BITING THE DUST, CRASHING AND BURNING, BUYING THE FARM

Remembering one of my best friends in Alaska who "bought the farm" thirty years ago today.  Appreciate knowing that he is with all my other friends and loved ones who are already back home.  These are a few memories of him --

 -- Meeting him the basement of the O Club on Elmendorf AFB . . . the first reason my heart went out to him was because he had just found out that his son's mother had allowed another man to adopt his son.  Had to hurt, but he still said he believed it was best for his son.

-- Watching him race down the hall of the squadron offices yelling that he was headed out "to be somebody" when he was on call and got tapped to respond to a battle scenario in an exercise.

-- Hearing a knock at the door of our quarters, asking who it was, and Ben answering, "Santa Claus," as he walked in the door.

--  Seeing the sheepish faces of him and Mark, another F-15 pilot when they had taken my 11 year old son up to the expert slope at Mount Alyeska Ski Resort.  Tommy was as white as a ghost and looked terrified, but a few minutes later he was headed out the door with the two of them again . . . and back down the mountain lickety-split.  No doubt it was all good training for the time that Tom became a US Marine.

-- Ben and two other pilots in their flight suits after the Elmendorf O Club had closed in a bar outside one of the main gates . . . a log cabin with big rocks on the roof . . . tall grass and flowers grew on it in the summer.  There was a ZZ Tops hit on the juke box and they were playing air guitars.  Somehow you could almost see the long beards draped over their flight suits.

-- Seeing Ben right before he went to fly that last time.  He was selected to be the pilot of a special flight in one of our two-seaters . . . a reward for an enlisted man who had done a good job.  Less than an hour later the aircraft and they were in little pieces on the side of the mountain.  Aircraft malfunction.

-- A fighter pilot wake . . . a memorial service at the base chapel . . . a Missing Man Formation fly-by outside the chapel with F-15s, of course . . . a reception back at the squadron and all sorts of stories . . . how he got his tactical call sign (he had a Harly and so of course he was "Biker"  . . . that he had ridden his Harley up from South Dakota to Alaska after visiting the Hell's Angels Summer Encampment in the Badlands . . . that he was one of the oldest Zoomies ever to have graduated at the Air Force Academy because he had been enlisted . . . that when he first met his biker chick girl friend when she was wait staff at the O Club Bar, he knew she was right for him because she had the identical leather biker jacket that he had -- long fringes and silver studs in all the right places. . . that he came after we had already had two crashes and I told all the new guys I didn't want to get to know them very well because it was too hard when we lost them. . . the way he was our host when we visited an intell girl he knew at the base where we exercised on the Florida panhandle less than a week before he crashed and burned.

It got so that whenever we heard the jets returning from their air combat training missions, we would be afraid to look and make sure that the four-ship that had gone out was not now a two-ship.  And when we heard the helicopters of the rescue squadron taking off, even if we were pretty sure they were just going on a normal everyday training mission, we still shivered a bit.  And prayed.

Thanks, Lord, for Ben.  Looking forward to seeing you again, good buddy.