So Others May Live | Personal Heroes Pt. 2
May 26th, 2008 . by JetmanToday, Memorial Day 2008, I’m sitting here alone writing. The kids are with their mom. My friends have long left for barbeques. The television is off and has been all day.
Today for the first time in eighteen years, it’s about memorializing my friends who will never have kids, who will not see another barbeque or a beer. It’s also about realizing that I lost more friends in seven years of peacetime service than most Americans have in the past seven years of warfare.
Most of my friends died after living only a few short years out of high school. They are my heroes.
As I’ve said before in the postscript of Bug’s Prayer and Core Values these are the types of people I want my boys to hear about when they ask what a hero is.
One hero who might not be remembered was a friend of mine from aircrew school, Rick Tafoya.
Rick was an Aviation Ordnanceman - AO Aircrewman, not directly in my rate. This was before they made all Aircrew jobs AW jobs.
Rick was cool and a great guy to hang out with, full of energy and positive about his future.
Richard (Rick) Tafoya - VP-50 Blue Dragons d. 1991
I remember running into Rick at the NAS Moffett McDonalds just a few months before his death. It was that night that I had a premonition that one of us wasn’t going to make it. Of course I thought it would be me dying, not him, and that part I recall as clear as yesterday.
Had I not picked VS as my platform. it could have easily been me onboard a VP-50 plane. I would have been in the VP pipeline, and knowing those folks at Alameda and Moffett, I probably would have picked orders to a squadron based there.
There I was… Bored on a Friday…
I was bored one Friday night in either in late 1990 or early 1991 and being underage in San Diego I decided to deadhead up on a C-12 transport to Moffett and see if any of my friends up there were having a fun time. I had just started my final school before the fleet and decided, Have Flightsuit, Will Travel. I knew some of the C-12 aircrew from my time at Pensacola where we all shared common survival training.
In fact one of them stationed at NAS Alameda, Scarlett "Sarah" Connor (best said in a Terminator style voice), was an aircrew classmate of mine from 1989 and she and I definitely did the Aircrew ‘cracks’ together, the O Course, and many other things.
She was also one of the roommates of the very first Navy female to complete SAR school in 1989. Scarlett was stationed up at NAS Alameda and was a blonde knockout who always had a great group to party or hang out with. I figured I would see what was going on and return to North Island either that night on the return leg or on Sunday night.
Of course this was before cell phones, remember what it was like to try to connect with anyone before cellular? If all else failed, I reasoned, I would bomb around the base until I found someone I knew.
I landed at Moffett and couldn’t locate anyone I knew by phone so I decided to take the Duty Driver up on his offer to grab some McD’s before the return flight to San Diego’s NAS North Island. We headed over there and as I walked out I saw Rick.
Rick had a scruffy beard growth and had just broken his arm. He had a grin on a mile wide when he saw me as I was going in and he was coming out.
"You’d better get a shave there shipwreck!" I shouted to Rick, "…don’t you remember that from P-cola?!?"
Rick was laughing as he had seen me at the same time and threw his arms halfway around my back as we shook hands.
We stood there for a short time, catching up.
Rick told me that he didn’t have to shave because he was on light duty, having just broken his arm snowboarding. I told him that I was headed back to NAS North Island but that I would come up again when I had a chance so we could hang out.
He also offered to teach me how to snowboard the next time I was up. According to Rick, the snow was killer in the Sierras. I think he mentioned Mammoth but it could have been Big Bear.
I was on a clock for the return flight so Rick gave me his squadron duty desk phone number and we parted company, me walking out and him walking to the counter to make his order.
I remember it like it was yesterday what happened next. When I walked out those doors a small voice in my head said,
You better turn around, because this is the last time you’re ever going to see Rick.
