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Transcript

My Leading Edge Episode 149 · So There I Was

• 0:00
  Quiet, numbskulls. I'm broadcasting. Hello, you're listening to the podcast, So There I Was.
• 0:05
  This is episode number 149, My Leading Edge.
• 0:10
  Nice. A great tribute to these two pilots, one's father and one's grandfather.
• 0:17
  We've got two generations of Army attack pilots.
• 0:21
  Isn't that something? Yeah. Let's start with a big thanks to HSI Wealth Strategies, Robbie Walling.
• 0:28
  We appreciate your support give robbie a call if you'd like to uh retire comfortably
• 0:34
  right exactly i mean don't don't go off course don't crash land short of the runway,
• 0:41
  get to your retirement goals and don't think you're smart enough to do it yourself
• 0:46
  either right because because you're not you're pilots well he's a pilot too
• 0:51
  and they are pilots but they specialize in this now so this is what they do
• 0:56
  how many guys do you know manage it themselves and screw it up.
• 1:00
  Don't screw it up. Not good. Yeah.
• 1:03
  Thanks also to Every Plate. They sponsored us this week, a new sponsor.
• 1:08
  I really love their food. And I asked my wife, I said, what do you like most about it?
• 1:13
  She said, the recipes were much easier to prepare than she expected.
• 1:16
  So outstanding food, easy preparation, and great prices.
• 1:21
  So everyplate.com slash podcast and use the code STIW50,
• 1:29
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• 1:35
  And thanks to our supporters, right, Fig?
• 1:37
  Oh, my gosh. Our pilot supporters, we are so humbled and appreciate your support.
• 1:43
  They have almost, what, tripled what it costs to record the podcast now?
• 1:48
  Yeah. They're streaming, sir.
• 1:49
  Yeah. Your report makes all the difference in the world. We can cover it this
• 1:54
  year because of your generosity.
• 1:55
  Hey, let's get back to the show.
• 1:57
  Good show this week. Two pilots on again. So that's two weeks in a row with two pilots.
• 2:03
  This time, two Army attack pilots a generation apart. Father and son.
• 2:08
  Father and son. Pretty unique situation. The father grew up in Plains,
• 2:15
  Georgia, which happened to be a hometown of a very significant other person in history.
• 2:22
  And that was President Jimmy Carter. Yeah, who administered his oath of office. How cool is that?
• 2:28
  They were neighbors. Yeah, and his dad was friends with Jimmy. So, President Carter.
• 2:35
  Met his wife there. Wasn't too interested in school and all that.
• 2:38
  Didn't know what he wanted to do with his life, except that,
• 2:40
  you know, he wanted to farm.
• 2:42
  And then he got off to school and went, oh.
• 2:45
  You know what? I like flying, too. I saw helicopters bringing the president
• 2:50
  in and out of town, and that looked pretty cool. And the next thing you knew, he had the flying bug.
• 2:55
  And then he was off to the races with a purpose. Absolutely.
• 2:59
  Good story about that. Yep. And where he opened the show, right?
• 3:04
  Yeah, the show opener is an attention getter, like they all are. Right.
• 3:09
  I don't want to run it, but he was in a precarious situation.
• 3:13
  Let's just leave it at that. Yeah.
• 3:15
  And talk about, hey, one thing we occasionally talk about on the show is compartmentalization, right?
• 3:20
  And man, if you ever had to compartmentalize, this was it.
• 3:24
  A couple other good stories. One is actually we reserved for our Patreon and
• 3:29
  financial supporters only is something that happened. But it has to do with
• 3:33
  the fact that we did have father and son on board.
• 3:36
  So that was pretty neat. The fact that they're both Army attack helicopter pilots
• 3:41
  flying different generation aircraft. Yeah.
• 3:44
  There's several very unique parts to this story. Yeah. And I don't want to run it.
• 3:50
  No. But it's very unique, historically unique. But the coffee cadet is now a
• 3:55
  captain in the Army. Oof.
• 3:58
  Right? Yes. Yeah, got his first ride with his dad in a Cobra at,
• 4:03
  I think he said, 12 years old.
• 4:05
  Making it all by itself, right? Yeah, not many 12-year-olds get to ride in a Cobra helicopter.
• 4:11
  That is cool. The other part of this show is the book, and it's My Leaning Edge,
• 4:16
  which is how he refers to his father.
• 4:19
  It's a dedication to his father and the faith that he was brought up in,
• 4:23
  and really fascinating to see how he put it all together related to flying.
• 4:28
  Yeah, it's actually tied in very nicely and neat, and it makes a lot of sense when he explains it.
• 4:34
  The book's an easy read, lots of pages with pictures in it for us Marines.
• 4:38
  Nice pictures. And a good read, and much of it deals with an incredibly helpless
• 4:45
  feeling that was foisted upon
• 4:46
  both Jeff and his bride as they faced the health challenges for a child.
• 4:52
  That they were not sure of the outcome on the front end of that.
• 4:56
  It does have a happy ending, and he talks about that in the story and in the book or in the show.
• 5:01
  But dang, I think we've talked long enough anyway. What about you?
• 5:08
  Let's get out of the way and let it rip. Let's do it. Don't sit on the collection.
• 5:13
  It's a true story. Don't sit on the collection. About crossing the pond at night
• 5:18
  in the world's smallest cockpit on the tanker through the weather.
• 5:26
  Oh, and to the tanker crew who did that. Excellent.
• 5:30
  Music.
• 5:49
  So there I was, sitting on the Iraqi border and helpless to aid my family.
• 5:54
  This is how difficult military service can be for families in a way that most
• 5:58
  civilians don't understand.
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  I had a powerless feeling that is difficult to describe.
• 6:03
  There was no such thing as a satellite phone, so I couldn't call or text Camille.
• 6:08
  I had a duty as a soldier and a pilot to fight for my country,
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  but also had a duty as a husband and a father to fight for my family and protect them.
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  I was in a war, and there was nothing else I could do but do my job and pray.
• 6:26
  Boom! Hey, what chapter was that from?
• 6:30
  That's pretty early on. That's, I believe, in chapter three.
• 6:34
  So that is how we're starting.
• 6:37
  So there I was today, and this is Fig. I am lucky enough to be at home for like 25 hours.
• 6:45
  Where's my co-horse? I'm home as well in New Hampshire. Repeat here.
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  And that was none other than Jeff Moss, author of My Leading Edge.
• 6:56
  We're blessed enough to be joined by Jeff and his progeny.
• 7:03
  How's that go? Now I may have missed the word, but I tried to sound smart.
• 7:07
  His son, Jay, who is also an Army attack helicopter pilot.
• 7:13
  And wow, gents, we are thrilled to have you with us. Jeff, where are you?
• 7:18
  I am in Southport, North Carolina. Nice. And how about you, Jay? Mableton, Georgia.
• 7:24
  Nice. All right. Well, welcome to you both. That was fantastic.
• 7:30
  Folks, I read this book, My Leading Edge, and...
• 7:36
  I don't remember the number of pages off the top of my head.
• 7:39
  I think it's in the 140, 150 page range, something like that, right, Jeff?
• 7:43
  It's an easy read. That's right. That's right. There are 30 pages of pictures,
• 7:46
  so it's a pretty easy read, even for Marines.
• 7:50
  Yeah, easy, even for Marines. I really like the pictures. Thank you. The pictures are great.
• 7:54
  Picture book is good for us. But, man, let me tell you, if you want a story
• 7:59
  of what it's like to grow up and find yourself going, Maybe I'd like to look
• 8:04
  at this military thing and then see what challenges are.
• 8:10
  These challenges hit every family, but more so, obviously, to military families.
• 8:16
  It's a story of hope, of challenges, of heart-wrenching.
• 8:23
  Tragedy isn't the right word, but heart-wrenching challenges that absolutely
• 8:29
  would tear so many people apart and instead brought Jeff and his wife to a deeper faith.
• 8:36
  And much of that is what this book is about. And it's a fun read.
• 8:41
  It's funny. You'll tear up. It's amazing.
• 8:45
  So there's my praise. Go get the book, My Leaning Edge, if you want a great story.
• 8:50
  Let's start at the beginning, Jeff, with, well, you kind of do it in the book.
• 8:56
  Let's kind of follow the line of the book and where and how you grew up and
• 9:00
  some of the interesting people in your neighborhood and how that led to a life
• 9:04
  in the military and military aviation specifically.
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  Well, I grew up in a small southwest Georgia town called Plains,
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  Georgia, and we had one famous citizen there.
• 9:17
  Peanut farms around there, right? Yeah, some peanut farms, and this gentleman
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  came up on the radar, and people would say, Jimmy who?
• 9:26
  So my dad moved to Plains in 1961 with my mom and my brother and sister,
• 9:33
  and my dad was a he ran
• 9:36
  the experiment station there for the university of georgia and we
• 9:39
  literally lived on that farm so for the first nine
• 9:42
  years of my life i was more or less a
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  spare farm hand to my dad on this
• 9:48
  state-owned farm that i believe was his go get the watcher boy oh yeah i absolutely
• 9:54
  thought it was dad's place and grew up a very mischievous child in this small
• 9:58
  town of plains georgia so mom said i gave every gray hair she's got on her head
• 10:03
  and we're fortunate that she's still living.
• 10:05
  I just lost my dad in January, but he was the inspiration that,
• 10:10
  you know, I wanted to write the
• 10:11
  book for him and I wanted to get it in his hands before he passed away.
• 10:17
  But it simply tells the story of a small town country man.
• 10:21
  I love the country music connotation that goes with that.
• 10:25
  Obviously, there've been some great songs written about guys like my dad,
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  but he raised me to believe that I can do pretty much anything I set my mind
• 10:33
  to, and my mother was the encourager.
• 10:35
  And in the middle of all this growing up, when I'm on the age of 12.
• 10:39
  My dad's good friend and our neighbor, Jimmy Carter, was elected president of the United States.
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  And that led to a lot of unique opportunities that as a young man,
• 10:49
  I'm quick to tell people that I'm not somebody that's really going to talk about
• 10:53
  President Carter's politics because I was a kid.
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  But I can tell you that post-presidency, he was a fine man in terms and not
• 11:02
  only his faith, but also his contribution to humanitarian efforts and things he did around the world.
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  So that was the man I knew. I didn't know of his politics. And I would say if
• 11:12
  dad were alive, he'd tell you the same thing. They were friends first.
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  All the politics stuff, you know, is on the sidewalk when you're friends with people.
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  And that is something I think we all experienced. But growing up in Plains,
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  I was very focused on becoming a farmer like my dad. I wanted to follow in his
• 11:30
  footsteps and take over his role at the University of Georgia Experiment Station in Plains.
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  Basically meet my wife right after I graduated from high school at church in
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  a Sunday school class. Her dad made him come.
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  Hey, can we back up for just a second? Your dad was a huge inspiration, obviously, in this.
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  One of my favorite stories early on is what you did to make sure you got to stay close to dad. Yeah.
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  It's a scene right out of American Graffiti, fig
• 12:01
  i know i want to i want to hear him tell them
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  yeah among other things that caused
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  my mom and dad a lot of a lot of consternation dad
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  dad would tell me all the time you know i'm going to take you to town
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  i'm going to town because going to town off a farm was a big deal
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  so at about the age of six dad said yeah you know i'm going to town and you
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  know whatever we had pole barns are you guys familiar with pole yes yes some
• 12:27
  of the listeners aren't but all the tractors and equipment and trucks were parked
• 12:30
  under pole barns that were a roof suspended by telephone poles.
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  So I got the idea that I'd tie dad's truck to the barn and I did.
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  And one of the farm hands got in his truck and tried to move and it wouldn't move.
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  So the harder he tried, you know, you can just see a truck on red Georgia clay
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  deal, spinning the tire, smoke going up, dust everywhere and the whole barn shaking.
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  And one of the other guys said, stop.
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  Jeff, Jeff's done tied the truck to the barn. Needless to say,
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  you know, dad came home and he wasn't amused, but the knot didn't break.
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  My sister told me after she read the book that I was mistaken,
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  that the rope broke, but the knot held. And I don't remember the rope breaking.
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  The story I know is that Mr. Howard Dupree nearly tore the barn down where a
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  six-year-old child had tied a truck to the pole barn to make sure daddy didn't leave without me.
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  So I go through the book talking about some of the life lessons we learned growing
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  up on a farm and even get into just simple things daddy taught me about feeding animals.
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  You know, don't get between the animal and the trough, for example, stuff like that.
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  I had the luxury of having a cousin that's an animal whisperer.
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  And I don't use that term loosely.
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  Jay can tell stories of the things he's witnessed as a child that my cousin,
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  Harold Goldman in Lincoln and Georgia has done.
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  But all of these life lessons and the thing that we really get into is task condition standard.
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  Everything daddy taught me from the time I was a little kid was there's a right
• 14:09
  way to do things and a wrong way to do things.
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  And he was my original leading edge. And as you guys know, the leading edge
• 14:16
  is the front edge of the prop.
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  The front edge of the rotor blade, airplane prop is the strongest part of the blade.
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  And it's the one that more or less blazes a trail that leads us forward through
• 14:27
  the air. And everything's good until you have a bird strike, right?
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  Or you suck a bird into an embellion on a turbine engine, as Sully would say.
• 14:35
  Dad was the leading edge. And the point that the book is titled after was he
• 14:41
  introduced me to Christ.
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  And Christ became the center of everything that we did.
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  And thankfully, because he did that, it was such a great servant leader and
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  presented to me the style of leadership that I wanted to emulate as a grown
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  person and to my son, to Jay and to my daughter, Mallory.
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  He set the tone, and that's really where the book takes off,
• 15:05
  is on that farm and those lessons Dad taught me.
• 15:08
  And we walked through that into the military.
• 15:12
  Nice. Okay. I love the title, and I love the meaning behind it. It is outstanding.
• 15:17
  We struggled over it, guys. I mean, there's a story. So what were some other
• 15:21
  titles you thought about? Moss Sauce.
• 15:24
  Dad had developed his own barbecue sauce, and it's called Affectionately Moss Sauce.
