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When I was at high school, I thought it'd be nice to go into Air Force Academy and fly jets, but that was a very brief dream. Ha, ha. I'm too lanky to fit in the cockpit.

I can remember loving to recruit. I knew I was going to do my best. But traveling and recruiting doesn't appeal to me any more. It's not as much fun as it used to be.

The first thing I did after getting a Master's degree - and the Air Force was very kind; they let me stay on at school to get a Master's - I went to Denver for the Armed Forces Air Intelligence School, six months. Fundamentally, we had a major effort on in Southeast Asia, and this was training folks to support that effort.

I spent one semester in Air Force ROTC, as I wanted to be a pilot.

It is cool to make a pilot because you get to do all the fun stuff, and then you get to leave when all the tough stuff starts.

Boot Camp was great and very interesting. You got to use live rounds of ammunition and got to do a lot of crawling around with live rounds flying around you, so you really had to learn to keep your ass down - everything down for that matter.

When I was commissioned in the Air Force, I was committed to the institution for a career.

I loved the bootcamp and the training. It was the actual Navy and the structure after it that I realized wasn't for me because they're building soldiers. It's a system, and you can't really stick out; you can't be the oddball out in the military.

I was put in the Air Corps. I was never educated to serve in the military, but soon my activities in the American Air Corps became very interesting to me.

I was interested in aerospace and flying, and the U.S. is really the best place in the world for flying.