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After graduation from LHS I attended St. John’s College, Winfield, KS and Concordia University, Seward, NE and graduated from both.
After that I attended the Navy’s Aviation Officer Candidates School (AOCS), ala the movie “An Officer and a Gentleman”. After my commissioning as an Ensign, I married Victoria Cordt (Thierfelder) in December 1978. (see photo below) Then I attended flight training with the Navy to become a helicopter pilot and received my “Wings of Gold” in May of 1980. While in the Navy I deployed on three different aircraft carriers; USS Midway (now a museum in San Diego), USS Enterprise & USS Eisenhower. One of the most interesting shore tours I had was flying the VIP helicopter (pictured below) around the DC area.
I took an early retirement from the Navy in 1994 and Victoria & our three, soon to be teenage, sons moved to Leavenworth. All three sons attended IMAC, sorry. Since there weren’t any decent helicopter pilot opportunities in the 90’s, I spent a couple of years as a manager for a couple of companies in the Kansas City area. Four of the six years we lived in Leavenworth were spent at a couple of monotonous government jobs for the County of Leavenworth.
In 2000 we escaped Leavenworth again and moved to a suburb of Dallas due to my wife’s job relocation. In the Dallas area I was again a manager and also tried my hand at investment and insurance sales. Not so good.
Then I discovered that the Vietnam era helicopter pilots were either dying or retiring and oil prices were going up, so there was a huge opportunity for former helicopter pilots. I resumed my professional helicopter flying career working in the Gulf of Mexico flying to/from oil rigs. I left that Gulf to fly as a contractor off of the Navy supply ship, USNS Amelia Earhart, presently in the Western Pacific Ocean. (See the other helicopter photo below) I sure hope we don’t get lost. I also have a part-time job working for Northrop Grumman as a war-gamer, which I’ve done since the late 90’s. This PT jobs usually brings me to Fort Leavenworth once or twice a year, where my parents, brother and one son & his family live nearby. In fact I’ll be working the night shift on a war-game exercise at Fort Leavenworth the two weeks prior to our reunion. Hope to see ya’ll there.