• 15:30
  And you know I'm really good at asking people questions
• 15:33
  and taking guidance and I people were saying
• 15:36
  people are going to see that title and
• 15:39
  they're going to have no idea what to do with it
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  or what the book's about when when I got out of the military the second title
• 15:46
  working title we had was when daddy was a real man because when the kids were
• 15:51
  growing up and they would ask me questions I would reflect back to the days
• 15:56
  of being in the military and attack helicopter pilot I said Well,
• 16:00
  back when dad was a real man,
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  and I would answer your questions, but my wife said, that's a title.
• 16:06
  We got to the point that we were struggling threading the needle and making the book work.
• 16:14
  Come together from front to back. And I was in America's Georgia and a wife
• 16:19
  of a good friend of mine basically called me on the carpet and said,
• 16:23
  when are you going to get this book done?
• 16:25
  And this was back in November of last year.
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  I was driving home from Georgia. It's about an eight hour trip. November 23.
• 16:34
  Yeah. Yeah. This was like 23, November 23.
• 16:38
  Actually, I'm sorry. November 24. We were almost done.
• 16:42
  Oh, was it? Okay. All right. Yeah. We were almost, we just couldn't get it finished.
• 16:46
  And I called my wife and I said, there's two things.
• 16:48
  One, if we don't get this published before I lose dad, I'm going to be very
• 16:51
  upset or mom, because I want to put it in their hand because it's really a testimony
• 16:56
  to them as much as anything else, because they are the DNA.
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  They set the tone of legacy leadership with our family.
• 17:04
  And second of all, it honestly is something that I think will help young people
• 17:10
  and anybody that reads it, hopefully get some lessons of life that things aren't
• 17:15
  going to be smooth flying.
• 17:16
  You know, you're going to have engine failures. You're going to have things
• 17:19
  happen and you can make a choice.
• 17:21
  You can run to your spouse or run away from them, or you can run to God or run away from God.
• 17:26
  And I really wanted to get that finished and get it out there.
• 17:29
  So I called her on the way home and I said, we've got to get this done.
• 17:33
  And she said, I'm missing the threat. We talked about it.
• 17:36
  And Camille came up and said, Jeff, aviation's been the threat of our life.
• 17:40
  From the time I met you pretty shortly thereafter, you wanted to be a pilot.
• 17:45
  So maybe aviation's the common link. And when we figured that out,
• 17:49
  the book started really coming together.
• 17:52
  And then from there, we added the Bible verses because I thought it was very
• 17:57
  important that we interspersed Bible versus that helped us through some of the
• 18:02
  more difficult times from being in the military, moving forward.
• 18:07
  Nice. Okay. And I got to say, you know, as you've gone through this.
• 18:13
  I don't know if you're familiar with, but I'm guessing you may be.
• 18:16
  It almost sounds like the song by Alan Jackson, Small Town Southern Man.
• 18:22
  It is. I actually referenced that at my dad's funeral.
• 18:25
  I had our pastor because I got my mother's heart.
• 18:28
  I'm an emotional person, and I knew I could not stand behind my dad's flag-draped
• 18:33
  coffin and talk about him.
• 18:35
  So I wrote my version of the eulogy, and I referenced that Alan Jackson song,
• 18:40
  two of them, Small Town Southern Man and Daddy Let Me Drive.
• 18:44
  And I used both of those as a catapult for the pastor's comments about the way
• 18:49
  my dad led his life and the fact that he put a Sears and Roebuck catalog under
• 18:54
  my rear end and behind my back.
• 18:56
  And he had me driving stuff that today, if somebody saw it, they probably had
• 19:00
  you in court, you know, but that's the way I came up.
• 19:05
  All right. Hey, well, let's, Jay, you got some, some granddad memories maybe
• 19:11
  we can share as long as we're on this side. Oh, so he thought we had to drive as well.
• 19:16
  I think my first run-in with a clutch was the 1945 Ford tractor.
• 19:22
  It's still sitting out in the backyard.
• 19:25
  And my people, he kind of asked me, you know, have you ever driven anything
• 19:29
  with a clutch before? I think I'm like seven, six or seven years old.
• 19:33
  And I was like, no, no, I haven't.
• 19:37
  And he's like, well, just let it out real slow. And I don't know what real slow
• 19:42
  was to a seven-year-old, but I pretty much let that clutch go.
• 19:46
  And if you want to know, 1945 Ford tractor can stand all the way up on the back wheels.
• 19:55
  Yeah, that scared the devil out of both of us, I think.
• 19:59
  He took action and was able to get the nose down and drop that tractor back on the front wheels.
• 20:07
  Yeah, that one stands out for sure.
• 20:10
  Wow nice okay it was
• 20:12
  very much a get in there and do it kind of guy and it
• 20:16
  was hey if you haven't done it you know now the time
• 20:19
  is a present so let's go and he threw jay
• 20:22
  up on the tracker i might not have been there i can't remember that was
• 20:25
  a summer that i was with them you know i'm kind of
• 20:27
  having a memory come back now when it came back down
• 20:30
  he yeah that is a little bit bigger than
• 20:33
  that but that's not far off the mark and he
• 20:37
  is like yeah so that was too fast there
• 20:40
  you go so that's a reference i put up on the screen a picture of a 45 ford tractor
• 20:45
  it's the old it's kind of an off weight and red paint scheme on those beautiful
• 20:49
  tractors it's just like it it's a little like jay said it was made in ford and
• 20:54
  dad dad was driving it at 93 he was still cutting his own lawn at 93.
• 20:59
  He started getting dementia issues at 94.
• 21:04
  And it was literally, as I detail in the book,
• 21:09
  I go home in the fall and he's out there grinding leaves and come back three
• 21:13
  months later and the grass needed mowing and dad was showing zero interest in
• 21:19
  getting on his job near a riding lawnmower that was appropriately labeled Boss Moss,
• 21:25
  as everybody knew him.
• 21:28
  And it was shocking how quick he fell off the ledge of having dementia issues and things like that.
• 21:36
  I'm just thankful that when he passed, he knew who he was. He knew who he were.
• 21:40
  He knew his grandchildren.
• 21:41
  And that's a blessing.
• 21:45
  Yeah, fantastic. Fantastic. All right. You have no fear, though.
• 21:50
  That's just the bottom line. And I think Jay witnessed that.
• 21:54
  I was going to say, he talked about it plainly for years.
• 21:59
  I mean, from 65 onwards, I'd say, I forget, maybe dad can remind us when they
• 22:07
  bought their plot just outside of town, but they bought their funeral plot.
• 22:11
  And he was very plain and calm about talking about the fact that they were going
• 22:17
  to go over there and take a nap at some point.
• 22:19
  And they went over there and tended the plot and cut grass over their burial
• 22:26
  plot regularly into their late 80s.
• 22:30
  But like dad said and meemaw too for that
• 22:33
  matter right now i mean she's not in the best of health but i've never heard
• 22:37
  either one of them balk about a fear of death or passing for them it's it's
• 22:45
  almost inconsequential or at least you would think so interesting okay wow.
• 22:52
  So all right i interrupted you you were talking about meeting your bride,
• 22:57
  and it you were you were
• 22:59
  a freshman in college sophomore i was i was right out she
• 23:02
  was she had been to georgia for a year and come
• 23:05
  home so she's she's nine months older than me which will get me in trouble for
• 23:08
  telling but i was fresh out of high school i was 18 and i was a summer youth
• 23:13
  worker at her church it happened to be in the same town where my brother lived
• 23:17
  with his wife and they had just had their first or actually they had two little
• 23:22
  girls at that point uh courtney and Ashley.
• 23:24
  So I go down to live with them because I wanted to go work for this pastor that
• 23:29
  had been my childhood pastor in Plains. Well, he got moved.
• 23:33
  So when I got down there, that deal kind of fell apart. And then they said,
• 23:37
  oh, you know, you're going to be teaching the Sunday school class for the college
• 23:41
  age kids. And I'm fresh out of high school.
• 23:43
  So I'm a little intimidated by this factor.
• 23:46
  And Camille showed up, you know, that first Sunday, like I said,
• 23:49
  her dad made her come. Um, and the next thing became, you know,
• 23:53
  I'd like to date this girl.
• 23:54
  So I go ask the new pastor who I didn't really know that well.
• 23:59
  Hey, is it okay if I, if I asked one of the college age girls out on a date?
• 24:03
  He said, sure, no problem.
• 24:05
  And I called Camille up and played like a lot of men do.
• 24:09
  Hey, I'm new here. I don't know my way around. Will you take me to Tallahassee
• 24:12
  and show me the ropes to try to get in right and get a date?
• 24:16
  So we did and we never really looked back.
• 24:20
  We started dating that summer, and she has confided years later that months
• 24:25
  before that summer when they introduced me at church as being the summer youth
• 24:29
  worker, she had her eyes on me, but she never let on, right?
• 24:33
  So you hear that, you know, 25 years into your marriage and things like that.
• 24:37
  But we go, Camille transferred to Valdosta State for a year.
• 24:42
  I'm at Abraham Baldwin Agricultural College about an hour away.
• 24:46
  We do that for a year and then we both go to Athens to the University of Georgia,
• 24:50
  which, you know, we all know is one of the number one party school in the world
• 24:55
  is the University of Georgia.
• 24:57
  And somehow between everything going on, we managed to continue dating for those next three years.
• 25:04
  And then we got married in the summer of 87. But the big drop bomb I laid on
• 25:09
  her was that sophomore year when I realized the University of Georgia wanted
• 25:15
  whoever replaced my dad to have a Ph.D.
• 25:18
  In agriculture. And I wasn't a fan of school.
• 25:23
  And I'm thinking I'm going to be good to be, you know, Jay saw some of my high
• 25:27
  school report cards a few weeks ago. And he's like, oh, my God, Dad.
• 25:31
  I'm like, I told you I was not I was not a serious student at that point.
• 25:36
  No and listen a lot of us weren't
• 25:39
  there was a lot of other distractions going on in high
• 25:41
  school and school work was not a real high priority for me
• 25:44
  it wasn't for me either i wanted to ride my motorcycle i
• 25:47
  wanted to play baseball football i wanted to do anything but study
• 25:51
  and i was i was i love to tell this
• 25:54
  story because my brother's nine years older than me my sister's
• 25:57
  six years older than me and i tell people i was a
• 26:00
  sunday afternoon that got out of hand i just kind of
• 26:03
  showed up right yeah by the time
• 26:06
  i come along mom and dad are kind of tired so i
• 26:09
  pretty much got to do whatever i wanted to do and my brother told me
• 26:12
  the other day you know he comes home from college and i'm a young teenager and
• 26:16
  he he said i looked at mom and dad and said you guys let jeff get away with
• 26:19
  everything whatever he wants to do no wonder you know you're having that's how
• 26:23
  it goes yeah yeah it is and and i personally believe it was an attack helicopter
• 26:28
  pilot in development yes it It probably was.
• 26:32
  That's how we roll, right, in the attack world. So, yeah, we're going to be
• 26:37
  a little unhinged. I love that. Yeah.
• 26:40
  Halloween deal where the, where a kid wants to go Halloween trick-or-treating
• 26:44
  and he's buck naked and holding a bottle of booze. Yep.
• 26:47
  And the mom says, no, you cannot go trick-or-treating as an attack helicopter pilot home on leave.
• 26:53
  I mean, that's just the connotation of who we are, right?
• 26:59
  May not be true, but anyway, it's, it's, it's, it's how we roll.
• 27:04
  So I come along and yeah, I wasn't a great student and I wanted to.
• 27:10
  I wanted to take dad's job i mean that was the sole
• 27:13
  focus mom was scared to death that being a tractor driver
• 27:15
  was my life ambition and then when we move over
• 27:18
  to one i want to fly a helicopter she was no more enamored with
• 27:21
  that tractors tractors you just can't you just can't keep her happy at that
• 27:27
  point i had a mother like that yeah yeah so i go to air force rotc and i come
• 27:33
  up a half inch short in the sitting height to be a pilot this is one or quarter
• 27:36
  and they offer me missile operator deal,
• 27:39
  which I mean, who amongst us wants to do that job?
• 27:42
  Well, you must be this tall to ride this jet. Come on, man.
• 27:45
  No, that sounds stupid. I'm sure, you know, when they were measuring and I didn't
• 27:49
  know what they were measuring, I probably was just kind of slumped over.
• 27:51
  You know, I could have found a half an inch. Sure. Yeah. Easy.
• 27:56
  Here we go. And there's, there's no way in the world I'm going to sit in a missile
• 28:00
  silo because I can't sit still anyway.
• 28:03
  And I wonder over to Army ROTC, but in the middle of this, I'm telling Camille
• 28:07
  what I'm doing. And when I literally brought up that I want to be a military
• 28:10
  pilot, she burst into tears in her dorm room.
• 28:13
  And I'm thinking. These are tears of joy or tears of fear?
• 28:17
  No, tears of fear. And I wasn't expecting that.
• 28:23
  The Air Force thing doesn't work out. And the only reason I was in the Air Force
• 28:26
  because my dad was a P-51 and F-86 crew chief in Korea. So Air Force was a natural draw.
• 28:32
  Sure. I go over to Army ROTC and they not only are interested,
• 28:36
  but kind of lay out the path of how to become an Army aviator.
• 28:40
  And it all boiled down to what we know as the order of merit list.
• 28:44
  So you have to be a top performer. And I will say that dad's development of
• 28:51
  me on that farm and everything he taught me, he never used the word task condition standard.
• 28:57
  But if you looked at anything we did on the farm, that's how you execute it.
• 29:02
  So I was kind of hunting on a baited field at that point. Yeah. Yeah.
• 29:08
  So let's, I want to back up just a second.
• 29:15
  So military service in your family, your uncle, World War II? World War II?
• 29:22
  Or was it your great uncle? Great uncle or your uncle? They were my uncles.
• 29:26
  My dad's brother served under Patton in World War II. Okay. And I knew that.
• 29:31
  And my Aunt Betty Ann, who I mentioned in the book, who was Daddy's paddlemeister,
• 29:35
  if he got in trouble, it was his sister Aunt Betty Ann that would spank him.
• 29:40
  Her husband also served in World War II. So we had a lineage,
• 29:44
  but it wasn't something the family rallied around.
• 29:47
  It was dad never talked about it. And in fact, Jay interviewed him in high school
• 29:52
  about his service in Korea.
• 29:54
  And Daddy had a box full of pictures of him being a crew chief.
