OTS-who’d have thunk it?

I reported to Officers Training School (OTS) at Medina Field in San Antonio, TX, on Jan. 3, 1980. Who ever imagined I’d end up there?

I got out of the Air Force after almost nine years because of some really bad supervisors in my last several assignments, low pay, and a desire to become a preacher/missionary. I never thought I’d go back into the military.

At the beginning of my last semester I started applying for preaching jobs in the Lubbock area. We had three children and one on the way at the time. What I found was that no congregation wanted a relatively new Christian (I was baptized in Oct. 1977) with a fresh degree and no experience. I had only one job offer that paid so little I wouldn’t have been able to pay my existing bills, let alone buy food and clothing. One day, out of frustration, I decided to talk to the Air Force recruiter about coming back into the military. I had in mind to just go back in as an enlisted airman. The recruiter asked me some questions about my prior military experience, my college grades, and my health. He told me that I was a good candidate for the VIP program of OTS. This was a program implemented in the late 1970s to get prior service airmen into OTS so the Air Force could have young officers with lots of military experience. It seems the Air Force let too many junior officers out of the service after the end of the Viet Nam war. By the mid to late 70s they found themselves with lots of senior officers but not enough junior officers. They initiated the VIP program to identify prior service airmen who had college degrees and who had served in fields where they needed junior officers. If a person qualified for the VIP program he didn’t have to go through as rigorous a screening process as non-prior service applicants. As I had been an aircraft maintenance technician and later a master instructor in aircraft maintenance they were very interested in me. It didn’t hurt that I had a very high GPA at college.

I took the Air Force Officers Qualifying Test in Amarillo on August 8, 1979 (as it happened, our fourth child–Jessica–was born in Lubbock, on the same day I was taking the test) and received very high scores. The Air Force offered me a slot at OTS as soon as I graduated from LCC. Our graduation ceremony was on December 7, 1979. I reported to OTS on January 3, 1980. Deborah and the kids moved to San Antonio with me and lived in a small, rented apartment near Medina Field.