New Horizons – Part Four
The Year of the Horse
It was late May of 1969, and I was ecstatic because I had just successfully completed the first phase of training to be an air traffic controller. Just before leaving the training center for a class celebration at a nearby bar, I took some time to call Kaz to give her the good news.
That morning, as I’d left for the center for my final problem, she’d wished me good luck—but had also told me that I shouldn’t worry because “horses” were strong and would always conquer difficult situations. Huh? It took me a few seconds to realize that she was talking about my Chinese Zodiac birth sign.
In the western world we commonly assign the twelve Astrological signs according to birth dates during any given year. Since I had been born between July 23rd and August 22nd, according to this chart I was born a Leo. However, in most of the Asian world birth signs are different and are also calculated differently.
The Chinese Zodiac is based on a twelve-year cycle, with each year of the lunar calendar in the cycle associated with an animal sign. For example, 2018 is the year of Earth Dog starting from February 16, 2018 (Chinese Spring Festival) and lasting to February 04, 2019. In 1942, when I was born, it was the Year of the Horse. Hence, I was a horse. Conversely, Kaz had been born in 1945, making her a chicken. I had learned all this just prior to my meeting her parents for the first time three long years ago.
When I had proposed to Kaz back on Okinawa she suggested that we should also ask her parents for permission to marry. I was understandably nervous but agreed that it would be proper since we would soon be leaving the island to live back in the U.S.
The meeting was arranged, and I was told that I would have to formally ask permission from, not only her parents, but also various other relatives during a dinner that had been planned precisely for this reason. The event was held one evening at a large Okinawan restaurant and I was surprised when I saw that there were at least fifteen other people in attendance. When Kaz and I entered the dining room everyone was already seated, and most were sipping on warm Japanese sake. Aside from Kaz, I knew no one sitting at the large rectangular dinner table, but she pointed out that her parents were seated together at the head of the table.
Her mom, Mrs. Shinkai, probably in her early fifties and dressed in a gorgeous off-white and gold kimono, was an attractive, olive-skinned woman with piercing dark eyes, a short wide nose, and high cheekbones. The “Asian fold” on her eyelids was not as pronounced as most, thereby giving her an almost Eurasian look. She wore her rich black hair, with flecks of gray, in a high tight bun, topped off with a small spray of tiny white and gold flowers. Her hands were unadorned, fingers daintily intertwined on the table before her and were set off with beautifully manicured nails.
There was no doubt that in her youth she had been a stunningly beautiful woman; even now, sitting quietly and staring straight ahead, she exuded an unmistakable air of feminine sexuality. Kaz’s stepfather, on the other hand, was small and frail, his dark facial skin pulled tightly over his face, giving him an almost cadaver-like appearance.
Her natural father had been killed late in the war, and this man, his older brother, had stepped up and honorably married the widow to help raise Kaz and her sister.
As he sat there toying with his small pitcher of sake, he looked tiny—his traditional male dark gray kimono almost swallowing his body save for his small balding head. He looked to be at least thirty or more years older than his wife.
As I gazed uneasily at the guests, Kaz whispered to me that she was going to introduce me to each and every person at the table and that I was to bow, in the best Japanese style, as each introduction was made.
Earlier she had coached me that when the time came, she would make each introduction. Then that person would rise, face me, and bow. I, on the other hand, had to ensure that my return bow was grander, lower, and lasted longer.
After taking our seats in the only two empty chairs, a waiter appeared out of nowhere to pour our serving of warm sake into the tiny saucer-like ampoules which had been placed next to the petite and gaily decorated sake containers. Then the introductions began.
As I finally took my seat after the last introduction, as if on cue everyone stood and raised their little saucers in a toast, after which one of the guests gruffly barked out the word, “Kanpai!” This, I had learned some time back, was the Japanese equivalent of our saying “cheers”, and literally meant, “Empty your glass.”