• 29:57
  I never knew he earned the Bronze Star.
• 30:00
  And I just, in his death, found his citation.
• 30:04
  And Dad broke an Air Force record. He had his plane in the air flying sorties
• 30:08
  for eight and a half hours on one mission. And they had no hangars in Korea.
• 30:13
  Now I know why he had frostbit feet.
• 30:17
  All of these things come out through the, you know, you're pulling it, right?
• 30:22
  Boy, that is such a common theme that how many people, you know,
• 30:26
  pass and then their family finds their war service records and all that.
• 30:30
  Actually, do you have that citation handy?
• 30:34
  It is at the frame shop right now because it's so brittle.
• 30:39
  I've got a picture of the colonel pinning the bronze star on dad's uniform.
• 30:44
  And i've got the citation and everything
• 30:47
  associated with it i found look i knew i was close when i found the cover for
• 30:52
  the bronze star you know the the box yes i mean i found the top in one of dad's
• 30:57
  junk drawers and i knew i was close and those boxes laying all around here yeah
• 31:02
  i found the original bronze star but i got them laying around here,
• 31:06
  ain't that something yeah it was it was such a cool thing and i immediately
• 31:13
  i had it I brought it back from Georgia a week ago and I took it to a frame
• 31:16
  shop and delicately rolled it out because, you know, this is brittle paper. Right.
• 31:21
  70, 80 years old. 70 years old. Yeah. Yeah. A hundred percent.
• 31:25
  So once it's done, if you could send me a photo of that, we'll put it up on
• 31:29
  your episodes blog post entry.
• 31:34
  Would love to. Okay. I got follow on. I got follow on questions.
• 31:38
  I'm writing questions fast while you're talking. Okay. So where did the flying
• 31:43
  bug come from? Why? I mean, why aviation?
• 31:46
  Why did you want to fly? Did you get a flight somewhere? Did you have a...
• 31:50
  Yeah. My brother was a private pilot.
• 31:52
  So with that distance of him being nine years older, when I was a kid, I would go get it.
• 31:58
  He had a little Cherokee single engine plane and I'd go get in the plane with him and go flying.
• 32:04
  And when the agriculture thing started falling off, And I got to tell you,
• 32:09
  too, the other part that's really disturbing to me is my friends were graduating
• 32:12
  two years ahead of me with a four year degree in agribusiness or whatever.
• 32:16
  And they were making the same money that you would make at the trailer plant in Plains, you know.
• 32:20
  And I thought, why did I go to school for four years to not have?
• 32:26
  Anything better than this to offer to Camille or to the family.
• 32:30
  So you wanted to be something better.
• 32:32
  So I pretty much fell back on what do you, what did you want to do?
• 32:37
  Where your interests lie and the aviation bug my brother had set.
• 32:40
  Now, additionally, this is pretty cool.
• 32:43
  My sister, Linda, worked at Peterson Field, which was a little grass strip about
• 32:47
  five miles from our house in Plains.
• 32:50
  And Mr. Peterson was flying Jimmy Carter around to events all around the country.
• 32:55
  So my sister's working out there
• 32:58
  Robert Redford came in a bunch of actors would fly into
• 33:01
  that grass strip to come meet with the future president and
• 33:04
  my sister was on taxi orders so she could taxi planes around and things so it
• 33:09
  was it was more or less set in motion and I didn't know it but the moment I
• 33:15
  started struggling with what I want to do I thought you know I kind of like
• 33:19
  flying And it wasn't the helicopter part, too,
• 33:22
  was at 12 when President Carter becomes president.
• 33:26
  He flies into Warner Robins Air Force Base in the 747. And guess how he gets
• 33:30
  to planes, which is in the middle of nowhere, on Marine One.
• 33:35
  And coming in Marine One is, you know, the beast, the presidential vehicle on a Chinook.
• 33:41
  So they're coming right over our house inbound to land. And I would jump on
• 33:47
  my bicycle and ride over to the ball field about the time the blade stopped turning.
• 33:51
  And I thought it was the coolest thing in the world.
• 33:55
  When the Air Force didn't work out, can't be a fighter pilot like you two guys,
• 33:59
  then because I'm too short.
• 34:01
  Now it's, I really like those helicopters and they're cool. And the Army's got a ton of helicopters.
• 34:07
  So they laid the path out for me. And I really go into a lot of detail in the
• 34:12
  book about what that looked like.
• 34:14
  People that I wanted the theme to be to praise others.
• 34:19
  If that, I hope you guys got that as you read the book.
• 34:22
  Oh, yeah. There's nothing negative in that book. It's all about these people
• 34:26
  that came into my life and into Jay's life that were positive influences.
• 34:32
  And I hope that set the tone.
• 34:34
  I don't know. There was some negative about some major over in Iraq.
• 34:42
  We'll come back to that. Let's come back to that. Hold on to that. Yeah.
• 34:49
  People, people can be a positive influence or a negative influence.
• 34:52
  So you want to surround yourself with people that are helping bring you up, not bring you down.
• 34:57
  So can you just touch on, there was a significant amount of risk and uncertainty
• 35:04
  when you said Army ROTC because they didn't give you an aviation contract.
• 35:10
  You had to, right? So can you talk about that? Yeah, and it was true for Jay
• 35:14
  as well, and he can put the exclamation point on it.
• 35:17
  Please do, gentlemen. He does the order of merit list.
• 35:20
  You know, I had to, first of all, go to this camp at Fort Knox to make up for
• 35:24
  my sophomore or freshman and sophomore year, the first two years of ROTC, because I didn't do it.
• 35:29
  And they told me when I went that you need to do well, but they didn't really
• 35:33
  lay it all out. They said you need to do well.
• 35:36
  You can qualify for a two-year Army ROTC scholarship.
• 35:38
  But it is kind of the starting point to getting aviation branch if you want
• 35:43
  to do it. But there is no promise.
• 35:45
  And if you don't get what you're going to get, you get to pick two or three,
• 35:49
  four branches of the Army.
• 35:51
  And let's just talk about the grunts first, you know, an 11 Bravo infantry.
• 35:56
  Infantry i had no interest in that but everything we did was infantry so i had
• 36:01
  to fake it till i made it but growing up sounds like the marine corps fig it
• 36:06
  does sound an awful lot like that.
• 36:09
  Yeah so you know i knew how to shoot i knew pretty much how to navigate through
• 36:13
  the woods i knew a lot of the basic fundamentals and having real army drill
• 36:17
  sergeants in my life that summer at fort Knox,
• 36:20
  just set me up for the rest of the evaluative period over the next two years.
• 36:25
  So I was fortunate that I had some really great NCOs.
• 36:30
  Sergeant Major Byram, I talk about in the book where the word Flanagan comes
• 36:33
  from. I'm sure you guys picked up on that. I don't want to give away what that means.
• 36:38
  But he was all up in our business. And it was a rough time with that guy.
• 36:44
  I liken it to the movie We Were Soldiers when the little privates coming down the sidewalk.
• 36:50
  Every time he meets the Sergeant Major, he nearly wets his pants,
• 36:53
  right? Right. I was like, how the hell do you know what kind of day it is, private?
• 36:56
  It was Sergeant Major Byron was that guy. And then they turned the University
• 37:01
  of Georgia Bulldogs strength coach loose on us.
• 37:04
  His name was Coach Mervos, and he was exalted to say the very least, but he had a lisp.
• 37:10
  And that's one of the funny moments in the book. when I talk about Sergeant
• 37:13
  or Coach Mervos would be screaming at us with a list.
• 37:16
  And if we knew, if we laughed, we were disrespecting him, but you know,
• 37:20
  you're the worst, worst group of cadets. I've ever seen.
• 37:23
  And you know, he was a big dude and we would, we were just sitting there.
• 37:27
  Just, you can't laugh at this guy.
• 37:29
  He had us running the university of Georgia Sanford stadium.
• 37:33
  Bleachers and steps till we threw up
• 37:36
  just about every day of the week but we were
• 37:39
  we were mean and ready to go so yeah i
• 37:42
  had to finish in the top of my class i also had to as jay did as well we had
• 37:47
  to pass the flight aptitude test finish at the top of the class and then the
• 37:52
  physicals i know everybody on the aviation side listening to this know about
• 37:57
  military flight physicals And until you get in and start flying,
• 38:02
  you are subject to any little thing, you're out.
• 38:05
  Oh, yeah. It's a weeding out process, really.
• 38:10
  If there's too many guys in the pipeline, well, they seem to find lots of things wrong with guys.
• 38:17
  I forgot to mention that, Fig. We're in the presence of those two guys.
• 38:24
  Class leaders, number one guys. Those guys. Yeah.
• 38:29
  Oh yeah the glasses supposedly got me that's why they pulled my flight contract
• 38:34
  was my vision 2020 minus three because i couldn't see three scrabble letters
• 38:39
  out of 32 across a darkened room but you know in one eye i think they've changed
• 38:45
  rules now but the funny now,
• 38:48
  the funny part about the army rotc thing from jay's perspective and and i'll
• 38:53
  let him tell this But I wanted him to go Air Force ROTC, and I'll tell you why.
• 38:58
  And I told him this, guys.
• 39:00
  You didn't want him to go in the military? No. That's right.
• 39:04
  He's laughing already because I had been on King Fod Airport in Saudi Arabia.
• 39:11
  And this story's not in the book, but we're on King Fod Airport.
• 39:16
  And the 101st Airborne that when I was taking an in-country swap out of 26 ECAS
• 39:22
  Cobras for 26 fully modernized Cobras, we're sleeping on a parking deck on King Fodd Airport.
• 39:29
  My mechanics, my test pilots, all of our guys for about two and a half months,
• 39:35
  scared to death that a Scud missile is going to hit us.
• 39:38
  They're contracting labor to build the airport.
• 39:42
  Well, the Air Force is on the other side of the airport, 101st Airborne Army
• 39:46
  is on one side, Air Force is on the other.
• 39:48
  One of my crew chiefs comes up to me and goes, hey LT, I heard they've got a
• 39:53
  mess hall over there, like real food, because we're eating tea rations. And I said.
• 39:59
  Man, you think? Well, you know they've got air-conditioned tents.
• 40:02
  If we're here and they've got a chow hall, why would you not believe that?
• 40:05
  And we're wearing flight suits. What do you think?
• 40:07
  And I totally am reading this kid's mind. I go, okay, we're going.
• 40:11
  Let's go. We go across, walk into their chow hall. They've got a salad bar.
• 40:17
  Yeah. Air-conditioned tents, salad bar. And right across the runway,
• 40:20
  we're eating tea rations out of a freaking can.
• 40:23
  Right. And I'm telling Jay this stuff. I'm like, dude, the good news about helicopters
• 40:29
  is you can land them anywhere.
• 40:30
  The bad news is you can land them anywhere, which means you're sleeping in the
• 40:35
  swamp. You're sleeping in the dirt.
• 40:38
  Fixed wing guys have to have a runway. So I think I've got him all set,
• 40:41
  you know, to have a better life than I did in the Army or certainly the Marines.
• 40:46
  Go Air Force ROTC. So I take him over to Georgia, and this is what happens. Yeah.
• 40:51
  So, Jay, tell us how you failed Life's IQ test. and we do
• 40:55
  not listen to anything your father said so
• 40:59
  i i just we we went
• 41:02
  to uga we were we were doing a campus tour
• 41:05
  visit and we had two appointments because i had
• 41:08
  been pre-awarded an air force scholarship and an army scholarship so i was going
• 41:12
  there to interview and figure out which way to go and we went in to meet with
• 41:19
  one of the junior pms's the professor of military science And he straight up,
• 41:26
  I can't remember his name, but he absolutely told us almost verbatim,
• 41:30
  I'm a USAFA grad, do not want to be here.
• 41:34
  I got kind of forced to come over here.
• 41:37
  And, you know, he didn't sell the program at all. And I saw some of their cadets
• 41:42
  and they did not impress at all.
• 41:45
  Very few of them were trying to become pilots. Most of them were trying to get
• 41:49
  into other jobs. So it didn't really feel like a community or a high-performing one, especially.
• 41:55
  And then we went across the street to the military science building where the
• 42:00
  Army ROTC department was, and there were people out back doing pull-ups, climbing ropes.
• 42:06
  The recruiting operations officer was three bags full, excited,
• 42:11
  talking about all the program opportunities and everything that there was to
• 42:15
  do. And that pretty much clinched it. And I was like, I have no business being
• 42:20
  over there with those guys.
• 42:21
  Like, this is where you need to be. There was another part that you may not
• 42:25
  remember, but when we got there, they met him outside.
• 42:29
  They knew we were coming, and the administrative director that was there when
• 42:35
  I was a cadet was still there, and she had my file.
• 42:39
  So she's standing on the porch at the military science building,
• 42:43
  meets us coming up, And she looks at him and she said, Jeff Moss,
• 42:48
  Jr., we want you here in Army ROTC. If you want to look at your dad's file, here it is.
• 42:55
  That's private. Yeah.
• 42:59
  Diane Perry. Yeah, she retired the year before I graduated, but she got me through 75% of it.
• 43:08
  She's an awesome lady. And they named the admin section of the Army ROTC military
• 43:13
  building at the University of Georgia after Ms. Diane Perry.
• 43:17
  It was such a this versus that.
• 43:21
  And I'm thinking the whole time when I saw her standing on the steps when we
• 43:25
  were walking up, I'm going, he's going Army ROTC, it's over,
• 43:28
  because that guy really messed it up.
• 43:31
  And here we are. So what's your experience? You've been sleeping in the dirt?
• 43:35
  Oh. So I've been colder than I thought possible on a number of occasions.
• 43:42
  But I mean, we've we've innovated my first sergeant in the hundred and first
• 43:49
  came up with a great idea.
• 43:51
  We had a weed sprayer and he brought a propane tank and like a seafood boil tank out into the field.
• 43:59
  So we would heat water up in that and pour it into the weed sprayer,
• 44:03
  pump it up. and you could have, you know, a decently hot shower experience in the field.
• 44:10
  But we've made do and I've had so much fun doing it. It's been an awesome experience.
• 44:17
  Adapt and overcome. So how long have you been active now?
• 44:20
  Nine years. Nine. All right.
