Posted by Ace Bowman on September 2, 2004:

I first met Bruce on the first day of the first shuffle in Spanish class. He was the Section Leader, 1st Section. 1st Section was not exactly my beat, but like Bruce, I was a native born Californian and Spanish was not considered very exotic. Neither of us had a big problem with the subject, and for two years Bruce remained Leader as I bounced around the room now and again. Not until well into Cow Year did I share another classroom with Bruce. As we got into the Social Science part of the year, he developed that skill for asking a 20 part Unanswerable Question of our after-dinner distinguished visitor/speakers. Sometimes that was awesome, maybe too awesome for a few. Bruce and I both went into the Air Force, but followed different paths. In 1975, I was at Hq USAFE invoved with Operations Plans; lots of Plans at the time, but few Operations. Anyhow, it was a time of change and I was charged to go out to the various USAFE Installations and Wings to aid in dropping outdated(lots) and initiating new (a few)Plans. I got to Ankara, Turkey and was hosted by Bruce, a very happy surprise indeed. With his help, taking care of MAAG business took about half an afternoon, with a bit of followup the next morning. Best stop of the trip due to Bruce's prep. Sadly, though, the Turks came down hard on us just then for our action/inaction towards the Cyprus situation and the Greeks. Flight and overflight were suddenly tightly restricted, and I was going nowhere indefinitely. Bruce first got me better quarters(an understatement), and took steps to see what could be done to get me, and an increasing number of others arriving from hinterlands with the same problem, on our way. Three days later, we "detainees" rode to the airport, got on a C-130 and went to Avaino AB in Italy. As it turned out, Bruce had gotten the C-130 diverted outbound; its original scheduled landing in Athens, of course, was scrubbed. Most of the passengers were in fact bound for Athens, but there was little grousing just then, and Aviano was exactly where I needed to be. Bruce grabbed that ball and ran with it, happily. Since then, I saw Bruce at reunions and such, but not often enough.

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