Posted by Craig Owings on February 11, 2021:

I met Gerry (the name he went by, pronounced Gary) in 2001. He was a flight instructor around Torrance Airport. I was working at El Camino college and got my pilots license and was looking into joining the Air Force. A teacher at the college knew him, and I started flying with Gerry in his Cessna 210, and went out to Krey field near Edwards AFB and flew gliders with him. I got to go to church with him and his wife. Fly quite a bit. He wrote me a letter of recommendation for the Air Force. I knew how lucky I was to fly with him, but I also didn't realize it in my 20s, the way I do now. He was a forward air controller (fac) in Vietnam. Prior to that, he was in B-29 bombers in Korea. He did well in flight school. Choose P-51 mustangs, though the instructors told him "don't be stupid, go jets, it's going to be a jet Air Force." But he wanted to be a P-51 pilot. Right before he went to P-51 school, he says "we sold all our P-51s to the French! So, I ended up in many-motors." Gerry had the heart of a fighter pilot. So, flying that bird dog in the Vietnam jungles, opening the window and flying with one hand and firing a gun out the window with the other didn't bother him. I got to see some incredible home movies he took. And I knew part of a bird dog preflight in country was to rattle the wings and see if there might be a grenade with a rubber band around it - over time the gas would eat away the rubber band and the grenade would go off. Don't want that to happen mid flight. Whenever you were walking towards a door, he would pause, let you go ahead and say, "go ahead...I'll race ya." Look forward to a different kind of flight with him one day.

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