• 44:23
  They can stay in well i just doubled
• 44:26
  down to do another four so going back
• 44:29
  to the 101st when this assignment's over and
• 44:32
  looking forward to i love the 101st is
• 44:35
  hands down been my favorite assignment so
• 44:38
  far and i'm looking forward to getting back to
• 44:41
  it nice okay and you're a captain
• 44:44
  now i am okay nice and
• 44:48
  uh wait what's the best rank in the army officer
• 44:51
  i would say captain is
• 44:54
  honestly i love being a pl it's nice
• 44:58
  to get in the driver's seat a little bit you know and
• 45:00
  i would say you know as long as you manage your relationships
• 45:04
  appropriately and you take care of people you
• 45:07
  can do some really awesome stuff with the team and that's
• 45:10
  i think when i look back on my career thus far
• 45:13
  the things that I've done as a
• 45:16
  member of a team you know it's nothing that
• 45:19
  nothing that I did by myself but it's my
• 45:23
  contributions and the contributions of other rowing together in the same direction
• 45:27
  we've been able to do some pretty insanely awesome and impressive feats over
• 45:33
  the last nine years spoken like a true leader there captain well well said yeah
• 45:38
  I I agree I go ahead I was just going to say,
• 45:42
  Fig, that one of the questions that repeat said is,
• 45:45
  you know, we're going to see a fight between them as to who's the best pilot.
• 45:49
  I have said from day one, Jay has surpassed me in every facet.
• 45:54
  Academically, he's a he's a heck of a pilot. He's a heck of a leader.
• 45:58
  And that's what every father should want for their child.
• 46:02
  Excel, do better than me. And he has done that. He was never a problem.
• 46:06
  And I think the maturity that he gained was having to grow up with a very sick
• 46:11
  sister that's three years older than him.
• 46:14
  He was forced into maturity long before he should have been.
• 46:19
  That's, yeah, that's, when I told you at the beginning, folks,
• 46:24
  about the overwhelming challenges that this family faced, that's part of it.
• 46:29
  I'll tell you what, let's take a moment and we will thank the people who made this episode possible.
• 46:37
  So, there I was, flying high, thinking my retirement was locked in,
• 46:42
  running smooth, no adjustments needed.
• 46:44
  Then it hit me. Retirement planning isn't something you can just put on autopilot.
• 46:48
  You can't just set it and hope for the best.
• 46:50
  If you're not actively steering, you could be drifting off course without even realizing it.
• 46:55
  That's why pilots who get it turn to HSI wealth strategies.
• 46:59
  These guys aren't your typical financial advisors.
• 47:02
  They're pilots. Military, airline, guard, civil. They've sat where you're sitting.
• 47:08
  They understand the unique financial landscape pilots face from high earning
• 47:13
  years to the minefield of taxes and inflation waiting downrange. And here's the kicker.
• 47:18
  On average, they're saving pilots a million dollars or more just by making smart course corrections.
• 47:23
  The earlier you start working with them, the more opportunities they have to
• 47:28
  reduce your lifetime tax burden and keep more of your hard-earned money where it belongs.
• 47:34
  But don't worry, even if you're closer to your Centrum Silver years,
• 47:38
  they have the expertise to help make the most of your approach to retirement.
• 47:43
  Now, let me ask you something. If your airplane was leaking fuel mid-flight,
• 47:47
  would you ignore it and hope you still had enough to make it to your destination?
• 47:51
  Of course not. You'd act immediately. Your retirement is no different.
• 47:55
  If you're not taking control now, you could be watching your hard-earned money
• 48:00
  evaporate through unnecessary taxes and inefficient planning.
• 48:04
  And listen, we all know the classic joke. How does a pilot make a million dollars?
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• 52:17
  talked about the forced maturity and i
• 52:20
  look at some times in my life that you know forced forced me
• 52:23
  to grow up as we've talked pre-show i've experienced some some of my own family
• 52:28
  difficulties at given times in my life the one thing i learned is there's nothing
• 52:33
  more difficult or challenging than to see your child suffering and to stand
• 52:39
  by helpless to do anything about it.
• 52:41
  So let's go into that just a little bit and tell us, you know,
• 52:44
  what it is you were facing.
• 52:45
  And I'm fuzzy on my math here.
• 52:49
  Was that, that had not started when you were getting ready to kick off the war
• 52:54
  that you talked about in your opening story.
• 52:55
  What had happened then, so I had headed from El Paso, Texas,
• 53:02
  to Fort Eustis, Virginia, to attend the maintenance manager maintenance test
• 53:05
  pilot course, and as I'm driving,
• 53:08
  Iraq has invaded Kuwait, and I'm listening to it on the radio.
• 53:12
  When I get, because again, I have to tell people, you know, this was 1989,
• 53:16
  1990. There were no cell phones at this juncture. Right. We had pagers.
• 53:20
  So I'm not communicating with my wife en route, the two-day trip to make that run.
• 53:26
  Of course, it takes 24 hours to drive across or 12 hours to cross Texas. Yeah.
• 53:32
  I get to Eustace and I call back and my wife said, I think they're going to call you back.
• 53:37
  And I said, why? She said, the cab is railheading, which means they're loading
• 53:41
  up the tanks and all that kind of thing.
• 53:43
  And I literally said out loud, and this is one of those comments that will live in infamy.
• 53:48
  I said, they will send the Girl Scouts before they send the fourth of the third
• 53:53
  ACR, which was my unit, the long knife squadron.
• 53:56
  And I was right in what I said at the time because they had just stood up the
• 54:01
  air cab squadron about a year, year and a half earlier.
• 54:05
  We didn't have aircraft up we
• 54:08
  had a horrible safety record just due to
• 54:11
  all the issues that were going on there was
• 54:14
  a whole lot of stuff going on one of my pilots had gotten killed due to a compressor
• 54:18
  stall that led to a number two drive shaft failure that they crashed and he
• 54:23
  didn't survive the crash there were a lot of reasons i said that yeah well you
• 54:29
  know two weeks later and she's pregnant with Mallory.
• 54:32
  So we had made arrangements for her to come to Eustace and deliver Mallory.
• 54:37
  I get called back. My commander, Captain Lou Huzella called me and goes,
• 54:41
  I didn't want to do this, but man, we're going.
• 54:43
  And I couldn't believe it. So I load my truck up and I'm driving all the way
• 54:48
  back across the country to El Paso.
• 54:51
  Mallory is due any day. This was October of 1990, and my commander,
• 54:59
  Colonel George Webb, came to me and he goes, I want you to be the rear detachment officer.
• 55:04
  About three years ago, he said, hey, part of it was I wanted you to see Mallory be born.
• 55:09
  But the truth of the matter is you were the best guy I had to do what I needed done.
• 55:13
  So he chose me to be the rear detachment, bring up the last airplane guy.
• 55:18
  And it was hopes that Mallory would be born. Well, Camille's overdue by a week.
• 55:23
  So Mallory is born on October the 11th. In the evening, I get on the plane after
• 55:30
  lunch on the 13th. So I've got a basically a day and a half with them in the hospital.
• 55:36
  But I have to tell you, thank God I saw my child born.
• 55:39
  Many have not. They've gotten the telegram or now the satellite call.
• 55:43
  Right. Now they can do it on video. But we didn't have that capability yet.
• 55:48
  So I head over for Desert Storm and the opening of the show. So there I was.
• 55:53
  We had jumped. The air war had started and we had jumped from the middle of
• 55:57
  the desert of Saudi Arabia somewhere to right on the Iraqi border.
• 56:02
  Tactical assembly area cactus i got
• 56:06
  called to a tent and when i walked in there
• 56:09
  colonel webb lou huzella and my first sergeant
• 56:12
  were sitting there along with chaplain jim malden malden and
• 56:16
  i'm scared to death i said what what's going
• 56:19
  on yeah right they said there's been an incident at fort
• 56:22
  bliss and i'm thinking you know something's happened to camilla
• 56:24
  mallory yeah you don't bring the chaplain in for yeah exactly
• 56:28
  i was petrified and i
• 56:31
  said don't just tell me cut to the chase and somebody when
• 56:35
  my wife got home from the hospital and this had been two months later somebody
• 56:41
  started calling my wife the night the air war started and it was harassing phone
• 56:45
  calls that i know your husband's in desert storm i know you're home alone you
• 56:51
  know all that oh my gosh and And they said,
• 56:54
  your father-in-law has flown to El Paso, he's got your wife in Maori,
• 56:59
  and they're headed back to Georgia, they're safe.
• 57:01
  So there I was, sitting on the Iraqi border, the ground war is imminent,
• 57:07
  and I'm completely powerless and helpless.
• 57:11
  That was the start of God telling me I've got this.
• 57:15
  I mean, it's hard for me to talk about now, I get emotional.
• 57:18
  Yeah. God started to get in.
• 57:22
  You don't need to worry. I've got them. So move forward. We get through Desert Storm and I come home.
• 57:30
  We have gotten out of the military.
• 57:32
  We have moved to a town called Macon, Georgia. Mallory's five.
• 57:37
  Jay has been born. He's now two.
• 57:39
  And Mallory has a seizure on a Sunday afternoon when I'm headed out the door
• 57:45
  to go practice with the Praise and Worship Bandit Church.
• 57:49
  And literally, for folks that don't understand seizures, Mallory's first seizure
• 57:53
  that we saw was a full-on grand mal.
• 57:57
  And not knowing much about epilepsy at that moment, when somebody has a severe
• 58:02
  grand mal seizure, they go into what's called a post-ictal phase,
• 58:06
  which means their breathing is very shallow. They're resting.
• 58:10
  Their body's trying to more or less recover from the seizures.
• 58:13
  Literally, guys, I thought she was dead. When the paramedics and the fire department
• 58:18
  showed up after Camille called 9-1-1.
• 58:20
  I was holding her on the floor sobbing because I thought she was dead.
• 58:26
  Now Jay's a two-year-old and he's not knowing what the world's going on.
• 58:31
  The fire department showed it first. They said, sir, she's got a faint pulse. She's alive.
• 58:38
  Let me have her. And I'm looking up like, I think she's deceased.
• 58:42
  So I let them have her. Long story short, that was the first seizure that led
• 58:48
  to us going up to 150 to 200 a day and Mallory becoming what was known as an
• 58:56
  atypical Linux gasto child.
• 58:59
  Now, just understand that up until she's five, Mallory was already reading on
• 59:04
  a third grade level. She could name the continents.
• 59:07
  She was super intelligent. So this totally took the carpet out from under us.
• 59:13
  She went into status epilepticus multiple times, which is one seizure after
• 59:19
  another without recovery. It's a medical emergency, and a lot of epileptics die from this.
• 59:24
  We've been in the hospital for...
• 59:27
  A month on end, and there's a story here that I really want to get on this podcast.
• 59:32
  I didn't put it in the book or it got pulled out, but it's going to be part of the follow-on.
• 59:37
  We've been in a hospital. I've been brand new to Pfizer. I hadn't worked for the company very long.
• 59:43
  And my regional manager shows up on a Sunday morning.
• 59:47
  He stuck his head in the door. And
• 59:49
  the cool thing about this guy is he's a Vietnam veteran bird dog pilot.
• 59:53
  So his name is John Strange. I love him. I can't begin to tell you how much I love this guy.
• 59:58
  He sticks his head in the door and gives me the come here. And I walked out
• 1:00:02
  in the hallway and he said, how are you holding up? And I told him the truth.
• 1:00:05
  You know, we don't know what's going on, Mallory.
• 1:00:07
  They're telling us this is really bad. I don't know.
• 1:00:11
  And he goes, is there anything you're concerned about? And I said,
• 1:00:14
  well, John, I've only got two weeks vacation and we've been in the hospital
• 1:00:17
  already almost two weeks. I don't know what to do.
• 1:00:20
  And he looked at me, guys, and you talk about leadership. he looked at me he
• 1:00:25
  goes Jeff this isn't vacation this is hell on earth,
• 1:00:30
  When you're able to get back in the field and go to work, you let your district manager know.
• 1:00:35
  She will tell me, but right now, you take care of Mallory. Wow.
• 1:00:39
  I mean, yeah. I mean, stop the press. He totally relieved my anxiety about my job and about work.
• 1:00:46
  And Pfizer was consistent with me throughout her entire illness like that.
• 1:00:51
  Wow. There were two brain surgeries. We were in the hospital for a month and
• 1:00:54
  a half, two months at a time.
• 1:00:56
  And the company stood behind me. Now, I got to tell you, Family Medical Leave
• 1:01:00
  Act comes up and all the HR stuff you've got today.
• 1:01:03
  I feel sorry for parents going through illnesses with their children because
• 1:01:08
  now the way HR systems work and the way regulations go, that probably doesn't happen. It's take FMLA.
• 1:01:16
  Well, that saves your job and it doesn't pay your bills. Right.
• 1:01:19
  You know, it's really sad. So in the middle of all of this trauma that's going
• 1:01:24
  on in our world is little Jay.
• 1:01:26
  And Camille's mom and dad pretty much moved
• 1:01:29
  in with us between her mom and
• 1:01:31
  dad which did the lion's share of heavy lifting and my parents Jay got raised
• 1:01:36
  by his grandparents for a for better part of five six years while we searched
• 1:01:42
  the globe trying to get help for our daughter for Mallory and you know I really
• 1:01:47
  felt bad about that but I couldn't do anything about it so.
• 1:01:51
  We're traveling all over the country trying to get her seizures stopped and
• 1:01:56
  trying to get her care and poor Jay is in the middle of it and I gotta tell
• 1:02:01
  you we're holding our breath waiting on him to turn 5,
• 1:02:05
  hoping that because all they could say is maybe this is genetic they never could find a.
• 1:02:11
  So we're holding our breath oh my god is Jay going to be okay and obviously
• 1:02:17
  he turned out better than normal and super smart and super capable and has never
• 1:02:23
  had a seizure. Thank God.
• 1:02:25
  But we early on in this,
• 1:02:29
  Everything I'd been taught by my dad, by the military, task condition standard.
• 1:02:33
  Mallory did not fall into a playbook. There was no guidelines.
• 1:02:38
  There was no path to getting her better. And I didn't know what to do.
• 1:02:43
  I'm used to a checklist, y'all.
• 1:02:45
  All of us aviators. We go to Chapter 5 for limitations. We go to Chapter 9 for emergency procedures.
