Journey Read online

  “I’m coming right over,” she bubbled on the phone the following evening after work. “I want to tell you all about him!”

  “But I’m already in my pajamas,” I told her, knowing that I’d have to be up at oh-dark-thirty to welcome my class of special education students at the Arnold Drive elementary school where I taught.

  “Perfect, I’m on my way!” she fired back, with a quiver of Cupid’s arrows deeply implanted in her imagination.

  Bursting through my front door, she made a beeline for the thick Little Rock phone book I kept wedged in beside my tiny microwave.

  “Let’s see … Santiago, Saunders, Schultz …” she mumbled as she ripped through the pages to find his address. “Here it is, Schwartz … Nathan, Neil, Nelson, Norton … That must be him, Norton A. Schwartz.” She was so proud of herself that she found him, and I’m like, C’mon, you’ve already got the man’s phone number and you know his name—this is not exactly rocket science, here.

  “Oh my God, Suzie. He lives right here in the McCain Park Apartments, only two buildings over! Put on some shoes, we’re going on a hike. He told me that he jogs twice every day, once at 5:00 a.m., then again at 7:00 every night. If you’d move a little faster than a turtle we should be able to sneak a peek when he gets home from his run tonight.”

  It was only 7:30, but with the short days of winter, the skies were already jet-black out there. I grabbed a flashlight and reverted back to my college hunting days—hunting for boys, that is. “But there is no way in heaven that I’m a match with anyone who gets up at 5:00 a.m.,” I whined as we slipped out the door.

  OK, so we found the right apartment. “Now what?” I asked, feeling like a fool standing outside a grown man’s apartment—an Air Force officer’s, no less—wearing pink wool pajamas with a huge Curious George printed on the front.

  “Personally, I’m hiding in here,” she said, climbing into a thicket of bushes immediately across the street from his front door. “But if you’d prefer to stay and introduce yourself, be my guest.”

  She nodded toward the roadway, where a tall, thin, very handsome man ran in our direction from about a quarter-mile away. Needless to say, I dove in beside her … but I came way too close to being busted. That man could run!

  We dropped completely out of sight as he ran past, but it was pretty clear to Angie that I liked what I saw. I decided that maybe there were some things in life for which I’d get up at 5:00!

  She waited until he was well inside his unit and we saw the lights turn on. Then she blurted out, “Why don’t I invite him to be my date to Julie’s wedding? That way he can see you all dressed up in your maid-of-honor dress, instead of the monkey suit you have on now. We could all go out for dinner after.”

  We could not have scripted this any better. She invited him and he accepted—very odd since he hates attending those kinds of things. Now that I think about it, I guess he really did like Angie!

  So we went to the wedding and just as planned, she introduced us just after the ceremony, then started complaining how hungry she was. What’s the poor guy going to say? Of course he had to take her somewhere to eat. So we got to his car, and ever the gentleman, he walked around and opened both passenger side doors—the front one for Angie, the back for me. “I’m fine here,” she said with a devilish grin as she sped into the back seat, leaving me to sit beside him in the front. He drove us both home, first dropping off Angie, then me. Of course he walked me to my door, but there was not even an attempt at anything beyond a quick handshake.

  “By the way, you looked very nice tonight,” he said, then turned and walked away.

  I stood outside my door and watched him get inside his car and start the engine. He started to pull away, then stopped and stuck his head outside the open window and left me with these words: “But I think I prefer you in those fuzzy pink pajamas.” What?? I wanted to bury my head in the sand.

  We started dating on the weekends. Angie was out and I was in. I found it strange that we’d often have to stop at Albertson’s on the way home from our dates. First it was for a pack of gum, then a loaf of bread, next a dozen eggs. I started to wonder if he had some kind of shopping fetish. Thing is, each time we’d stop to pick up whatever tiny thing he said he needed, we wound up leaving with an entire basket of groceries—for me! Later it hit me that this was his way to help me make ends meet by stocking up my fridge for the next week. I had never met anyone like him.

