Aviation Remedy Started Lengthy Earlier than I Ever Thought to Give it a Identify
I’ve been a pilot since I used to be 16 years outdated, taking my first flight at Weiser Air Park in northwest Houston in June 1978. In 1984, I started a 20-year flying profession for the US Air Power. Since retiring in July 2004, I’ve been an airline pilot with Southwest Airways.
Lots of people ask what we do up within the cockpit throughout flight. They assume we’re as busy flying the aircraft as you’ll be driving your automobile down the freeway. The reality is, we normally solely hand-fly the primary and final three minutes of a flight, usually beneath 2,000 to five,000 ft. The remainder of the time is spent programming and managing the autopilot to do many of the clean flying, so we spend a whole lot of time speaking.
We share tales of our household, our previous, our flying within the navy, or our backgrounds in civilian aviation. I’m lucky to have executed a little bit little bit of every little thing in aviation, from getting my personal license in small Piper Cherokees, flying a cling glider over Central Texas, navigating a B-52 bomber, after which flying the Air Power’s heavy KC-10 air refueling tankers, and the elegant Gulfstream G-IIIs and G-Vs.
One week after my navy retirement, I started flying Boeing 737s for Southwest. My diversified background has allowed me to share tales with a various group of fellow aviators, from deployments with navy pilots, cargo flights with freight pilots, to carrying VIPs on government jets with company pilots.
The Spark to Inform My Story
I flew throughout quite a few historic world occasions, from the Chilly Battle to the invasion of Panama, Operation Desert Storm over Iraq, the Bosnian Battle within the mid-Nineties, and the occasions throughout and after September 11, 2001. This guide is an aviation memoir of my intersections with historical past. These are my often-told flying tales from 1978 to 2004.
The undertaking started in October 2021, once I was on trip with my spouse, my brother, and his spouse. We had been having drinks within the bar, and I advised my story of flying the US Military Rangers into Mogadishu, Somalia, within the Nineties. These troopers would change into concerned within the incident of Black Hawk Down.
The day we dropped off the troops, the airfield got here underneath mortar assault by the Somali rebels, and the UN troopers from Romania returned mortar fireplace into the encircling hills. I used to be the commander of a 500,000-pound KC-10, a navy model of the DC-10, and it doesn’t go wherever quick.
With a thunderstorm closing in from our left and black smoke on our proper, we took off in a rush. After I completed telling this often-told “battle story,” my brother stated, “I didn’t know you had been over there.” That’s when the lightbulb went off that I wanted to write down my tales down, and Mogadishu was the primary story I wrote.
Discovering Aviation Remedy
My self-published memoir, Prepared For Takeoff – Tales from an Air Power Pilot, was an awesome undertaking, and I actually loved reliving the recollections from the pages of my logbook and reconnecting with lifelong mates. I primarily felt like I used to be writing “our tales” and never my tales.
After finishing the primary draft, I despatched varied chapters out to mates concerned in these chapters. I advised them that I didn’t need the guide to come back out and for our mates to say, “That’s BS. It didn’t occur that approach.”
I heard again from many Air Power mates that I knew from 1984 to 2004. Some advised me particulars I both didn’t know or had forgotten, however I gave them credit score for his or her recollections. One among my copilots was thrilled to know that his title could be in a guide. One other stated his mother all the time advised him he ought to write down his tales, so he gave her my guide and advised her, “Right here you go!”
The train of writing has additionally been enlightening, as the method unfolded. In my autobiographical Chapter 1, I inform about my little sister elevating not one, however two horses when she was a shy teenager. I believed that she loved equine remedy at its most interesting. Then it dawned on me: I gained self-confidence and got here out of my shell due to aviation. I benefited from Aviation Remedy.
From Self-Publishing to the Large Stage
As soon as my self-published guide, Prepared For Takeoff, was full in November 2022, I despatched it out to quite a few periodicals, each aviation magazines {and professional} journals, for his or her overview. My best disappointment got here when Air & House Quarterly (of the Air and House Smithsonian Museum) stated their insurance policies prevented them from reviewing or selling self-published materials, which had not been vetted by a writer. I used to be decided at that time to get my story printed.
In a stroke of luck, on a European River Cruise in April 2023, I met an creator, Yi Shun Lai, a novelist from California. We later learn one another’s books, and Yi Shun stated she might inform from my first guide that there was an undercurrent of perseverance and private development all through my story. She then inspired me to rewrite my manuscript and be part of her in November 2023 at a Author’s Convention in Kansas Metropolis.
There, I met Christine Wolf, an editor from Chicago who makes a speciality of memoirs and non-fiction, however she knew nothing about aviation or the navy. She cherished the manuscript and my tales. After her first learn, she advised me she was unhappy when she got here to the final chapter as a result of she didn’t need it to finish.
Aviation Remedy: A Story of Perseverance
After answering her probing questions on what pilots suppose and what our households endured, the newly bolstered guide was shopped to varied publishers, each in Texas and the northeast. My guide was picked up in August 2024 by Stoney Creek Publishing, a division of Texas A&M Press. (No small feat for this Texas Longhorn!).
The writer advised me there are two launch cycles for books: Spring and Fall, and that their plate for Spring 2025 Releases was full. After 15 months, Aviation Remedy — Tales of Perseverance and Private Progress is now prepared for buy in paperback, e-book, and audio, which I recorded at Austin Audio Lab.
Air and House Quarterly loved the brand new synopsis of the printed guide and wrote to me in September 2025 to say they’d not solely overview it but in addition function it within the upcoming Winter difficulty (January 2026), which would come with an in-depth interview with me. Even the writing of this second memoir has been a narrative of perseverance.
My aviation tales will attraction to a variety of readers, from anybody fascinated by an aviation profession to navy historical past fans.
Uncover Aviation Remedy: Tales of Perseverance and Private Progress from the Cockpit—now accessible in paperback, Kindle, and audiobook on Amazon.