• 1:02:52
  We're skilled and trained in simulators.
• 1:02:55
  And we have no idea what to do when the engine quits and you don't have a procedure.
• 1:03:03
  And I liken it back to Apollo 13. You know, when they said, I need you to make
• 1:03:07
  a filter out of this, this is all they've got.
• 1:03:11
  That's kind of where we were at that point. And we didn't know what to do.
• 1:03:16
  So you guys, at one point, you talk about it in the book, were told that she
• 1:03:23
  had, Jay, I want to talk to you in a second here about your memories of this
• 1:03:27
  and feelings, but I want to get a little further into,
• 1:03:30
  you were told that she might have a year to live at best at one point. Yeah.
• 1:03:34
  It was a Sunday morning and a neurologist walked in the hospital room and essentially
• 1:03:39
  just nonchalantly said, your daughter's got a degenerative brain disease and
• 1:03:43
  she's either going to be fully retarded or dead in a year.
• 1:03:47
  And it took a minute for that to sink in on me.
• 1:03:50
  Good Lord. And it was, you know, that little major that we talked about,
• 1:03:53
  the negative part of the book.
• 1:03:55
  Again, conditioning. God put people in my life and he conditioned me to deal with stuff.
• 1:04:00
  And within 30 seconds of hearing that, I looked at him and I said,
• 1:04:04
  then we need a second opinion.
• 1:04:06
  Discharge us from this hospital and send us somewhere else. Tell us where to
• 1:04:10
  go. He literally said, we have the best neurologist in the country here.
• 1:04:14
  And that means you're sucking all the air, oxygen out of the air.
• 1:04:18
  You're taking away our hope.
• 1:04:20
  And I said, well, my next statement to him was, I don't believe that's what
• 1:04:24
  God intended for our child.
• 1:04:27
  And we got her out of the hospital, and I'm in Macon, Georgia.
• 1:04:32
  And to this day, you know, I go back to this doctor named Sabir Anthony.
• 1:04:35
  I was in pharmaceutical sales, so I'm calling on a neurologist.
• 1:04:39
  And everybody in town knew what was going on with Mallory. I mean,
• 1:04:42
  they were praying for us, felt sorry for us. You know, it was all of that.
• 1:04:45
  But I couldn't go to work without 12 times a day telling people how she was doing.
• 1:04:51
  Well, this neurologist said, how are you doing? And I told him the truth.
• 1:04:55
  And he said, what can I do to help you, Jeff?
• 1:04:57
  And I said, God, Dr. Anthony, I don't know, but you're a neurologist.
• 1:05:02
  If this is your child, what would you do? And he sat there and he thought about it for a second.
• 1:05:06
  He turned around to his library behind him and he pulled a textbook off and
• 1:05:11
  it was written by a doctor from the Cleveland Clinic.
• 1:05:15
  But her name's Dr. Wiley. And he goes, this lady writes the textbooks on epilepsy.
• 1:05:21
  I would find a way to get my child in front of Dr. Wiley. So needless to say, by now cell phones work.
• 1:05:27
  I'm out in the parking lot calling my colleagues in Cleveland, Ohio.
• 1:05:31
  Who knows Dr. Wiley and can we get an appointment? And within 48 hours,
• 1:05:36
  again, Jay's with his grandparents who have moved in with us.
• 1:05:38
  We're on the way to Cleveland, Ohio with Mallory.
• 1:05:41
  And Dr. Wiley evaluated her and said, it's not a degenerative brain disease, but it's not good.
• 1:05:48
  She has atypical Lennox gastro syndrome. And of course, you go,
• 1:05:52
  well, what is that? Mallory's a three percenter.
• 1:05:55
  97% of Lennox Gastaut kids are born completely debilitated in a wheelchair.
• 1:06:02
  They can't. They're non-functional. 3% Lennox Gastaut are like Mallory.
• 1:06:07
  Super smart, horrible epilepsy, difficult to control seizures,
• 1:06:12
  but they're semi-functional.
• 1:06:14
  And that leads to a whole nother arena of the book.
• 1:06:19
  But I know you want to ask Jay about where he is in all of this. Yeah.
• 1:06:24
  Yeah. Jay, so you, uh, what's your first memory of this? And, uh,
• 1:06:29
  At any point, you know, you're described well in the book, but you didn't write the book.
• 1:06:34
  At any point, are you just really frustrated? Or did you view this as like,
• 1:06:39
  for instance, I'll give you a quick personal experience on this.
• 1:06:43
  My parents divorced when I was very young.
• 1:06:45
  At the time, it was hard, but I look back on it as forced maturity.
• 1:06:50
  And I've since regressed from that. But the forced maturity,
• 1:06:56
  I thought, was a blessing and a good thing in my life. So where were you on that?
• 1:07:01
  At any point, did you regret or get angry about this? Because that's normal if you did, right?
• 1:07:09
  I would say that I don't recall feeling very frustrated.
• 1:07:15
  My grandparents took very good care of me.
• 1:07:18
  Carter and Glenda Morton, my mom's parents, basically moved in with us.
• 1:07:24
  And, you know, they were taking me to school, cooking meals,
• 1:07:27
  playing with me and, you know, all these kinds of things.
• 1:07:30
  And then, you know, I was going back and forth between them and Meemaw and Peepaw, my dad's parents.
• 1:07:38
  What i recall was more of the terror i guess because i mean it was like dad
• 1:07:46
  described it was pretty horrifying you know and now we barely react to it at
• 1:07:52
  this point you know 33 years later for.
• 1:07:56
  Mom and dad and 31 years later for me like mary still has seizures very few
• 1:08:01
  compared to when she was a child, but we don't even, it doesn't even get in, you know?
• 1:08:07
  But I mean, at the time, one of the things he didn't describe,
• 1:08:10
  but I mean, I have to kind of say it like there's a sort of a horror aspect
• 1:08:15
  to it because, you know, when someone has a grand mal seizure,
• 1:08:19
  typically there's a convulsive sort of headbanging motion forward, very violent.
• 1:08:25
  It happens immediately. it's a sucker
• 1:08:28
  punch every time that it happens and it
• 1:08:31
  seemed like with Mallory every fourth or fifth
• 1:08:34
  time that it happened she would be facing
• 1:08:37
  a granite countertop or the edge of a table and I mean knocked her front teeth
• 1:08:46
  out gashing her her eyebrow her head and you know and bleeding profusely all over the place.
• 1:08:55
  So, you know, she's coming out of a seizure and is covered in blood or in extreme pain from,
• 1:09:03
  you know, losing her two front teeth and screaming, you know,
• 1:09:08
  and then there was one period too,
• 1:09:10
  because the other fun part about this whole journey in my teenage years,
• 1:09:16
  There is a brief period where the chemical cocktail that she was under in her
• 1:09:23
  drug formula that was keeping her stable all of a sudden wasn't really working that well anymore.
• 1:09:31
  She had an uptick in seizures and the worst part of that was that.
• 1:09:37
  It made her hallucinate the most nightmarish scenarios, like having snakes crawling
• 1:09:44
  all over her, you know, insects all over her skin. And she could see them, but we couldn't.
• 1:09:50
  And that was a major thing. But as far as the forced maturity,
• 1:09:55
  I mean, it was a little tough growing up. Other kids didn't understand me.
• 1:09:59
  I think looking back on it a lot, and we were still moving around here and there
• 1:10:05
  a little bit. But so I did not, could not communicate with them the way they
• 1:10:12
  communicated with each other.
• 1:10:14
  And I mean, that led to a lot of bullying and stuff, you know.
• 1:10:18
  You're like, that dude is weird.
• 1:10:19
  And I, you know, as an adult looking back on it, I can totally understand why,
• 1:10:26
  you know, they probably did what they did or thought what they did.
• 1:10:29
  But, you know, as a as a young kid and stuff like that was difficult.
• 1:10:34
  You know, I felt like practically nobody liked me, but, you know,
• 1:10:38
  I did in high school, you know, I was lucky to have some friends that were more mature by that point.
• 1:10:45
  And one of my best friends, Mac Baggerly, you know, I kind of was in a similar
• 1:10:49
  scenario going into middle school, high school, but he and I played rec ball
• 1:10:53
  together in Forsyth. And he
• 1:10:55
  was one of the first, like, no matter what was going on, he stuck with me.
• 1:11:00
  We're still good friends today. But, you know, it wasn't like that up until that point.
• 1:11:05
  I mean, up until that point, it was just, I mean, how do you communicate?
• 1:11:10
  You know, because most people, like, most people don't experience that kind of stuff, you know.
• 1:11:16
  And it changes who you are and how you behave, I think, fundamentally.
• 1:11:20
  And it kind of gets irretractably tied up into your persona.
• 1:11:28
  And I'll just say this to kind of tie it off. But one of the things that I realized,
• 1:11:32
  too, and dad can touch on as well. I don't want to name drop anybody.
• 1:11:36
  But, you know, we thought Mallory had it bad. But by virtue of being in a neurology
• 1:11:44
  ward and seeing what was going on in some of those other hospital rooms,
• 1:11:49
  we weren't that bad off by comparison.
• 1:11:53
  And it's just perspective changes everything. You know, you think you've got
• 1:11:58
  it bad until you see what's going on next door. Yeah, absolutely.
• 1:12:04
  You walk down the street, and I talk about it a lot in the book because I think
• 1:12:09
  through God's providence, he
• 1:12:12
  puts people in your path that might actually make you feel kind of lucky.
• 1:12:16
  And in the worst moments in the hospital when, you know, I would be feeling really down.
• 1:12:22
  And Camille and I were never down at the same time. If I was up,
• 1:12:26
  she was down and vice versa. So I think that's part of God's plan.
• 1:12:29
  But, you know, I found myself up on the cancer ward one night with a bunch of
• 1:12:33
  parents that were facing life and death.
• 1:12:35
  And we had come to the realization that although Mallory's life wasn't great,
• 1:12:40
  we knew she wasn't going to pass away.
• 1:12:42
  Typically, some epileptics do.
• 1:12:44
  But, you know, we had a fighting chance here of getting her well.
• 1:12:48
  But you wind up on the cancer ward or with the Gendals and it's OK to drop their name.
• 1:12:53
  They're in the book. This couple raised a child that was born with cerebral
• 1:12:59
  palsy and had to have 100% care from the day he was born till the day he died a little past 21.
• 1:13:06
  And I talk about in the book going through a phase of being angry with God.
• 1:13:11
  And when I say angry with God, I mean, I didn't understand his will.
• 1:13:15
  You know, you had shown me the path. I took it. Everything seemed to work out.
• 1:13:19
  But here's my child. What have I done?
• 1:13:23
  To bring this on my family. What awful thing have I been as a human being because
• 1:13:30
  we were Christians, we were raised in the church, I believed in God fervently.
• 1:13:35
  And you know, that's really a bad place to be mentally.
• 1:13:38
  And I talk about that, but also talk about the chaplain that helped me through
• 1:13:43
  it at the hospital in Hackensack.
• 1:13:45
  But this is real world stuff that parents go through every single day when their
• 1:13:51
  child is suffering and they wonder, what did I do to bring this on them?
• 1:13:55
  And God really doesn't work like that.
• 1:13:58
  And I hope that folks that read the book will walk away with that message that
• 1:14:04
  things can be really horrible and bad, but God's there for you.
• 1:14:08
  And I had a friend that lost his daughter in a car accident and he turned away from God.
• 1:14:15
  And I reached out to a close friend and said, I don't know what to say to him.
• 1:14:19
  And he said, bottom line is the child died as a Christian, and they're in heaven with Jesus right now.
• 1:14:25
  Do they want their legacy to be that in their death, you turned away from God
• 1:14:30
  and you forgot everything that you taught them as a dad raising them?
• 1:14:36
  That's easy to say. I would say, too, that one thing that I've had to come to
• 1:14:42
  peace with is that if you're a religious person, if you're a person of faith,
• 1:14:47
  you know, some people say, like, well, you can't get angry with God.
• 1:14:50
  And I personally, I don't know if I'm right for saying this,
• 1:14:54
  but you absolutely can't.
• 1:14:55
  You absolutely can't. Oh, my beer.
• 1:14:57
  Yeah. And that's okay. I think the only thing that's not okay is to stay there.
• 1:15:05
  And I mean, even most recently, I got angry with God in January.
• 1:15:11
  You know, so just talking about Peepaw's passing again just briefly.
• 1:15:16
  But, you know, there's two things that Peepaw, especially in his later years,
• 1:15:21
  that he had an issue with and he hated being cold and he hated sticks.
• 1:15:26
  Like Dad was saying, he hated sticks and leaves in the yard because he didn't he didn't like it.
• 1:15:32
  He felt that it was unprofessional and looked sorry
• 1:15:35
  like a golf course yeah yeah he he
• 1:15:38
  did he did and you know dad and i
• 1:15:40
  talked about this but you know in his dementia what
• 1:15:44
  what actually happened was he he got up in the middle of the night which had
• 1:15:49
  never happened the entire time that he was in care and his hands had drawn up
• 1:15:55
  so he didn't have a lot of fine motor skills anymore but he made his way outside in January.
• 1:16:01
  It was 18 degrees outside.
• 1:16:04
  And essentially he got hypothermic and he passed.
• 1:16:09
  And initially my issue working through that was that, you know,
• 1:16:19
  our grandfather, My grandfather,
• 1:16:23
  94 years, a servant to Christ and his community.
• 1:16:34
  He never hurt anybody. He never withheld anything from anyone.
• 1:16:39
  And, you know, it was difficult to work through that somehow his reward for
• 1:16:46
  all of that was to freeze to death.
• 1:16:52
  And I was very angry. But where I eventually got to, though,
• 1:16:57
  because I was seriously, I got the news.
• 1:17:00
  He hadn't passed quite yet. There's a brief period where, you know,
• 1:17:06
  he was trying to be stabilized in the hospital.
• 1:17:08
  And I jumped in my truck and I was speeding down to planes trying to get there
• 1:17:14
  to catch him before he passed.
• 1:17:18
  I was like, why? How is that just?
• 1:17:24
  And the reality of it is that life just doesn't work that way.
• 1:17:28
  It's not just necessarily.
• 1:17:30
  And I kind of rationalized my way through it.
• 1:17:34
  I think that to a degree, I think he actually somewhat had a moment of clarity.