  I was teaching school and he was flying. Fine at first, then more and more things starting popping up that really got me irritated. We would lock in a time for a Saturday night date, then on Friday he’d call to cancel. “I’m really sorry, but I’ve got to fly again this weekend,” he’d say, having no clue how impolite it was on so many levels. Besides being irritated, I was also worried. I knew that most of his missions involved night flights and that scared me. Scared and irritated—not a great combination for young love. I suppose it wouldn’t have been so bad if he made up for it with awesome dates, but the truth is that when we did finally get together, “Mr. Thrill Ride” was so exhausted, he had very little, if anything, left for me. That’s how that whole TV thing came about—because he fell asleep in the middle of our date! While we were sitting there watching TV. I looked and he was out like a light. And that’s when I lost it because I was thinking, “You are dating! This is not married people, this is dating and he’s sleeping in the middle of our date!” So, yes. I slammed the door so hard that this stupid piece of scrap metal he had mounted on the wall completely broke loose and …

  Norty: Not to interrupt, but what Suzie is calling a “stupid piece of scrap metal” was actually a fifteen-pound section of a LAPES (low-altitude parachute extraction system) pallet that was custom framed. You could only get it done like that at Clark Air Base in the Philippines.

  Suzie: Would you please describe it?

  Norty: It’s a long, flat section of aluminum that’s strong enough to support a tank …

  Suzie: Thank you, Mr. Webster. As I said, this big, heavy, stupid piece of scrap metal that only a bachelor would have framed fell off the wall and apparently smashed the TV. I did feel bad about that part, but it was probably improperly hung in the first place, and I did have to show him that I was mad. I’m very good at being mad. And making up, which he isn’t. He hopes that by closing his eyes and ears that all the problems will just magically go away.

  Norty: Speaking of problems, I suppose now is as good a time as any for me to fess up with full disclosure about the “artwork.” It’s true that it’s a piece of a LAPES pallet from my time at Clark. I’ve just never really divulged how that came to be.

  We were on a training practice mission because there was a big inspection coming up and we were going to be the LAPES crew. We had to nail this thing. I was in the right seat and Major Wolf was in the left seat. It was the right-seat pilot’s responsibility to release the chutes that pulled the load out of the airplane. For it to work, the key was to make the release at that very instant that the airplane bottomed out at five to ten feet above the ground. Well, I got a little overanxious and I let it go at about forty feet. At these speeds, the difference between forty feet and ten feet is probably two milliseconds, but it was premature and the outcome was not pretty. Instead of skidding upright onto the turf as if should have done, the load smashed into the ground and disintegrated into a thousand different pieces. The piece that I had hanging on the wall was the largest piece that remained of this thirty-six-foot piece of extruded aluminum. Following the flight, the crew somehow had it framed and presented it to me. Now that I think about it, having it meet its end by smashing into the TV set is an appropriate bookend to how it was “conceived” in the first place.

  I may laugh about it now, but this was not a good situation. The squadron leadership could have taken me off the crew for that, and I’m sure they talked about it. Bottom line, they hung in there and believed that I would deliver the goods—and I did. We went out on that inspection and nailed
it. More importantly, we continued to do so on real-world missions. I used that piece of “fine art” to remind myself that anyone can make a mistake, but don’t do it again.

  I never did.

  Suzie: So we dated through the summer—by then school was out and I had taken a summer job as a lifeguard at the base pool—and occasionally Norty would drop by to “say hi”—which really means check me out in my swimming suit …

  Norty: There is certainly merit to that observation.

  Suzie: It was during one of those pool visits when I had 90 percent of my attention focused on two little kids who had absolutely no business being in that pool alone—that Norty decided to share with me, in passing, that our relationship (if that’s what you call it when two people are dating with no stated commitment of any kind) was about to be totally turned upside down. Months beforehand, apparently he had applied for a very special—very elite—assignment at the Pentagon. “I got it,” he said. “And it looks like I’ll be leaving for DC in a few weeks.”

