Forty years ago, at nineteen years of age, I was lost, completely without direction or purpose in life.

So on a whim that had been building up inside me since I was fourteen, I signed up for a four-year hitch in the regular Air Force.

It was not a burning desire to serve my country that motivated me, but something completely unrelated to patriotism or service.

People ask me why I chose the USAF.

Was it because my dad served in the Air Force?

A little, but dad’s impact on my decision was way deeper than just that. I’d never even seen him in uniform, as his service was over by the time he and mom married.

When I was between the ages of six and thirteen, dad took me to see documentaries at the Parkwood movie theater for a buck. He would invariably nap through the 7 o’clock showing, wake during the intermission and watch the 9 o’clock show, so I would always get to see the movie twice.

I’d soak up travelogues like North Country and Alaskan Safari and Fred Bear’s adventures in archery. Scenes of high mountain lakes, trout-filled, pristine streams, and snow-covered mountain ranges.Of grizzly bears gorging themselves on epic salmon migrations, and bighorn sheep going head-to-head for domination of their breathtaking realm.

Seeing these things lit a fire inside me.

I became determined to go to a place like that and never return to provincial, homogeneous, painfully dull Northeast Philly ever again.

There was something better out there. Out west. In the North Country. In Alaska.

Far away from home.

So when at nineteen, I felt like I should do something drastic to change my life, it occurred to me that I might let Uncle Sam pay my way to one of these places.

It was May of 1979, and post-Vietnam War, post-Watergate sentiments weighed heavily on all Americans.

The Draft had ended in 1973, so the military was using incentives to entice new recruits.

Things like highly specialized training, guaranteed jobs and my pick of duty stations.

Little did we know that that was all about to change with the Iranian revolution and the taking hostage of the American embassy in Tehran. A change that has made a direct impact on the way we all look at military service now.

It was in this context on a day in May of 1979, I decided I was outta here. I went to the recruiting stations of the four major branches of the military down on Cottman Avenue and I made them all the same offer:

"Get me to the Rocky Mountains or Alaska and I'm all yours."

The Air Force offered me a six month school in Denver, with the chance of being stationed at Elmendorf Air Force Base in Alaska.

I was signed up within an hour of leaving my house.

What happened next can only be described as everything I had hoped for.

Kind of. The military's record of keeping promises is a little shaky.

While I was never stationed in Alaska, I did attend a six-month-long technical school at Lowery AFB in Aurora, Colorado. From February until August of 1980 I was, within the confines of my schedule, able to explore the Eastern slope of the Rockies, which was everything I had seen and dreamed about.

Spectacular and moving in every way, even when I close my eyes and remember it all these years later.

Upon graduation from tech school, the Air Force sent me to Holloman AFB in Alamogordo, New Mexico where I spent the next three and a half years flight testing inertial navigation systems for the B-1 bomber. And having an absolute ball.

Everybody who knows me knows I can go on and on about my time in the Alamo. 

The things I did and the people I met along the way are part of who I am today. The Northeast Philly kid in me was crushed and reconstituted in a hundred different crucibles over that short, three and a half year period of time, and I came out a very different person than I was when I left my house to enlist on that warm May afternoon..

Growing up on the streets of Philadelphia has deeply shaped my outlook on many things, but the time I spent in the Air Force turned out to be the springboard that has propelled me to everything I have become since.

Upon my honorable discharge in December of 1983, I accidentally entered the world of high tech electronic sales right around the conclusion of the first personal computer boom.

I also wound up back here in the Delaware Valley, as the best offer of employment I got upon my discharge was from a manufacturer’s rep firm in Cherry Hill, New Jersey, selling electronic components. The guts of everything electronic.

They were looking for a salesman who could represent their interests among military subcontractors. Somebody whose military experience would act as a rubber stamp for their credibility. It was almost too easy.

By virtue of everything I’d been trained to do in the Air Force, all I had to do was show up and tell a few stories about my time in the service.

The orders and the money rolled in.

By 1986 I met and married Carol, a St. Jerome’s girl, and we raised four wonderful kids ten minutes from our homes in Northeast Philly.

My kids all graduated from Archbishop Ryan High School, just like I did, and three of them went to St. Anselm School, just like I did.

Over those years I enjoyed a number of rewarding position in sales and marketing, traveled all over the United States and the World, and made a lot of money while every corner of the planet became connected by the Internet, computers came to our kitchen tables, and mobile phones forever changed the way we stay connected to each other.

And I got to be part of all of it.

100% because of my time in the Air Force.

Funny enough, as much as I wanted to get out of Philadelphia when I was young, I’m deeply happy to have accidentally come home, and I love my city despite its room for improvement. (It’s infinitely better today than it was in the seventies.)

And while nobody’s life is all good, today is a good day.

Instead of living on a mountain in Colorado I live ten minutes from the house I grew up in and I am profoundly fortunate to have breakfast with my parents every Sunday morning.

I do Friday happy hours with the guy who sat behind me in kindergarten, and I am deeply connected to the people, places, and things that I once tried so hard to run from.

During my time in the Air Force I realized that there really is no place like home, and for that, I am also deeply grateful.

I often use my military service to bring context to my work experience, but I do not prefer to wear my service on my chest like some kind of a badge of honor. In fact, I am writing this at the request of my son, Donny, who feels that all who serve deserve recognition and thanks, even though for some of us, there was no sacrifice, but instead our service is the gift that keeps on giving.

While I flew in a bunch of rickety, thirty-plus-year-old planes during my time at Holloman, I never had to look down the barrel of a gun, drive up on an IED, or face down a hostile enemy, nor would I ever want to.

I have tremendous respect for the courageous women and men of our military who have done so and continue to do so today.

I thank them and their families on this Veteran’s Day.

But when you see me, please don’t thank me for my service.

Allow me to thank you for the privilege to have served.