• 1:17:41
  And he knew that Meemaw wasn't doing very well. She still isn't at this point.
• 1:17:46
  And I think some part of him somewhere got up and he was a man of action his whole life,
• 1:17:55
  you know, and he took action and he went to prepare the way that that's how
• 1:18:02
  we choose to look at it ourselves.
• 1:18:04
  But you can apply that to everything.
• 1:18:07
  And, you know, that's where that that's the plan. That's at least the plan that
• 1:18:11
  I'm trying to how I'm trying to do it and how I'm trying to perceive it.
• 1:18:15
  But it can be hard to see that in the midst of extreme grief or pain.
• 1:18:22
  You know, it doesn't come across.
• 1:18:24
  It's very hard to see any kind of clarity or any rhyme or reason to it. It just seems me.
• 1:18:31
  Well, let me offer this because I'm such a wise person. Just ask me.
• 1:18:36
  God made us. God gave us those emotions, and he understands them better than we ever will.
• 1:18:41
  So our anger at him is probably almost amusing, and I don't mean that in a flippant way.
• 1:18:49
  I mean, it's like it's what he made us.
• 1:18:54
  This isn't your typical podcast, guys. No, no, it isn't. It's not. Which, go ahead Fig.
• 1:19:03
  I got a lot of questions still about flying. Yeah.
• 1:19:06
  Well, and that's where I wanted to go because I think we'd like,
• 1:19:09
  we talked earlier pre-show about bringing your bride Camille on and talking
• 1:19:14
  about what military families go through.
• 1:19:16
  We've reached out a couple times to different spouses because that's a big part of it, the military.
• 1:19:23
  And I try to always thank the veterans, the active duty, and the families who
• 1:19:27
  help the veterans in active duty do what they do.
• 1:19:30
  And and so focus some more on that but the other thing i'd like to get into
• 1:19:35
  is jay there's a picture of you here at i think seven you got your first how
• 1:19:43
  many seven-year-olds no that's not it,
• 1:19:47
  there it is thank you 12 there okay 12 years old ah well all the 12-year-olds
• 1:19:54
  get to ride around in Cobras.
• 1:19:55
  I mean, how cool is that? So I can see why you're interested in.
• 1:20:02
  You were interested in flying by the time you got to college.
• 1:20:05
  You were the coffee cadet, right? Is that what, that's what they called you?
• 1:20:08
  I was, I was going to say, I think I was three or four the first time I ever
• 1:20:13
  flew in a helicopter and it was over Niagara Falls.
• 1:20:17
  And I kind of, as I alluded to, as a child, I used to have a lot of fear,
• 1:20:22
  you know, and I think some of that That might've been just the environment that
• 1:20:26
  I was in, you know, I was freaked out about stuff.
• 1:20:29
  But what I'll say is panicking, losing it, like I kind of always did before
• 1:20:33
  the skids broke contact on that tour in Niagara Falls.
• 1:20:38
  But as soon as they did, it was like a switch flip.
• 1:20:42
  I distinctly, that's a core memory, I guess it's, I distinctly remember that.
• 1:20:49
  I really loved it, but there was also, there's kind of a gap between that point
• 1:20:53
  and that photo that you just saw.
• 1:20:56
  And we were living in Atlanta and, you know, dad had found out about the Army
• 1:21:02
  Aviation Heritage Foundation and we just kind of started showing up.
• 1:21:07
  And initially, you know, I think I was eight when we first went out there.
• 1:21:12
  There's not much that an eight-year-old can contribute in that environment,
• 1:21:15
  but I could hit go on the coffee pot and, you know, bring coffee around to people.
• 1:21:21
  And that wound up becoming an environment where I was mentored by arguably some
• 1:21:28
  of the most experienced combat helicopter pilots in the country over the next 10 years.
• 1:21:35
  And there were instances where I was riding around in Hueys and riding around
• 1:21:39
  in Cobras while I was listening to war stories and tenets of leadership that
• 1:21:45
  molded me into the person that I am today. And some of them were true.
• 1:21:50
  And some of them were true. 10%?
• 1:21:52
  Yeah. Oh, I think one of the funniest stories I heard one of the pilots telling
• 1:21:57
  Jay was about being in Vietnam and they went inadvertent IMC.
• 1:22:02
  And they thought if I let down the window in the Huey, I can stick my head out
• 1:22:06
  and fly. But the fog rolled into the cockpit.
• 1:22:09
  And and i was miraculously able to
• 1:22:12
  learn land and somebody said well how did you do
• 1:22:15
  it and this was a grown-up that actually said that to the guy he
• 1:22:17
  was making a joke with jay he goes oh i broke out the glass and the flight instruments
• 1:22:22
  and landed by braille right so he could feel the artificial horizon and all
• 1:22:26
  that and i thought oh my lord you know here we go but there were there were
• 1:22:30
  things that i told jay you may hear around the hangar don't go home and repeat
• 1:22:34
  in front of your mother because she'll never let you come back again.
• 1:22:37
  Typical aviators being aviators. Oh, no. He took his first flight.
• 1:22:42
  In a Huey with me, and there's a picture of that I think I sent you guys.
• 1:22:46
  It's definitely in the book. He's eight years old, and we fly down to Vidalia,
• 1:22:50
  Georgia, and I'm out flying passengers in the Huey, and I come back in Atlanta.
• 1:22:54
  He's standing there in a flight suit, and one of the guys that flew an OH-6
• 1:22:59
  in Vietnam, and that OH-6 actually was in the foundation, the same helicopter,
• 1:23:05
  I think at tail number seven, nine, or five, and a guy's name's Kurt Knapp.
• 1:23:09
  Kurt bought him a flight suit and i land and
• 1:23:12
  jay's standing there in a flight suit and i'm like lord where'd you get that
• 1:23:15
  oh mr knap bought it for me so i try to pay kurt back for the flight suit and
• 1:23:20
  he won't take my money he goes he's a sky soldier he's one of us he needs to
• 1:23:24
  be in a flight suit very cool and there's a picture of him at air shows you
• 1:23:28
  know standing there is an eight nine ten year old child.
• 1:23:33
  Briefing onlookers of a cobra or a huey and jay
• 1:23:36
  has memorized the dash 10 he knows he knows
• 1:23:39
  all the characteristics and all the pilots are
• 1:23:42
  like you know this is when we can sit here and chill because the kids
• 1:23:45
  got it and i've been calling him you know ever
• 1:23:49
  since then because that's how they referred to him so
• 1:23:51
  he got exposed to all these vietnam veterans he got exposed exposed to helicopter
• 1:23:56
  flying so it was no shock when he's an 11th grader he goes dad i want to be
• 1:24:01
  an army aviator and as much as i tried to push him to go air force i couldn't
• 1:24:05
  get him off of that And frankly, you know, we got him in.
• 1:24:09
  He had his private helicopter ratings and fixed wing ratings before he ever
• 1:24:13
  showed up at Fort Rucker, now Fort Novosel, for flight school.
• 1:24:17
  And he'd get the Cobra with me, and I'd let him fly it from the front seat.
• 1:24:24
  He could do it. You know, he couldn't hover it or land it at that point.
• 1:24:28
  But soon after he got his private helicopter rating, you know,
• 1:24:32
  I'd let him fly the Cobra with me.
• 1:24:34
  And there, that's the picture of him standing by the Cobra.
• 1:24:37
  He's eight years old and he knew everything about the weapon systems.
• 1:24:41
  He knew how the helmet sight subsystem worked. He knew everything.
• 1:24:45
  And the Cobra is a pretty much, yeah, it's a DOS operating system in today's language.
• 1:24:52
  And now that he's flying the, you know, the Echo model Apache version six with
• 1:24:57
  full glass cockpit, color avionics, I flew in the simulator with him at Fort Bragg two years ago.
• 1:25:04
  And I was in the front seat simulator and the guy that Jay was flying with before
• 1:25:10
  I got in is telling me all the switchology.
• 1:25:12
  I said, dude, make the gun shoot when I pull the trigger.
• 1:25:18
  Every glass you know has buttons all the way around it you go to this screen
• 1:25:23
  that screen I don't know that I would have made it but the technology that he's
• 1:25:29
  flying with make this thing pilot proof man.
• 1:25:31
  Trigger go bang put the thing on the thing come alongside the aircraft carrier
• 1:25:38
  and push a button and the sucker will come over and land on its home I know
• 1:25:42
  nothing of that yeah just put the thing on the thing,
• 1:25:46
  fantastic so well i want to make sure everybody
• 1:25:49
  knows that the story ends well mallory had a couple of
• 1:25:52
  brain surgeries a year apart she is
• 1:25:55
  34 years old now she can run a microwave oven
• 1:25:58
  she can finish a a puzzle on wheel
• 1:26:01
  of fortune oftentimes before we can she seizes in her sleep but at the worst
• 1:26:07
  times guys it was 150 seizures a day she's in a wheelchair with her head velcro
• 1:26:12
  back so she doesn't lunge into the table and wind up in the emergency room. It was terror.
• 1:26:20
  And I think something that's important when we had the last editor working on the book guys, it was,
• 1:26:26
  She told, she, she honed down chapter five, which is really all about Mallory's story.
• 1:26:32
  She honed it down to probably 25% of the real story. And she told us that people can't take it.
• 1:26:39
  She said, they will, they will start reading chapter five, Jeff,
• 1:26:42
  and they'll put the book down and they won't know that there's a good ending.
• 1:26:45
  They won't know what you did after that.
• 1:26:47
  They won't hear about Jay becoming an army aviator and how he turned out because they can't take it.
• 1:26:53
  And you know, she was right. It's tough.
• 1:26:57
  Yeah, that part of the book was tough. There was no doubt about it.
• 1:27:00
  And when you told me it was cut down, so I'm like, wow, okay, I get it.
• 1:27:05
  But as I said in the beginning, I think there's no more helpless feeling on
• 1:27:09
  the planet to any human than to sit there and watch your child suffering in
• 1:27:13
  the hospital and be totally helpless to do anything.
• 1:27:17
  You know what affected the family? When I got back into flying with the Army
• 1:27:21
  Aviation Heritage Foundation, and we've got three chapters. There's one in St.
• 1:27:25
  Louis, there's one in Mesa, Arizona, and the one in Hampton, Georgia.
• 1:27:28
  When I started flying again, it was me trying to get my life back in order because
• 1:27:33
  I knew there was this gaping hole that had left me that I had to get back so
• 1:27:40
  that I could be fulfilled and I could be happy.
• 1:27:42
  My professional career had to get turned back on. I started flying,
• 1:27:46
  but when I climbed in the cockpit and flew the Cobra for the first time with
• 1:27:49
  a Vietnam combat veteran named Judd.
• 1:27:52
  Judd had over 3,000 hours of war in Vietnam.
• 1:27:55
  It could be 5,000. I don't remember exactly, but holy smokes.
• 1:27:59
  I had not been taught how to really fly the Cobra until these Vietnam veterans
• 1:28:04
  got a hold of me in my mid-30s and said, what the heck? We were Cold War.
• 1:28:09
  Pop-up, fire-toe missile, drop, move. Pop-up, fire-toe missile, drop, move.
• 1:28:14
  These guys were flying close air support. They were in the middle of the fight.
• 1:28:18
  They were dealing with, you know, unbelievable circumstances in Vietnam.
• 1:28:22
  And honestly, I didn't know how to fly the thing.
• 1:28:25
  When I'm in the cockpit with Judd, I thought we were going to die.
• 1:28:28
  And I thought all I could think about is that first air show I flew and the
• 1:28:33
  first time back in the Cobra after I got out of the Army.
• 1:28:35
  We're going to die. I'm going to die. Camille's never going to forgive me.
• 1:28:41
  She's going to curse my grave because I've left her with two kids because I
• 1:28:46
  got in a helicopter with this Vietnam guy and he crashed me.
• 1:28:50
  That is my favorite bird. That's Legacy 998, which is painted in desert storm
• 1:28:57
  colors and flies in honor of CW-2 Rick Stroh, who was my pilot I mentioned earlier
• 1:29:02
  that got killed doing gunnery tables at Fort Bliss.
• 1:29:05
  But Jay has flown with me in that Cobra many times and a lot of other people.
• 1:29:11
  We were able to take civilians up for rides in the aircraft.
• 1:29:15
  And, you know, I'm sure you guys would agree with me. When you get out of the
• 1:29:18
  military, the thought of flying family members in the aircraft you flew in the
• 1:29:22
  military is really not a plausible thought.
• 1:29:26
  I have told my dad, Mallory, Camille, family members, friends,
• 1:29:32
  and I've taken them up and we put them through a Vietnam reenactment that's safe.
• 1:29:36
  But realistic, we do return to target maneuvers, high G loading maneuvers.
• 1:29:41
  They basically get a sense to a degree
• 1:29:44
  because nobody's really shooting at you of what the
• 1:29:46
  aircraft can do but getting in that aircraft with
• 1:29:50
  Jay is exhilarating to no end and
• 1:29:53
  now he's got his own flight folder so coffee cadet at eight now he is a pilot
• 1:29:59
  with our foundation he flew the Huey the other day for the first time with a
• 1:30:04
  Vietnam veteran got checked out in the Huey and it just It made my heart explode.
• 1:30:12
  It only can happen in America.
• 1:30:14
  So you said something, and you kind of glossed over it, though,
• 1:30:17
  that you kind of really learned about how that Cobra could or would fly 20 years
• 1:30:23
  after you left active duty.
• 1:30:26
  One, what do you think led to that? And two, I think you describe it in the
• 1:30:30
  book. Can you describe the...
• 1:30:33
  What was going through your mind and your heart as you're going through this
• 1:30:37
  the first time? Yeah. Yeah.
• 1:30:40
  It, it, it was, I had found out about the foundation, my neighbor in planes,
• 1:30:47
  a guy named Lonnie Wise was a Vietnam veteran.
• 1:30:49
  He was a member of the foundation and he'd come over and he told me they were
• 1:30:53
  looking for Cobra trained helicopter pilots.
• 1:30:56
  And the fact that I was also a maintenance test pilot made me,
• 1:31:01
  I guess a positive target for them and the fact that I was in my late 30s or early mid-30s.
• 1:31:09
  Most of the guys were Vietnam.