  So that was that: he moved out of his apartment and left town. We agreed to try the long-distance thing, which meant exactly one phone call each Sunday—no more, no less. Atomic clocks could be set by the exactness off those calls. We were still dating, I suppose, but there was no talk about any next step or anything beyond that. He got so focused on work that he probably never gave it a second thought, but for me, it was kind of sad. Well, real sad.

  * * *

  So often you’ll hear those in the field talk about the pencil pushers in the Pentagon, as if a Pentagon assignment was akin to being banished to Siberia. But I loved working there. That “elite” program Suzie referenced was called the Air Staff Training program (ASTRA), a sort of internship for promising young officers. As a twenty-seven-year-old captain, I had an E-ring office and worked directly for Lt General Charles A. Gabriel, the Chief of Staff for Plans and Operations (then designated AF/XO). He would go on to become chief of staff of the Air Force. They were actually paying me to observe the inner workings of the U.S. military from the highest level, and what I learned was incalculable.

  Earlier I mentioned how I don’t consider myself to be a particularly pious Jew, yet so often events or situations take me back to earlier times and remind me how significant those core Judaic principles—and traditions—are to my foundation. My acceptance into the ASTRA program was one such experience.

  Once a year we celebrate the eight-day festival of Passover, which commemorates the Jews’ liberation from slavery in Egypt. We begin the observance with a Seder—a ritual feast where family and friends assemble to recount this ancient story from the book of Exodus. The Seder is so rich with symbols and customs, it’s always been one of my favorite traditions.

  As we close the front door following the prophet Elijah’s symbolic visit, we enjoy our fourth cup of wine, then everyone at the table breaks out in song—multiple generations doing their best to stay on-key while belting out the fifteen stanzas of “Dayenu,” the consummate Passover song. It’s an upbeat, cheerful song about our gratitude for God’s blessings. As specific blessings are recounted, we enthusiastically chime in with “Dayenu,” a Hebrew word that translates to “It would have been enough.” In this case, the theme reflects that while we are grateful for each of these blessings independently, our appreciation for them as a whole is multiplied exponentially.

  The concept is one that has evolved to encompass secular experiences, and there’s no better example than the gratitude I felt for my ASTRA selection. At this point in my career, almost any Pentagon position would have yielded growth opportunities for which I would have been extremely grateful. But to have an E-ring office and the chance to observe (and learn from) a three-star the likes of General Gabriel? Unimaginable. Was it really just fate that aligned my stars so perfectly that of all the young officers in the Air Force, I’d be the one chosen for such an opportunity?

  While providence may have played a role, months later I learned that the real “man behind the curtain” was Colonel Al Navas, the wing commander at Clark for whom I orchestrated the change-of-command ceremony. It turned out that he and Jack Eddlemon, who, like Al Navas, was a respected colonel and in this case one of three Air Force Planners, lobbied on my behalf to get me the ASTRA executive assistant position in the front office. It’s yet another example of why I am forever indebted to Al. Having the opportunity to work with him again was the icing on the cake, my own personal “dayenu moment.”

  Lt Gen Gabriel’s deputy was Maj Gen Jerry O’Malley, a fellow cadet at West Point and subsequently Gabriel’s vice commander at the Udorn Royal Thai Air Force, Thailand, where each of them flew over a hundred F-4 combat missions. Later on, when Gabriel became Chief, O’Malley would once again serve as his vice.

  These were two inspired leaders. It’s one thing to be taught effective leadership techniques, quite another to be a fly on the wall and observe them firsthand in the day-to-day interactions of two of the top military leaders of the time—to see how they interacted with civilian seniors, how they interacted with peers and subordinates, how they prepared for meetings, and how they navigated the complex issues of the day. So many things about the man I am today can be traced back to the principles, communication techniques, and decision processes I gleaned from Generals Gabriel and O’Malley back in 1980.