After tipping my head back and letting the warm sake slide down my throat, we all sat back down. As I adjusted my chair, I sensed that every eye at the table was now on me. Under the table Kaz gently tapped my knee with hers and softly whispered that it was time for me to address her parents.
I stood slowly and turned slightly to my left to address her mother and father. Our eyes met, and I began my small speech.
“I’m sorry but my Japanese is not good enough for me to say what I want to say, so I will speak in English.” I paused to let Kaz translate. “We are here today for me to ask your permission to marry your daughter. I have known Kazumi for many months and we have decided that we want to marry. I know this will cause a burden for your family because in a few months we plan to return to my home in the United States to live our life together. So, with your blessing I would like to ask your permission for me to take your daughter’s hand in marriage. Domo arigato gozaimasu.” I bowed long and deep and took my chair.
There was a long uncomfortable silence, then Kaz’s mother turned and spoke a few words softly to her husband. With a short head-bob he acknowledged his wife’s words and without opening his lips made a deep grunting sound.
She then turned to face me, and her eyes locked onto mine. “You stole my daughter!” she said loudly and forcefully.
Taken completely by surprise, because Kaz had told me that neither parent spoke nor understood any English, she had just accused me of stealing Kaz from her. I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to respond but I thought maybe I should issue some sort of denial at the least. Before I could say anything Kaz squeezed my arm tightly and began to address her mother in Japanese. Although I couldn’t understand all she was saying, it didn’t sound very pleasant.
Her mom listened to Kaz for a few moments then raised her hand. Kaz stopped talking. She then began a slow and measured response in Japanese. She spoke for several minutes, her face softening as she spoke, with her eyes lovingly centered on her eldest daughter.
When she finished, Kaz turned to me, her eyes beginning to fill with tears, and said, “My mom said that although she doesn’t completely agree with our getting married, she is going to give her permission anyway, and this is the reason why.
“After I told her a few days ago that we were planning to get married she decided to visit an Okinawan fortune teller. However, before leaving she asked me if I knew when you were born. I told her you were born on August 20, 1942. At the time I didn’t know why she was asking.
“During the séance, and without knowing our birthdates beforehand, the fortune teller told her that as she looked into the future, she had a vision of a chicken riding a horse. When she came out of her séance, she asked my mother what our birthdates were.
“Upon learning that I had been born in the year of the Chicken and you in the year of the Horse, the fortune teller told her there was nothing that could be done. In a vision that had come to her during the séance she’d seen a chicken sitting on top of a horse. She interpreted that to mean that those two were meant to be together. Further, because the chicken was riding the horse it meant that the horse was taking the chicken into the future with him. To her, all this meant that fate had already dictated and foretold of our marriage.”
I was shocked and didn’t know what to say.
Suddenly and magically, the mood around the table instantly changed, and everyone began excitedly talking to everyone else. A man sitting a couple of chairs to my left stood and came up to bow and shake my hand. Confused, I stood and extended my hand as he started his bow. I quickly pulled my hand back and began a deep bow just as he straightened up and stuck his hand out to shake my now retracted hand. He graciously waited until I finished my bow to grab my hand and shake it vigorously.
Kaz was engaged in conversation with several ladies across the table, dabbing her eyes and nose with a small hanky she’d extracted from her purse as I sat back down. I poured myself a little slug of sake and glanced over to Mrs. Shinkai who was in spirited conversation with a couple of ladies who had been sitting across from us earlier. As I raised the shot of sake up to my lips, she looked over to me and smiled warmly and I managed to smile back. I looked at her husband and was surprised to see that he seemed to be dozing off.
ATC Training
“Gentlemen: forget everything you just learned in Oklahoma City! This is Houston Center, and you’re in the real fucking world now! If you think OKC was tough you’re in for a big fucking surprise!”
