Countdown in General

Countdown

I was on the way home from the store when Evel came up with this one.

The markers of our life. The “Where were you when?”

I was a kid when the space shuttle Enterprise, the test bed for the program rolled out. I read about it in the base newspaper. Kincheloe AFB, on the upper peninsula of Michigan.

Years later, as an avionics technician at Nellis AFB in Las Vegas, I received a phone call from a friend who told me the Challenger had exploded. I thought he was joking.

Fast forward. One of my department heads in my first squadron during the early 90s was Willie McCool. When he checked into the squadron I was the assistant operations officer. One of my responsibilities was to track everyones qualifications and flight time. His log books were a mess. He had spent four years in test pilot school with a follow on assignment at the Naval Air Systems command.

It took me a week to unfuck his log books. The guy had flown everything with wings.

In early 2003 most of the EA-6B community received an email, composed on the Columbia while Willie was sitting in the mission commander seat. He described what it was like to be in orbit. The colors, the sensations.

Unfortunately that email disappeared with my .navy.mil email account.

He was killed when the Columbia came apart on reentry over Texas, February 1st, 2003.

Last updated June 03, 2017