Reflections of An Uncommon Common Man

  Sometime in November, or December 1986 Misty was supposed to go to an all night skate party in Smyrna. We let her go thinking that she would stay in the building all night and it was supposed to be chaperoned so we thought that it would be okay. I had a rule that my kids could not car date until they were sixteen. She was fourteen and seeing an older boy named Marshall. He was coming over to our house to see her on a fairly regular basis. The morning after the skating party Debbie told me that she had discovered that Misty had left the skating party with Marshall and had gone over to his house. I never whipped Misty more than a couple of times in her life but I was very angry at her over this. Although she was fourteen I thought that she needed a whipping and I gave her one with my belt. Debbie was normally at home with our kids when they were growing up but during the 1980's after I lost my job at Colonial. It became necessary, however; for her to work in order to help out with ...

    We had a C-130 that had a throttle cable snap while doing "touch and go's" at Ft. Campbell in 1986. The plane crashed while landing and killed the pilot, navigator, and load master. Two crewmen survived. One was the co-pilot who only had minor burns on his face because he was able to run out through the rear of the plane and away from the flames. The other four were engulfed in flames and the one crewman who survived the flames underwent months of treatment at Brook Army Burn Center in San Antonio Texas. I was the chapel song leader and honored when they asked me to lead the singing at the memorial for the three men who had died. The only problem was that they asked me to prepare two songs that I had never heard of in my life and I can't read music. The songs were Our God of Ages Past and My Faith Looks Up To Thee.  Our God of Ages Past was the opening song and for some reason no matter how much I practiced I could not get that song in my head. All four local tele...

Ezekiel 33:11 - Say to them, "As I Live" says the Lord God. I take no pleasure in the destruction of the wicked, but rather that the wicked turn from his way and live!  This is the prayer that I pray everyday in regards to the enemies of our country. I don't rejoice when they die in their sin. I don't dance on their grave the way the Communists and "useful idiots danced on the grave of Charlie Kirk. I hope that Jesse Jackson was right with God when he drew his last breath. His life, however; was spent as a charlatan and race hustler who became a millionaire setting race relations back in this country for many years. Along with his race hustling buddies Al Sharpton, Louis Farakhan and Barack Obama. I pray that they will repent and live while there is still time. Martin Luther King asked us to judge a man by the content of his character. Based on that admonition Jesse Jackson comes up short.

  I knew from the start that we wouldn't be Flight Chiefs very long. because we were only filling in until the new SSgt's arrived. About one month after we arrived at Erhac the two new E-5's arrived and I was bumped down to assistant Flight Chief. I became assistant to a Flight Chief who happened to be black. He wasn't very talkative and I just reasoned that this was just his normal disposition. He was one of the two E-5's that were already there when we arrived. I tried to establish a rapport with him but he would not talk to me unless it had to do with work and it was short and to the point. Ours was a very chilly relationship from the start. He would post me in the alert area every night and I was never posted at the storage area, which was a better post. Then I began to notice that my name was last on the duty roster and as assistant I should have been listed second behind the flight chiefs name. Everyone else was listed by their rank but my name was just Segrov...

We got off of a midnight shift on a Saturday morning and boarded one of our C-130's bound for Upper Heyford Royal Air Force Base in Oxfordshire England. After landing we changed out of our uniforms and hailed some taxis that took us on a scary ride down winding back country roads. Doing this on the left side of the road instead of the right as Americans are used to was very frightening. Our destination was a railroad station where we boarded a train that took us through the beautiful English countryside. After arriving in London we walked all over trying to find the tourist sites such as Buckingham Palace, the Tower of London, Tower Bridge, and Big Ben. We rode on the tube, or underground which is the London subway. Much of the subway was the same subway used as bomb shelters during the London Blitz. After a steep climb we ended up at Picadilly Circus. This was a whirlwind trip in which we were trying to pack a lot into a couple of days. We wasted a lot of time looking for these pl...

  In the late Spring of 1985 our whole Air Guard unit took part in a NATO exercise called Volant Partner. All of our C-130's were loaded down with personnel and equipment for the long flight to a search and rescue base on the coast of Belgium called Koksijde. This was a Belgian Air Force base that had been built by the German Luftwaffe in WW2. The base reminded me of a WW2 movie set with German bunkers and perimeter fencing from that era. It was also where Belgian Air Force cadets took their basic training. The base was in a very historic area. The town of Ypres was nearby, where several great WW1 battles were fought and Koksijde was only about five miles from Dunkirk. The medieval town of Bruges was nearby and Bruges was not only beautiful, it is the lace capital of the world.   I was excited about going to such a historic area of Europe but I was beset by a strange premonition before I left. Flying is always something that makes me nervous but in this case I was more af...