  This was a busy time in the AF/XO front office. Besides the usual suspects, anti-American sentiment in Iran was intensifying, with Ayatollah Khomeini’s rhetoric against the “Great American Satan” garnering more and more support. On November 4, 1979—just a few weeks after my arrival at the Pentagon—the American Embassy in Tehran was overrun by a group of Iranian students who supported the Iranian Revolution, and fifty-two American diplomats and citizens were taken hostage. Diplomatic attempts to free the captives were proving fruitless; days stretched into weeks, then months.

  Ted Koppel ticked off the days with late-night newscasts devoted entirely to the hostage crisis. Originally entitled The Iran Crisis: America Held Hostage, Day XXX (with “XXX” representing the number of days the hostages had been held), the show captured an enormous audience—so robust that ABC News president Roone Arledge believed it should become a permanent addition to the ABC late-night lineup, one that he felt would break The Tonight Show’s long-standing late-night ratings dominance. He renamed the show Nightline, and it has remained on ABC’s late-night schedule for the past thirty-six years, not to mention its franchised offspring sold to TV networks around the world. (ABC newsman Frank Reynolds hosted the original broadcast four days after the takeover. Koppel took over a few weeks later.)

  A classic photo of the quintessential Air Force couple, Jerry and Diane O’Malley. Seen here with General Gabriel.

  Personal collection of Sharon O'Malley Burg

  While the hostage situation was certainly at the forefront of all of our minds, there were broader enterprise issues that occupied the bulk of our time in the AF/XO organization. Our fleet of aircraft was in the midst of an unprecedented expansion, with recent acquisitions including the F-15, F-16, and A-10. Various classified programs ushered in a new buzzword that foretold a technology that would change the face of air combat: stealth. Although the public wouldn’t be made aware of them for years, we were well into the development of the F-117 stealth fighter and B-2 stealth bomber (known at the time as the Advanced Strategic Penetrating Aircraft—ASPA). There could not have been a better team to handle these complex issues than Generals Gabriel and O’Malley.

  General O’Malley was a charmer, a natural people person with one of the broadest professional networks I have ever seen. He was upbeat, completely transparent, and had a natural ability to spot one’s strengths and zero in on them—disregarding potential deficits yet taking full advantage of the assets to build highly effective teams. It was very empowering, and naturally motivational. By the same token, he was keenly aware of his own strengths and shortfalls, and eager to surround himself with experts who knew more about certain areas than he k
new himself.

  Surround yourself with experts in those areas in which you are not so strong.

  We grew quite close over the course of those six months, to the point of him unofficially adopting me. No matter how busy he was, he never missed an opportunity to pull me aside and share some personal insight that would serve as a growth opportunity for me. Questions were always encouraged, but he had no tolerance for subordinates wasting his time with requests for him to intercede on issues they were fully capable of handling themselves. He assigned the right people to tasks that suited them, and cut them loose to succeed. In most cases, they did. Observing his leadership style early on taught me that:

  Micromanaging is for micro-minded managers.

  It’s a surefire formula for winning a few battles, but losing the war.

  O’Malley made no bones about the fact that the bulk of his leadership philosophies were derived from Gabriel, just as so many of my own evolved from O’Malley’s. His top three leadership philosophies championed:

  • Integrity

  • Job Expertise

  • Sensitivity in Interactions with Others

  I happened to be in his office when he became aware of an Inspector General (IG) investigation filed against a high-ranking Air Force officer. “What a goddamn waste!” he vented, tossing the file into his out-box. “Here’s an excellent officer whose career will, most likely, be finished, because he was unable to keep his zipper zipped. There’s a reason we say ‘Integrity First,’ and it starts with integrity to yourself. You’ve got to be able to look at yourself in the mirror every morning, and respect what you see. You’ve got to be honest to your boss, and honest with the people you have working for you.”