How Having an A&P Benefitted Me

The boss man asked me to put a series of articles together to let all of you know my life story. Well not all of it, but the part of how getting my A&P benefitted me. Strangely enough it also benefitted lots of people besides myself. And I will say that there are multiple doors that opened to me because I had my A&P. So please be patient as I lay the groundwork with this first article. More will follow. So…..

I was born in an Air Force hospital in 1958. Yep – I’m the wheezinist geezer you probably know. And when I retired from the ANG in 2018 I had been the oldest member of the Indiana National Guard (Army and Air) for at least two years. My dad was a Crew Chief, my grandfather was a Crew Chief in the Army Air Corps in WWII. I had relatives in both the Union and Confederate armies as well as some who served in the War of Independence. As far as I know none of them distinguished themselves “above and beyond” which for sure included myself. Maybe I’m wrong but I think my relatives are all probably best categorized as those who served to the best of their ability.

My mom tells me that when I was really young I didn’t get the normal bedtime stories, instead my dad would tell me airplane stories. He had, and still has an amazing love of military aviation and he passed that along to me. I guess in a way I was preprogrammed both through genetics and nurture. My dad left the AF shortly after I was born but when I was six we attended the open house at Amarillo AFB (the base I was born at) where the Thunderbirds performed. They were flying the F-100 Super Sabre and those planes were just larger than life. Just a side note, there is an F-100 that operates out of Fort Wayne Indiana at the same base I retired from and it was always a sentimental journey when they flew it. That airplane has a “bang-in” burner which means that when the afterburner lights off there is a very loud bang. Modern fighters have “soft-light” burners which ignite quieter. Which leads into something else. If you haven’t stood right next to an engine running in full burner then you haven’t lived. Every molecule in your body vibrates as adrenaline courses through your veins. Double or even quadruple the engines, like on the B-1 and it’s, well, indescribable.

Back to the 1964 season Thunderbirds. In the 1960’s the Air Force was impressive, especially at open houses and airshows. None of the FAA and current whiny baby Air Force restrictions were in place. Planes flew over the spectators at low altitudes and really showcased the aircraft. At Nellis they even had Airpower Demonstration days where the dropped live bombs, napalm, and shot the guns, all within a distance today that would cause mass heart attacks within our sensitive sheepy population.

At 16 I soloed in a sailplane which was another life changing event and flying those is a very Zen sort of thing for me. This was in New Zealand and our tow plane was a bright yellow WW II era DeHavilland Tiger Moth biplane in RAF markings. There was a brief foray into powered flight instruction but I hated it. Inexplicably, when I heard there was an Air Force Academy I got excited about the idea of attending and becoming a fighter pilot. But the timing was wrong for application and my grades weren’t high enough. They could have been, but to the frustration of my teachers I was happy to get a B since it was easy and then goof off the rest of the time. There was another roadblock that I didn’t know was there until I joined the Air Force. Because I went to High School in New Zealand the Air Force didn’t recognize my diploma and classified me as a non-high school graduate and placed me as a GED. The funny thing is that the last year of high school in New Zealand is the equivalent of a freshman year in college. But whatever. Looking back the Academy would have been a disaster for me and the Air Force. I’m a rebel without a clue and the Academy staff and Commandant would have booted me within weeks.

My family moved back to the U.S. when I was 17 and as a typical high school grad I pretty much bummed around my parents house doing nothing. I worked enough to pay gas and insurance and have date money which normally occupied my evenings. You probably know where this is going with my parents and they finally reached their breaking point and to keep them happy I signed up for Community College, who also did not recognize my foreign diploma and said I had to take all the pre-101 courses. Sitting in pre-Algebra when you’ve taken a few terms of Calculus is Russian Roulette inducing agony. I lasted a term and quit. So it was back to the couch and the parental looks of concern at their firstborn, and disappointment mixed with beginnings of regret for not thinking in terms of birth control in 1957.

