fill in the missing name but Sensei-san was cagey and knew what I was up to. I was really apprehensive about passing this thing and finally wound up with a "Speak 3, Read 3" Professional level Japanese qualification. Sensei-san kept a bottle of Suntory in his desk drawer and we had a little drink afterward. The ability to speak and read Japanese opened up countless opportunities.

Posting at American Embassy, Tokyo, Japan

I served as the Air Attache for both Ambassador Mike Mansfield and Mike Armacost. Mansfield didn't much care for us military folk whereas Mike Armacost and his wife Bonnie really included us and our wives into virtually all of the embassy functions. I had a good relationship with General J.B, Davis at 5th Air Force so I could get Ambassador Armacost a helo pretty much on demand. He traveled all over the country, something Mansfield didn't do, so maybe he saw a benefit in having a good relationship with his military guys for transportation reasons.

There were lots of intel collecting opportunities and significant events while we were in Japan but one situation gave me the most satisfaction. President Bush (41) was to attend Emperor Hirohito's funeral. Normally, all helo operations were done out of the pad at Hardy Barracks, near the embassy compound. Our intel people had gotten information that the Japanese Red Army (JRA) was staking out buildings and taking precise distance and angle measurements all around Hardy Barracks in the days prior to the president's visit. With this in mind, I contacted the Marine Lt. Col. incharge of Marine 2, and suggested that after they got the helos flyable, he meet with me at the grassy open area next to Grew Tower in the embassy staff housing complex. I told him that this might be a good pad and ramp facility for the helos during the upcoming state funeral. I knew the rotor arcs and dimensions of the machines but getting them in and out of the space might be a problem. I asked that the area be cleared of people, we met at the site, and the Marine commander had a helo sent over from Hardy barracks to do an approach that he personally guided in. By backing the helos over the grass and up against a wall, we could get all three of them in! It was January so it was a bit cold out. In the evening, the embassy staff residents came out with hot coffee and cookies and lots of kids got to have their picture taken sitting in Marine 2. I like to think that we seriously interrupted the JRA guys plans but we got no feedback on what they ultimately did. No incidents occurred during the president's visit.

Regional Plans and Policies, The Pentagon (1991 - 1992)

From AMEMB Tokyo, we returned to Virginia and to the Pentagon courtesy of Brigadier General Bob Mitchell (with whom I had worked at LAAFS in the AFSCF) as the Assistant Deputy Director for Regional Plans and Policy.

I decided it was time for retirement from the military and time to join the civilian workforce, settle down in Virginia as our retirement spot and start looking for a job.

Program Management Support to NOAA and DOE (1992 - 1996)

My DSMC experience was key to joining a small Program Management firm supporting satellite operations at NOAA. NOAA was running a kind of hobby shop for satellites with no cost or schedule control. I wrote proposals and we won several Program Management contracts with NOAA while discovering that I had a talent for discovering and obtaining new business and finding the right people to staff these new positions. The field of Knowledge Management was expanding and I wanted to attend George Mason University for a degree so, in order to sequence that, I left the firm, did an Italian Sabbatical in Umbria and later used the GI bill for an MS from Geoprge Mason.

Computer Science Corporation (1996 -2014)

Armed with this new degree, I interviewed at Computer Sciences Corporation. The interviewers seemed more interested in what we did in Umbria than what I learned at George Mason. Gerry Gustafson took a risk and hired me as a casual employee to analyze their KM systems and potential applications to corporate objectives.

With the KM background I Joined a proposal team run by Dr. John Rose and Len Osborn for the development of a virtual classroom capability supporting Defense Acquisition University. I Wrote the KM portion of the proposal and, along with Len, delivered the oral presentation to the Source Selection Board at Defense Acquisition University. We ultimately won the job and deployed the web based learning and certification system in use today.

Leading CSC's Defense Business in Europe, EUCOM, CINCEUR, AFRICOM, and the Marshall Center (2005 -2010)

Marco Devito, my boss at Computer Sciences Corporation, asked me to consider taking the job leading CSC's defense business in Europe. The incumbent was retired in place and hardly ever seen by his employees. Morale was low and the relationship with our customers in Europe was sub-standard. I told him I was interested so Marco Sent Susan and me to Stuttgart to look over the situation and decide whether it was something I really wanted to do.

Susan was at the height of her real estate career at the time, had a lot of clients and was doing very well so, there was a financial component to our decision. Ultimately, since I had never had an assignment in Europe with the Air Force, we decided to take the job even though we didn't want to go through another move and what I perceived to be was a disastrous business operation.

The European office was a mess, documentation was missing, a fired employee had run off with the financial records and disappeared, one of the government contracting officers seemed to have a prejudicial outlook on one of our program managers, and the government wanted to completely eliminate any CSC leadership in Germany. I had to fly over twice before taking the job to convince the government that there was distinct value added in having me there. That took several sessions of meetings over several months.

I took the job, threw out about 2 tons of outdated equipment and files, got a tech refresh from the home office, relocated the Stuttgart offices closer to EUCOM headquarters at Patch Barracks, and grew the business in Europe significantly. Our primary business employed about 250 people but as time went on, I took on administrative responsibility for about another 300 employees that were assigned to Europe but without any local advocacy or support from CSC. We brought them into the fold and included all of these people into CSC activities. The customers liked the fact that they could make a call in the European time zone to have issues dealt with or to ensure a standout CSC employee got the appreciation from the company that they deserved. I was also able to expand our IT support to the newly created and established AFRICOM. In the process I got to know Kip Ward, Chuck Wald, Tom Verbeck, Yancy Linsey and Dick and Ros Gallagher.

Finding our German Relatives in Esslingen, DE

One amazing outcome of our stay in Germany was that I was able to locate our German relatives! It took quite a bit of effort, since the Germans completely restrict distribution of personal data to only direct line relatives, but Susan and cousin Helen Comer found a way to get around this little bureaucratic restriction. We found Hans Maier and his wife Waltraud living about a kilometer from us in Esslingen, where I had rented a house! Since then we have had many very enjoyable meetings and family reunions. I was able to locate my grandfather and great grandfather's house in the little village of Munster, across the Neckar river from Bad Cannstatt. The house is now a Gasttatte, a little restaurant, and during one reunion, we all gathered there for a family picture.

Now Retired, traveling, and Enjoying our GrandDaughters, Oakton, Virginia (2014 - ????)

For anything that I may have accomplished over the years, I have deep indebtedness to my 64 classmates like Dan Trial, Doc Fargurson, Bob Dempsey, Karl Richter, Jerry Zionic, Wally Wolniewicz, Steve Mayo, John Denko, Fred Gregory, Jeff Levy, Al Larson, and many more for their always ready help, support and, primarily, inspiration. I wouldn't have lasted a week at USAFA in the summer of 1960 without these guys!


Capt. Karl Widmayer and Phantom in Revetment




Col. Widmayer and Family enroute to Tokyo



In Grandfather's House in Munster, DE

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