June 8th -- Wiggle Wings to Jungle Raisins
Up at 0600 to get to the auditorium by 7, check out the mikes, make sure the slide shows were working, doing my thing. Around 7:30, I went upstairs to the Commandant's office and miked up the first three speakers so I wouldn't have to scramble to find them between breaks. Two I had seen the night before at the Mansion, and Gen Jumper (ret) I knew from our accidental encounter at the Pentagon. Plus me using him in quotes in a bunch of my lessons. I'm sure he didn't mind.
Col Halverson was first -- he was one of the pilots who delivered goods to the folks in West Berlin after WWII, and became known as The Candy Bomber after he met with some children, gave them his only two sticks of gum, saw how they reacted (tearing them into fifteen small pieces and distributing amongst themselves), and began secretly dropping candy on small parachutes during his delivery runs. Word got out back home and American schools and candy companies joined together to make tons of parachute packages for the children. He'd get letters from kids ("I'm too short to reach above my friends, so please drop candy at the following address next time...") and adults later in life, who told him that the chocolate bar meant more than food, it was a symbol of hope, that someone out there still cared about them and their freedom. Fantastic story.
Gen Jumper was pretty funny, and gave a good speech -- I had never heard him talk before -- though a classmate said he'd heard different parts of that same speech a half-dozen times already.
Maj Tom Griffin was a navigator on plane #9 that took off from the USS Hornet during Doolittle's Raid on Japan in retaliation for Pearl Harbor. He poked fun at Halverson, calling him a punk kid at 86, and that he (Griffin) had four years on him, so he was going to sit down during his retelling of a marvelous story of redemption and survival in China.
A quick greek lunch in my sturdy tents, then I had to go mike up the afternoon players -- Florene Miller-Watson, another 86-year-young member of the Women's Air Service Pilots, who kept touching my chest and upper arms while talking to me, the scamp; Homer Hickam, author of "Rocket Boys" (and Vietnam Vet); and Brig Gen Olds, who is our nation's only Fighter Ace from two non-consecutive wars (WWII and Vietnam). Gen Olds didn't wear a tie, so I had to clip his mike to his coat collar, which kept rubbing against his shirt and pissing him off. And when he stood up from his chair, his big belly pushed the remote receiver off his belt and the whole unit came crashing down to the floor. I quickly retrieved it from my second-row vantage point and quietly hoped the next day's speakers would wear ties. Those are easy, uh, clip-ons, if you will.
That night was our graduation banquet, with the WBLS lecturers as our guests of honor, naturally, so everyone had to change into their monkey suits. Which suited the salad just fine, let me tell you, pile of tree leaves and sad nuts and dates and yellow raisins that it was. "Don't you want your salad?" Meg asked. "I'd LOVE a salad. THIS, on the other hand..." So I just held my friends' 3-month-old daughter and let them eat before joining the buffet. A fifty-piece AF band played some great songs after dinner, with a rolling slideshow in the background showing some reminiscent moments from our time at AFIT (I had snuck a picture of Ryan and me in there, so I got to point him out to everyone).
Still, these things are no fun without my wife, so I scooted out first chance I had. Second late night in a row after an early morning, and one last WBLS day to go.
Col Halverson was first -- he was one of the pilots who delivered goods to the folks in West Berlin after WWII, and became known as The Candy Bomber after he met with some children, gave them his only two sticks of gum, saw how they reacted (tearing them into fifteen small pieces and distributing amongst themselves), and began secretly dropping candy on small parachutes during his delivery runs. Word got out back home and American schools and candy companies joined together to make tons of parachute packages for the children. He'd get letters from kids ("I'm too short to reach above my friends, so please drop candy at the following address next time...") and adults later in life, who told him that the chocolate bar meant more than food, it was a symbol of hope, that someone out there still cared about them and their freedom. Fantastic story.
Gen Jumper was pretty funny, and gave a good speech -- I had never heard him talk before -- though a classmate said he'd heard different parts of that same speech a half-dozen times already.
Maj Tom Griffin was a navigator on plane #9 that took off from the USS Hornet during Doolittle's Raid on Japan in retaliation for Pearl Harbor. He poked fun at Halverson, calling him a punk kid at 86, and that he (Griffin) had four years on him, so he was going to sit down during his retelling of a marvelous story of redemption and survival in China.
A quick greek lunch in my sturdy tents, then I had to go mike up the afternoon players -- Florene Miller-Watson, another 86-year-young member of the Women's Air Service Pilots, who kept touching my chest and upper arms while talking to me, the scamp; Homer Hickam, author of "Rocket Boys" (and Vietnam Vet); and Brig Gen Olds, who is our nation's only Fighter Ace from two non-consecutive wars (WWII and Vietnam). Gen Olds didn't wear a tie, so I had to clip his mike to his coat collar, which kept rubbing against his shirt and pissing him off. And when he stood up from his chair, his big belly pushed the remote receiver off his belt and the whole unit came crashing down to the floor. I quickly retrieved it from my second-row vantage point and quietly hoped the next day's speakers would wear ties. Those are easy, uh, clip-ons, if you will.
That night was our graduation banquet, with the WBLS lecturers as our guests of honor, naturally, so everyone had to change into their monkey suits. Which suited the salad just fine, let me tell you, pile of tree leaves and sad nuts and dates and yellow raisins that it was. "Don't you want your salad?" Meg asked. "I'd LOVE a salad. THIS, on the other hand..." So I just held my friends' 3-month-old daughter and let them eat before joining the buffet. A fifty-piece AF band played some great songs after dinner, with a rolling slideshow in the background showing some reminiscent moments from our time at AFIT (I had snuck a picture of Ryan and me in there, so I got to point him out to everyone).
Still, these things are no fun without my wife, so I scooted out first chance I had. Second late night in a row after an early morning, and one last WBLS day to go.
posted by Dan at 10:00 PM
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