• 1:31:11
  Yeah I mean they're they're 50 and I'm 30 something and when the founder a guy
• 1:31:16
  named Mike Brady that started the foundation brought me in I'm the youngest
• 1:31:21
  pilot they've got and I'm fully qualifying the Cobra.
• 1:31:24
  I didn't have a boatload of time but maintenance test
• 1:31:28
  pilot the army at the point that i
• 1:31:30
  went through was very conservative in the
• 1:31:33
  training we did and it probably still is you know we're not doing
• 1:31:36
  close air support maneuvering flight obviously the
• 1:31:40
  black hawk down scenario in somalia had not
• 1:31:42
  happened there's a lot going on later but
• 1:31:46
  it's pop up shoot drop move you know we weren't
• 1:31:49
  doing return to target maneuvers we weren't doing g-loading
• 1:31:52
  turns we certainly were not banking at 90
• 1:31:56
  degrees and diving and doing all kinds of that
• 1:31:59
  stuff they told us no rapid input of flight controls if you do these things
• 1:32:03
  the aircraft will come apart and i get in the cockpit with retired cw4 vietnam
• 1:32:09
  hero judd lewis with the foundation i've never seen them fly i literally drove
• 1:32:16
  to camden south carolina for this air show,
• 1:32:19
  they're coming into land and I hear them and I'm rolling down the window,
• 1:32:23
  hanging out the window with my tongue hanging out, right?
• 1:32:26
  Because there's, the Cobra makes a distinctive sound like the hero. Oh yeah.
• 1:32:30
  And here they come in and I'm like, holy crap. I didn't even know I was going
• 1:32:34
  to get to fly, but Brady wanted to set the hook in me.
• 1:32:38
  I get there, and they go, you're going to fly the show. You're going to ride
• 1:32:41
  in the front seat, in the gunner seat with Judd Lewis.
• 1:32:44
  Still haven't seen it, have no idea what to expect. He runs the aircraft up,
• 1:32:49
  takes off, and we had two Cobras, a couple of Hueys, and an OH-6 in this Vietnam demo scenario.
• 1:32:58
  Judd pulls up to a 500-foot perch, and I think, okay, you know, nothing has happened.
• 1:33:05
  Well, the minute they started the show and he made his first dive in RTT,
• 1:33:11
  my heart rate is going through the roof, white-knuckling the telescopic sight
• 1:33:16
  unit, thinking, Camille's never going to forgive me, we're going to die.
• 1:33:20
  Fifteen minutes later, in the OH-6, being flown by a guy named Skip Lamb,
• 1:33:25
  he's up and all over the place, John Woodward, all of these incredible pilots.
• 1:33:28
  We land and i and i'm
• 1:33:31
  you know i'm almost needing a brown bag right to
• 1:33:35
  because i'm hyperventilating i had already split the back side of my flight
• 1:33:39
  suit on the pre-flight i climb out of the cockpit slither around the judd i'm
• 1:33:44
  white as a sheet and he looks at me goes what's the matter like holy you know
• 1:33:49
  what i've never seen the cobra phone like that thank god we didn't die what was that.
• 1:33:55
  He he's dumbfounded yeah he's
• 1:33:58
  like what do you mean what was what yeah he is completely what
• 1:34:02
  do you know we do it thought you were a combat cobra pilot man but i'm a i'm
• 1:34:09
  a cold war cobra pilot yeah so interestingly the tactics had changed and you
• 1:34:15
  know we seem to be behind the eight ball i heard your your podcast with the f-16 pilot You know,
• 1:34:21
  we're sitting there unloaded and we're supposed to be first responders.
• 1:34:25
  That won't happen twice, but it happened. Same thing here.
• 1:34:29
  We go from one scenario to the next and we're not really preparing the way we
• 1:34:34
  need to to make sure our combat fighters are ready.
• 1:34:37
  Fully prepared. So as the Iraq war starts and we start losing aircraft in Iraq
• 1:34:44
  because they're being genteel in the way they fly the aircraft,
• 1:34:49
  several of our foundation members are called back to what we call Mother Rucker,
• 1:34:53
  the home of Army Aviation, to right the ship.
• 1:34:56
  We have lost our close air support combat skills.
• 1:35:02
  And Judd and Jerry Kramidis and a number of other people I name in the book,
• 1:35:07
  go back to Rucker, and they go,
• 1:35:09
  the Cobra can do more because it's been phased out in 02, but the Apache's got
• 1:35:16
  a fully articulated rotor system.
• 1:35:18
  This thing can do barrel rolls and flips, and ironically,
• 1:35:22
  now one of our members is a Navy test pilot school graduate named Mark Metzger,
• 1:35:28
  and Mark is a guy in the videos you see online flying the A model Apache,
• 1:35:34
  doing backward flips barrel rolls inverted
• 1:35:38
  flight all of this stuff when he gets
• 1:35:40
  out of the army becomes a chief test pilot for for
• 1:35:44
  boeing in mesa arizona and this
• 1:35:48
  is where we have evolved to so thankfully jay can do a return to target maneuver
• 1:35:52
  in the apache he can do combat maneuvering flight but there was that little
• 1:35:57
  spell in early iraq that we didn't have the skills let's talk about that for
• 1:36:02
  a second. So you're sitting on the border and.
• 1:36:07
  Getting new airplanes. Yeah, waiting for this war to kick off.
• 1:36:12
  The war kicks off. What was the flying like for you?
• 1:36:16
  It was a tank war by definition at that point.
• 1:36:20
  I'm a maintenance guy, so I'm literally going into a rack in a Humvee with my
• 1:36:23
  maintenance team and a deuce and a half.
• 1:36:27
  I wind up going out and having to get in a Cobra for a combat mission,
• 1:36:31
  but the Cobra at that point had become a secondary filler to the Apache.
• 1:36:36
  It was the Apache's first real war against an armored threat.
• 1:36:41
  It had been in Panama and it had done some stuff.
• 1:36:44
  But General Dick Cody, at that point, a lieutenant colonel, if you remember,
• 1:36:49
  if you go back and study the Iraq war, there was a task force called Normandy.
• 1:36:55
  General Cody, at that point, Lieutenant Colonel Dick Cody, who became the Army
• 1:37:00
  Chief of Staff down the road, launches into Iraq with Apaches,
• 1:37:05
  and they took out the Iraqi early warning system.
• 1:37:10
  So the first bullets fired in Desert Storm came from an Apache,
• 1:37:15
  came from several Apaches, and they eradicated the early warning system for the Iraqi force.
• 1:37:23
  Task Force Normandy is declassified. There are videos out there about it. It's really cool.
• 1:37:28
  Interestingly, General Dick Cody's son, Lieutenant or Colonel Clint Cody,
• 1:37:35
  was Jay's commander at the 101st Airborne.
• 1:37:39
  So we have that connectivity going all the way back.
• 1:37:43
  And General Cody was just famously awarded for going into Western North Carolina
• 1:37:50
  in his personally owned OH-6.
• 1:37:52
  To provide belief and support to folks that were going through stuff based on the hurricane.
• 1:38:02
  That was lean, right? Yeah, back in September. Wow. An incredible family.
• 1:38:06
  They've got two Colonel Cody's that are prodigy of General Cody.
• 1:38:11
  And I think what Jay has told me, because he spent the last two years in recruiting
• 1:38:16
  command, another void we have is legacy service, right?
• 1:38:20
  So you look at these families and the lineage of service members and how that trickles down.
• 1:38:25
  It typically starts with somebody that's the leading edge, the tip of the spear,
• 1:38:30
  that got the family interested in the patriotism and the value of military service.
• 1:38:36
  And Jay would be a third-generation service member at this point.
• 1:38:42
  Jay, have you got combat time? No.
• 1:38:46
  I did one no-notice deployment with the 82nd.
• 1:38:51
  We were on immediate response force. when they killed the Quds Force commander Soleimani.
• 1:38:57
  And I want to say that was the very beginning of 2020 in Iraq.
• 1:39:02
  And then, you know, Iran shot ICBMs into Iraq. And when they did that,
• 1:39:08
  our unit activated and we kicked out.
• 1:39:11
  And it was one of the fastest deployments of a multifunctional aviation task force in history.
• 1:39:18
  It was 33 Stradair C-17s,
• 1:39:22
  and we basically put a miniature combat aviation brigade in Kuwait,
• 1:39:29
  and were pretty much fully mission capable in about a 30 to 45-day time period.
• 1:39:36
  And got to do some really cool stuff. There are deck landings with the Navy
• 1:39:41
  in the Arabian Gulf and a lot of area support missions because the National
• 1:39:47
  Guard had actually been holding down Kuwait,
• 1:39:50
  but they moved up into Iraq when the ICBMs were shot.
• 1:39:54
  And then we basically backfilled them.
• 1:39:58
  OK, the interesting thing about that was when that happened,
• 1:40:03
  I was on Christmas block leave and I got a phone call from our squadron XO and
• 1:40:09
  she said, I need you to come into work.
• 1:40:11
  And I knew pretty much immediately it was on at that point.
• 1:40:15
  And then I got on a C-17 on January 19th, 2020, which was the day I turned 26.
• 1:40:23
  And i was in kuwait within
• 1:40:27
  48 hours pretty much so wow but
• 1:40:30
  and i mean at that time we didn't really know what our
• 1:40:33
  mission was sure but as far
• 1:40:36
  as we knew we were going to combat and i mean
• 1:40:39
  that's something i think a lot of service members not just
• 1:40:41
  aviators have been through like when you're re-upping your
• 1:40:44
  mortuary affairs one more time and
• 1:40:48
  you're you're still i'm like i really hope nobody needs
• 1:40:51
  this you know write that letter yeah
• 1:40:54
  write a letter i hope nobody ever reads yeah right well
• 1:40:57
  i wrote i wrote them too as most most people do
• 1:41:00
  but that's the closest i've come to anything kinetic it's funny because i've
• 1:41:05
  been in the 82nd and the 101st my whole career two of the units that deployed
• 1:41:10
  the most through oif and oef and it just it was a timing thing As soon as I left Bragg,
• 1:41:18
  they had been a 58 unit when I got there.
• 1:41:20
  We converted them to Delta models. We converted them to Echo models before I left.
• 1:41:25
  They decided to put them... You're talking to Patches, right?
• 1:41:28
  Patchy models? Patches, yes.
• 1:41:30
  And built up an Echo unit, did that deployment and came back,
• 1:41:35
  got sent to Campbell after the captain's career course.
• 1:41:39
  And they were on Echo V4s. and we were on IRF followed me to Campbell.
• 1:41:48
  So the 101st assumed it when I got there and there was a brief period.
• 1:41:52
  I was actually at the joint readiness training center down in Louisiana attached to the G-SAB 6101.
• 1:42:02
  And that's a general support aviation battalion.
• 1:42:06
  It's all the heavy lift all the chinooks and
• 1:42:09
  stuff okay and my squadron commander
• 1:42:12
  called me he's like my next phone call is to colonel espinoza
• 1:42:16
  but it looks like we're getting activated i need all my apaches back on campbell
• 1:42:22
  now get your stuff turned in you
• 1:42:25
  know and get out of jrtc and russia has invaded and he gets called back.
• 1:42:33
  And we ripped out, which if anybody knows, you don't leave JRTC once it starts.
• 1:42:40
  Once you're in, nothing is going to de-latch you from that except,
• 1:42:44
  I guess, a Russian invasion.
• 1:42:46
  JRTC, define that. Joint Readiness Training Center. Thank you.
• 1:42:51
  Listen, we've got some listeners that have no military experience and you know, we love acronyms.
• 1:42:58
  Yeah, we do. So we got to find it. So thank you for that. And is that,
• 1:43:01
  hey, where is, which, which JRTC are you talking about? Where was it? That's in Louisiana.
• 1:43:07
  The other one is the NTC National Training Center, and that's out west,
• 1:43:11
  and it's a desert environment.
• 1:43:13
  So some people say JRTC is the more favorable of the two locations.
• 1:43:19
  But we ripped back, and then obviously nothing happened.
• 1:43:23
  You know, that was like a month that he was on call.
• 1:43:28
  Oh yeah that's true that's
• 1:43:31
  another thing that civilians don't understand when you've been activated
• 1:43:34
  like that when you leave home in the morning and
• 1:43:38
  go out there to the airfield you don't know
• 1:43:40
  if you're coming home so you need to say goodbye like
• 1:43:44
  40 times yeah we were rocking which
• 1:43:47
  is fun we were like two weeks
• 1:43:50
  two weeks we're going to run and then the difference was
• 1:43:54
  the stratair never came and that wound up not being of
• 1:43:57
  thing but we wound up converting that unit
• 1:44:00
  to echo v6 and built
• 1:44:04
  up a v6 unit so i kind of okay stop stop
• 1:44:07
  echo v6 help me
• 1:44:10
  out here so the the apache has gone through
• 1:44:13
  multiple variants at this
• 1:44:15
  point started with the alpha models the current base model
• 1:44:19
  is the echo and there's two different versions that
• 1:44:23
  are running around predominantly right now there's v4s and there's v6s and the
• 1:44:28
  difference is basically just the technology that's on the aircraft some of the
• 1:44:33
  capabilities that are different between the two the v6 is the modern variant
• 1:44:38
  that is like apple's on speed it's an apple computer on speed.
• 1:44:44
  It's really cool. I was just going to say, I feel like a lot of my career has been building units.
• 1:44:52
  I bet a lot of people feel that way, though, because you're building and training
• 1:44:57
  competency as best you can the entire time in case you need it.
• 1:45:03
  That's been the extent of my career, and I've really enjoyed it.
• 1:45:07
  No combat, which is a lesson. Jay, you're kind of playing this down a bit.
• 1:45:12
  But dad's going to add the color to this.
• 1:45:16
  He deploys over there, and they've got them flying around in the Persian Gulf
• 1:45:21
  around Iraqi attack vessels, and he's literally launching on and off.
• 1:45:27
  What was it, Jay? It was a naval vessel, but he's got carrier landings.
• 1:45:34
  And they're zipping around not knowing what in the world is going to happen
• 1:45:37
  with the Iranian retaliation.