Then one fateful day, as I was slowly being absorbed by the couch, my dad told me that he was taking my brother to a nearby A&P school to check it out and asked if I wanted to go along. Since he was pointing a loaded 1911 at my forehead I decided that it might be fun. Besides that, if I died in that couch nobody would ever find my body. If you remember 1970’s décor and color schemes you’ll get it.

So I went with them and toured the place. The technology and smell of aircraft and parts reactivated my dormant genes that my dad had cruelly infected me with and I signed up. My brother did not. Looking back I wish he had because he went to work in a mom and pop furniture refinishing place. This was pre-OSHA days and he got leukemia from the chemicals and died a long and painful death in 1993 at the age of 33. Dan, I wish it had been me instead of you. You were by far the better human being.

Mechanically I wasn’t much. Both my dad and granddad, besides being aircraft mechanics had later become car mechanics and my granddad ran his own shop almost up until the day he died. As a kid I hung out in his shop but about all I was good for was wiping down the tools. He was a man of few words but did teach me a few things about working on cars.

But here’s what he really taught me. Patience and calm when things appear to be falling apart or when people have done something really stupid. One day my brother was in the shop with us and he had seen my grandpa using the hydraulic shop press to remove a ball bearing from a transmission shaft. He thought it looked fun and retrieved a bearing from the scrap pile and just set it on the plate and started pumping the ram down. Mind you, there was no shaft in this bearing. Just a 4 inch ball bearing with I don’t know how much pressure being applied to it by an eight year old daredevil. Within moments there was a bang and then the air was filled with flying deadly spheres as the bearing let loose. 2020 Dave flashes to the movie The Green Berets when they set off the Claymore mines. My brother was frozen in shock. Fortunately nobody was hurt except for a few holes in the wall. All my grandpa did was walk calmly over to move my brother away from the shop press. All he said was, “Here, here, you can’t do that.” And then he showed him how to correctly use the machine. Now don’t get me wrong, I sure don’t have the level of patience and calm that he did, but I got some of it. It helped me immensely later in life, especially when I became an instructor.

He also taught me to keep my mouth shut and only speak when I had something of value to add. By being that way, when he spoke you listened because you knew it wasn’t just going to be fluff. I’ve been in way too many situations where people were speaking just to let everyone know that they are important because they have something of value to add. The quintessential one is, “Just to piggyback on what the commander said…” and then they just say verbatim what the commander just said. It’s the same thing as making someone read a book and then you reading the book to them. Shut up you idiots! By doing that you just prove that you DON’T have anything important to say. Now the flip side is that if you are quiet most of the time then people may think you are anti-social. Ok. Yeah. I don’t care. Moving on.

I retired as a Maintenance Group Superintendent (E-9) and I always frustrated the poor MXG Commander at meetings because of my speak little philosophy. He would give his talk and then go around the room to other leadership to see what they had to add. Of course they were plenty of piggybackers but he always asked me last and my answer 99% of the time was, “Nothing to add sir” and he would press me to say something but I rarely did. Then came the last meeting the day of my retirement and he came to the end and said, “Chief, since this is your last meeting before retirement, do you have any final words for us?” My reply was, “Meeting adjourned” and it was. He said, “You heard the Chief.” Even in my current civilian job I still carry the same philosophy. And there is another reason I do it. I hate most meetings/briefings and the less I say the quicker it’s over.

One last thing I learned from my grandpa was charity. When the widows came into his shop to get their cars fixed he rarely charged them, or he at the least would deeply discount the price. He would do a tune up for $1 sometimes and would tell the ladies that it was a quick and easy job so the labor wasn’t much. I don’t think he knew that I saw what he was doing. He did that sort of thing though all areas in his life and it has stood me in good stead to emulate him. The karma you get back from giving someone your older laptop instead of charging them $30 is immeasurable. Taking someone’s duty so that they can be with family will gain you all sorts of loyalty and good morale.

Coming up in the next installment. Working in Arcades to put myself through A&P school and my first job as an aircraft mechanic working with a Korean War veteran helicopter mechanic. Oh, I should mention that he was an alcoholic. Stay tuned for jocularity and shenanigans.

– Dave Chamberlin