Jon Thomas Little

West Point, 1964

Be Thou At Peace

Posted by Bill Murphy on November 26, 2006:

November 13, 1942-May 24, 1987 Nomination Letter for FCHS Hall of Fame Duty, Honor, Country sums up the life of Jon Thomas Little, a member of the Class of 1960 at Fern Creek High School. From the moment he left FCHS after graduation until six West Point cadets in dress uniforms carried the flag-draped casket of Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Jon T. Little to his final resting place on the plains at the United States Military Academy, he lived by those three simple words, Duty, Honor, Country. Jack as his classmates knew him in high school, earned a coveted congressional appointment to West Point where he followed in the footsteps of other cadets such as Ulysses S. Grant, Douglas A. McArthur and H. Norman Schwarzkopf. Jon Thomas Little entered this world in Indianapolis, Indiana, the son of proud parents, Thomas and Evelyn Little. Jack spent his early childhood in Plainfield, just 16 miles west of Indianapolis until 1957 when his family moved to Jeffersontown, Kentucky. Jack spent three years at FCHS, excelling in the classroom as a member of the National Beta Society and on the athletic field as a member of the track team. He also played guitar and loved to listen to Elvis and Bo Diddley. On July 5, 1960 -- Jack entered the Class of 1964 at West Point. He arrived with his guitar in one hand and white track shoes in the other. While at the academy, he ran on the Corps Squad track team where he earned his Major A. He also played in a cadet rock band and sang in the Glee Club and Protestant Chapel Choir. He appeared on the Ed Sullivan TV show with the Glee Club. In November of his senior year, Jack announced he was going to try for a pilot slot in the Air Force. He made it and gave up some of his graduation leave to report a month early to Laredo Air Force Base, Texas. Fifty-five weeks later, he pinned on his wings. While stationed at Laredo, he met Jane Sawyer, a senior in high school. She was struck by his vibrant blue eyes and blond hair. At first we were just friends, said Jane, but when Jack tutored me in chemistry three nights a week, the relationship became more than just friends. Jack and Jane married on May 13, 1966 and moved to Hill Air Force Base, Utah where he flew C-124 Globemasters with the 23rd Military Airlift Squadron. Jack hated Old Shakey as the propeller-driven planes were affectionately called. He wanted to fly fighters and actually got an F-100 Super Sabre assignment, but before he could pack his bags, an offer came to fly 0-1 Cessnas as a Forward Air Controller in Southeast Asia. Jack, the warrior, jumped at the chance to fly combat missions in the Vietnam War and wound up directing air strikes on North Vietnamese troops and trucks along the infamous Ho Chi Minh Trail in Laos. He was awarded a Distinguished Flying Cross and 16 Air Medals for 240 missions. After Vietnam, Jack attended T-37 training and became an instructor pilot at Laredo. Every student pilot wanted to fly with Jack the Fac. From Laredo, Lt. Little was assigned to Maelstrom Air Force Base, Montana as a missile officer. But sitting deep underground in a Minuteman silo wasn't what Jack wanted to do, so he volunteered to fly U-2 spy planes. On the night of August 19, 1975, two weeks before Saigon fell to North Vietnamese troops, Jack and another U-2 pilot were ferrying two planes from a base in Thailand to Guam, the first leg of a long trip back to home base in Tucson, Arizona. Suddenly, the control column slammed forward in the cockpit of Captain Little's plane and sent him in a dive toward the Gulf of Siam. I'm out of control, upside down and spinning, radioed Little Jon, his nickname in the squadron. Captain America, the nickname of his wingman, Captain Jim Barrilleaux, replied, "Get out, Get out, Get out." Using all of the strength he could muster, Jack reached between his legs and pulled the ejection handle. The darkened cockpit suddenly became as bright as day as the rocket under his ejection seat ignited and hurled him into space at 65,000 feet where it was 90-degrees below zero. On the way out of the aircraft, an oxygen hose connected to his pressure suit apparently cracked like a whip and broke the face shield of his helmet. The blow on the forehead knocked Jack unconscious and for the next three minutes or so he fell like a rag doll toward the water at the speed of 641 miles per hour. At 15,000 feet his parachute automatically deployed and gently carried him to a soft water landing. Jack regained consciousness once he hit the water, and was able to climb into his life raft and recover his survival radio. But he spent seven hours bobbing up and down in the Gulf of Siam before some Malay fishermen pulled him aboard a trawler. Instead of cutting his parachute loose and letting it sink, Jack tied it to the back of the boat. Rescue aircraft spotted the big orange chute and followed the trawler to a little village where Jack was eventually recovered by a rescue helicopter from his home base at Utapao. Whenever there is an accident involving an airplane in the Air Force, the pilot is Guilty, until proven Innocent, said Barrilleaux. Colonel Roger Cooper, Jack's squadron commander, agrees. The wing can fall off, and the pilot is blamed, laughed Cooper. Colonel Jerry Sinclair, who later became squadron commander, was in charge of the team enroute back to the states on April 16. He says there was an unwritten law in the Air Force at that time, Crash a U-2 and you never fly again. Eventually, Jack's reputation was restored. A board of inquiry determined that the problem was not pilot error. It was a problem with the auto-pilot. But the damage had already been done to Captain Little's career. Little was transferred from the U-2 squadron and reassigned to the United States Air Force Academy as an Air Laison Officer. He never flew again. But his wife says he never complained. Being the good officer that he was, he simply saluted and performed whatever duties he was assigned. As a result he was promoted to Major and Lieutenant Colonel. In 1983, while serving as Deputy Base Commander at Patrick AFB, near Cape Canaveral in Florida, Jack noticed a tiny bulge under his rib cage. The bulge turned out to be a 7 pound 3-ounce cancerous tumor attached to one of his kidneys. It was bigger than his son, Dax, was at birth. He survived surgery, but a year and a half later, the cancer returned and he was medically retired from the Air Force after 23 years in uniform before he could pin on the silver wings of a full Colonel. Jon Thomas Little never gave up. He thought he would live forever. In fact, he won five gold medals in an Over 40 foot race while taking more than 30 chemo pills a day. Jack finally surrendered to cancer on May 24, 1987. At his request, he was buried in his orange flight suit. Inside the left breast pocket was his all-purpose pocket knife his wife asked the funeral director to place there. He never flew without it, said Jane as she recalled other details of the ceremony at West Point. As a highly-decorated combat veteran. Jack was entitled to a flyover of military jets, but Jane was unable to arrange a flyover on the Memorial Day weekend when he was buried. But as Jack's wife, two children, mother, father, sister and former classmates from the Class of 1964 gathered at graveside, Jane heard a putt-putt sound. It was a single engine Cessna flying over the cemetery at West Point, the kind of plane he flew along The Trail in Laos. So in the end, Lt. Col. Jon Thomas Little got his flyover. His widow likes to think Jack the Fac arranged his own flyover. Today, he rests in peace among 65 classmates from the United States Military Academy, 25 of whom were killed during the Vietnam War. The mission of the United States Military Academy is to educate, train, and inspire the Corps of Cadets so that each graduate is a commissioned leader of character committed to the values of Duty, Honor, Country. Jack Little was more than just an "Officer and a Gentleman." He was a devoted husband, father and patriot and worthy of being enshrined in the Fern Creek High School Hall of Fame.

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