• 1:45:40
  So they definitely have the same
• 1:45:43
  pucker factor any of us had that
• 1:45:46
  was that were in actual combat and the
• 1:45:49
  the rotor blade in behind me that i
• 1:45:52
  know the viewers can't all see as a cobra tail rotor blade jay
• 1:45:55
  is in the persian gulf at the same point
• 1:45:59
  in his life that i was so this
• 1:46:02
  blade has got the stars and
• 1:46:05
  bars but it's an actual photo of me
• 1:46:08
  in desert storm jay in the
• 1:46:11
  persian gulf at the same point in his career we got the carol one in and the
• 1:46:15
  apache on the other but the irony that your son is flying an attack helicopter
• 1:46:21
  in the same theater that you went to war right 30 years later what are the chances right.
• 1:46:30
  Yeah. Well, amazing. Well, first of all, what are the chances?
• 1:46:35
  That's probably significantly minuscule, probably unmeasurable, but 30 years apart.
• 1:46:42
  You know, what the hell do you think we're still doing there? Yeah.
• 1:46:48
  That's crazy. Right.
• 1:46:51
  Well, you should have finished it the first time, Jeff. Thank you both for your service, by the way.
• 1:46:56
  I'm going to say that right now. And, you know, Jeff, you're continuing,
• 1:46:59
  or Jay, your continued service.
• 1:47:02
  You got a ways to go if you're going to stick this out, man.
• 1:47:05
  Impressive. Impressive family heritage there.
• 1:47:08
  Thank you all for yours. It all started with my dad.
• 1:47:13
  And that really is where the title came from. My leading edge was my dad.
• 1:47:18
  And he quickly showed me his leading edge, which was Christ, Jesus.
• 1:47:23
  And I've tried to take
• 1:47:26
  that forward but I can tell you that what
• 1:47:29
  I lay out in the book that I hope will resonate with people is that task condition
• 1:47:36
  standard that we are all ingrained in as military aviators when the engine stops
• 1:47:42
  when Sully hit those birds instinct took over,
• 1:47:48
  and fortunately what dad ingrained in me the most important lesson of all was to trust,
• 1:47:53
  my family to believe in my family and
• 1:47:57
  to trust that god's got this and i will take that forward and i hope that jay
• 1:48:02
  has learned that i believe he has and i hope that your listeners pick that up
• 1:48:06
  that you can be the baddest of the bad attack helicopter pilots but at the end
• 1:48:11
  of the day when something's going on with your kid, it'll bring you to your knees.
• 1:48:15
  Amen. Yeah. I'll tell you that. I'll tell you about it.
• 1:48:19
  Wow. We've been at this one. I've got one last question, and it's the same question
• 1:48:22
  for both of you because people are going to like this answer.
• 1:48:25
  I don't know the answer to the first person I'm going to ask it to,
• 1:48:28
  but I knew the answer to the second one, and it's cool.
• 1:48:31
  Who pinned on your second lieutenant bars, Jay? Who commissioned you?
• 1:48:36
  I was commissioned by Peyton DeHart. He gave me my oath.
• 1:48:40
  I mean, my parents and my fiancé, my wife at the time, put my bars on,
• 1:48:46
  but the oath of office was given to me by Peyton, who is a foundation member.
• 1:48:52
  You talked about flying with him.
• 1:48:54
  Yep. He flew me in the Cobra, and he corresponded with me.
• 1:48:59
  He would send me emails and just check in on me very regularly all the way through
• 1:49:03
  college. Is he still with us?
• 1:49:05
  He is. Oh, yeah. I think he needs to join us. He's in great shape.
• 1:49:10
  He's still a Marine he runs every morning.
• 1:49:14
  I think he needs to join us a Vietnam attack pilot
• 1:49:17
  hell yeah Peyton was actually
• 1:49:20
  Grenada and Desert Storm he's only about
• 1:49:24
  four years older than I am oh okay I thought he was Vietnam five years older
• 1:49:28
  his fall sign was his ex-man but Peyton has been a mentor not only for me he
• 1:49:34
  was the guy that really took over my training in the Army Aviation Heritage
• 1:49:38
  Foundation because Peyton could fly a Cobra.
• 1:49:41
  He's got over 6,000 hours in a Cobra.
• 1:49:44
  The odds of getting that far, I'm sorry. Yeah, he's a Semper Fi Marine.
• 1:49:49
  He is probably arguably the world's greatest Cobra pilot in my book.
• 1:49:54
  Mark Metzger is right there with him.
• 1:49:57
  But Peyton commissioned J.J. has respected him his entire career and he's,
• 1:50:03
  You know, Jay's fiance, Katie, who also, you know, we haven't talked about at all.
• 1:50:08
  He meets her in ROTC, and she was an explosive ordinance disposal officer.
• 1:50:12
  So Katie is my bad-to-the-bone daughter-in-law.
• 1:50:16
  And I will tell you, when Jay deployed, Katie calls me, and she's sobbing,
• 1:50:23
  crying. And you know what I'm thinking.
• 1:50:25
  Uh-oh. Yeah. Yeah. There's something horrible.
• 1:50:29
  You're a tough EOD. Yeah. well thank
• 1:50:32
  god she's pretty quick to say he has
• 1:50:35
  deployed and he's over there with those Iranian gunboats she
• 1:50:38
  calls me and she's sobbing and crying i'm like what the world what is you know
• 1:50:42
  i'm immediately thinking something's happened to jay and she says i'm pregnant
• 1:50:46
  and i can't stop throwing up and i'm elated i'm elated because i know jay's
• 1:50:54
  okay yeah but i'm like let me get Oh, that's great.
• 1:50:58
  So she can help you with that. But you just told me I'm going to be a granddad.
• 1:51:02
  Yeah, I'm okay with that. I'm totally okay with that.
• 1:51:08
  Yeah, 100%. All right, second part of the question.
• 1:51:13
  It's who? Yeah, I already know the answer, but who pinned on your bars?
• 1:51:20
  Mine? Yes. Well, when President Carter commissioned me, my mother and my wife,
• 1:51:27
  Camille, pinned my bars on.
• 1:51:29
  But the coolest experience growing up, knowing the president of the United States
• 1:51:33
  and having him as a neighbor, he created a lot of unique opportunities for us.
• 1:51:39
  One of them was he actually gave me my oath of office down there on the commission
• 1:51:43
  where it says by the president.
• 1:51:44
  He hand wrote his signature, Jimmy Carter. And like I said, I know that there
• 1:51:50
  are people with mixed emotions and feelings about what kind of president he was.
• 1:51:54
  But I want you to walk away hearing this straight from my heart.
• 1:51:58
  He was one of the finest human beings and godly men I have ever known that did so much for humanity.
• 1:52:05
  And I couldn't be more proud to have called him friend and neighbor to my mom
• 1:52:10
  and dad, to our family, to have signed my oath of office and provided the opportunities.
• 1:52:16
  I'll tell you another funny one guys It's not in the book When he's governor
• 1:52:21
  of Georgia He invited my family to the governor's mansion He and Ms.
• 1:52:26
  Roseland For dinner For lunch or dinner One of the two We go there I've never seen an elevator.
• 1:52:33
  Amy Carter and I spent the day Riding up and down in the elevator Because I've
• 1:52:38
  never seen one in my life In Plains,
• 1:52:41
  Georgia So I'm at the governor's mansion as a child and mom and dad are having
• 1:52:46
  lunch with him before he's even thought of running for president.
• 1:52:50
  But the lineage and the history and the family ties, you know,
• 1:52:54
  to the Carter family go way back. And, you know,
• 1:52:58
  Honestly, his helicopters landing and bringing him in probably had a huge part
• 1:53:04
  to do with me getting interested in Army aviation and the reason Jay's there.
• 1:53:08
  And here we are as a Rotary Wing family, having served our country,
• 1:53:12
  and we're proud Americans.
• 1:53:15
  Well, that's fantastic. So, very cool.
• 1:53:19
  What a neat experience to get your oath of office and hand signature.
• 1:53:23
  That's very unique. President. Yeah.
• 1:53:27
  So indeed, thank you both. We've been going hour and 40 or so now.
• 1:53:31
  So we do need to land the plane and we want to say thank you both for your service.
• 1:53:35
  Thank you to your brides for their sacrifices to continue to do what you do.
• 1:53:41
  And Jay, I know you do sacrifices so your bride can do what she does.
• 1:53:45
  That's a big deal. It's not an easy life, but it's unspeakably rewarding.
• 1:53:53
  I mean, it's amazing the professionals you get to work with. So thank you for that.
• 1:53:57
  Let me also quickly thank Dave Hamilton over at BackBeatMedia.com,
• 1:54:01
  who provides our advertising for us and technical know-how and all that good
• 1:54:06
  stuff. So thank you, Dave.
• 1:54:09
  Thanks to Bago, who's been in the background today. Thank you,
• 1:54:13
  sir. And Sticks, who's MIA right now, but he's normally. Yeah.
• 1:54:17
  Thanks to Bago for being there for us, buddy.
• 1:54:20
  And we need to thank Badass. Badass. Badass. I don't know if he's still with
• 1:54:24
  us or not. I think he was here earlier.
• 1:54:26
  He said he might not make it, but he provided some pretty cool photos for us.
• 1:54:32
  BDSaviationphotography.com. We're grateful to you, sir, for allowing us to use
• 1:54:36
  your art. That's a picture of Jeff right there. Yeah. Thanks to Badass.
• 1:54:40
  Up on the video. So there he is. Yeah. He's here still with us. So thank you, Badass.
• 1:54:46
  Amazing, amazing photos. I don't know how he gets.
• 1:54:51
  They aren't pictures. They are art. Cool stuff.
• 1:54:56
  Yeah, I love the paint job on that, too. Thanks to HSI Wealth Strategies. Yeah, for sponsoring.
• 1:55:05
  And what's the other? The Every Plate. Oh, Every Plate. Thank you,
• 1:55:08
  Every Plate, for sponsoring this week.
• 1:55:10
  We're deeply humbled and grateful to you for stepping up and sponsoring the show.
• 1:55:18
  Thank you to our Patreon supporters who have lost all sense of commonality and normalcy.
• 1:55:26
  Financial management counseling is in your future because you have cracked your
• 1:55:30
  wallets and thrown money at us. Harder though it may be, we are humbled by that.
• 1:55:35
  Very humbled. We thanked him last week, but we didn't state the amount.
• 1:55:39
  And I want to circle back here on Sheriff, who made a $50 donation to the show.
• 1:55:45
  We're humbled by that, Sheriff. Thank you, Sheriff. Thank you so much.
• 1:55:49
  Show 12, Sheriff was our guest. And this is $149. But yeah, show 12,
• 1:55:55
  we were on a mission from God.
• 1:56:00
  You know yeah yeah yeah you know we did it in an airplane instead of an old uh caddy,
• 1:56:08
  all right now what else
• 1:56:12
  fig well if you could
• 1:56:14
  give us a rating make it five stars make it so ratings
• 1:56:18
  yeah so there i was slash rate if you can't give us five stars tell us Tell
• 1:56:24
  us what would make it five stars Because we're trainable Right We love good
• 1:56:28
  feedback We haven't given these email addresses in a long time either You can
• 1:56:31
  write to fig At sotherearewows.us Repeat R-E-P-E-T-E At sotherearewows.us,
• 1:56:39
  bago or sticks at so there i was
• 1:56:42
  dot us and give us good feedback if you have a question a comment
• 1:56:45
  or anything like that if you have a question ask sticks yeah stick
• 1:56:48
  sticks and bago are the real the real brains of this
• 1:56:51
  whole operation to be known yeah yeah
• 1:56:56
  merch man it's coming up on bikini
• 1:56:59
  season soon so there i was dot us slash merch get
• 1:57:02
  yourself a cool hat like i'm wearing or a polo shirt or
• 1:57:05
  or a bikini or a beach towel some towel hoodie trying to figure out how to get
• 1:57:13
  robin's bird bring designs involved in the whole merch thing but we've got on
• 1:57:18
  the way keychains and flasks and cool stuff that's all personalized to you so
• 1:57:23
  that'll that'll be cool we do that.
• 1:57:26
  I'm trying to think.
• 1:57:30
  Why is it of course now it's not plenty of nice hey
• 1:57:34
  and bago bago threw that up for us oh the book i can't believe i almost went
• 1:57:40
  with jeff and camille moss my leading edge by jeff and camille moss available
• 1:57:45
  on amazon anywhere else jeff not right now i mean direct from us but primarily
• 1:57:50
  amazon's the best source,
• 1:57:52
  yeah so that's jeff and jay uh on the cover uh
• 1:57:56
  hanging out there on an attack helicopter and some
• 1:57:59
  other photos uh in throughout the book like good picture book for us marines
• 1:58:03
  yeah a lot of pictures which i really did appreciate but i i like how it's written
• 1:58:08
  i like lessons learned at the very at the end of every chapter too it's kind
• 1:58:12
  of like you know debrief right yeah you hit the nail on the head.
• 1:58:19
  What's that noise? What's that sound? We're forgetting somebody.
• 1:58:22
  Well, that's the Dos Gringos. Those are the Dos Air Force F-16 guys that make
• 1:58:29
  the Air Force sound good.
• 1:58:31
  They let us use the music. They were guests on our program.
• 1:58:35
  I forgot what episode. It seems like a bajillion years ago now.
• 1:58:39
  Right. And they have four albums and not one bad song.
• 1:58:42
  If you like humor, you'll love their songs. It is hilarious.
• 1:58:50
  So, as soon as we have rotor heads on, Fig, any advice for folks until next
• 1:58:54
  week? Don't sit on the collective. Don't do it.
• 1:59:00
  Right? Collective? Collective. The up-down stick.
• 1:59:06
  100%. That's your up and down. Well, there I was, crossing the pond,
• 1:59:11
  and you could see that I wasn't exactly fun Of all the shit I was wearing on that day.
• 1:59:13
  Music.
• 1:59:19
  Now an F-16 is cramped enough But it's even worse With all that stuff supposed
• 1:59:25
  to save your life But we knew there was no way,
• 1:59:31
  Cause when you're going down the North Atlantic, man, it's over Hold on, it's what?
• 1:59:37
  He said it's over Where the hell have you been, soldier?
• 1:59:41
  Training, sir! Training, sir! What kind of training, son?
• 1:59:47
  Army training, sir! Army training, sir! And we are out!
• 1:59:53
  How apropos was that? I never know what you're going to play at the end. That was awesome.