Those were the first words our Lead Instructor, Bill (call me Billy) Mauldin, said on the first training day, to our class of fifteen who had just survived nine hellish weeks at the Aeronautical Center. Originally, Houston had sent twenty developmental controllers (what we were called until as long as we were in the training program) for the nine-week course, but five, including Bill, had failed the program and would no longer be continuing in the program.
Having washed out of the ATC training program, they were sent to the floor (as the control room was called) and temporarily assigned to permanent crews of Flight Data Specialists (FDS). These crews were responsible for the hand-printing and loading of machine-printed flight progress strips into metal holders, and the delivery of all these strips to active ATC sectors.
The specialists assigned to these crews were made up of ATC training program washouts who had failed that program many years ago. In those days, instead of being fired or sent to a non-ATC facility, they were offered jobs at a GS-7 level as FDS in the enroute center to which they were originally assigned. There they would remain for the rest of their careers with no chance for advancement or reassignment to a higher paying grade or facility.
In the radar control rooms of the 1960’s and the early 1970’s, controllers worked on large flat broadband radars and used radio communications equipment which had been salvaged from old World War II warships. Flights displayed on the glass-topped green-tinted radar scopes appeared as bright blips and were identified by laying rectangular pieces of transparent Plexiglas, about one-and-a-half-inch long by half-inch tall with one end cut diagonally, over each blip. Called “shrimp boats”, the aircraft’s flight data was written on them with black grease pencil, and the controller pushed them along the radar scope’s glass surface following the radar blip representing the aircraft.
Flight progress strips, displaying the flight data of a particular flight, were stacked vertically on a slanted flat shelf next to the radar where the radar and the manual controller working the sector could read them. The data on each strip was either hand-printed or printed by old dot-matrix printers on sheets of heavy-gauge perforated paper. The machine printed strips’ data was transmitted by airline operations personnel by feeding pre-punched IBM cards containing an air carrier’s flight plan into primitive pre-digital card readers which then fed the data to the printers.
The few hand-written strips were produced from flight plans which had been filed by pilots at an FSS and then phone-called into the ARTCC by the FSS specialists.
FDS’s were responsible for ripping the printed sheets of paper of the printers at their perforations and sliding the rectangular strips of paper containing a flight’s data into metal holders. They had to determine to what sector out of over a hundred each strip belonged, and arrange the loaded metal holders onto a large plastic tray which they would carry to each sector in order to facilitate a logical delivery order.
Most of the permanent FDS’s were good natured and really efficient in their duties, and for the most part they seemed happy and satisfied in their jobs. They got along well with most of the controller workforce, and because they were permanent employees, they usually didn’t have to deliver flight progress strips to sectors, but instead usually manned the phones, printers, and teletype machines to copy and “stuff” flight strips into flight strip holders. Delivering the strips was mostly done by the temporarily-assigned ATC washouts; while delivering these strips they were referred to as “runners”.
As they made the rounds of the control room floor delivering their load of flight progress strips, the runners were usually hassled and vocally put down by some of the controllers at the sectors. For example, in the event a runner mistakenly delivered a Houston arrival strip to a San Antonio departure sector, usually an older or senior controller at that sector would subject the runner to a barrage of verbal insults that usually culminated in having the strip thrown back at the runner’s head.
Although the paper strip itself was harmless the heavy metal holder it was stuffed into could definitely cause some damage. Many times, these thrown strip holders would cause the runner to drop his entire load of strips on the floor as he tried to keep from getting hit in the eye, or worse. He would then have to rearrange all the dropped strips back onto his tray to continue his deliveries. It was a humiliating and degrading job.
Journeyman controllers, especially the older ones, seemed to pride themselves in not only never remembering, or even learning, the runners’ names, but also in making their lives a living hell. Runners were commonly referred to as “sookies” or just plain “losers”. When a runner arrived at a sector to deliver strips, more often than not, the veteran controllers would make insulting comments about the runner’s appearance, dress, or body size—making their already difficult work environment a little less comfortable—to say the least.
If a runner complained to a supervisor about any mistreatment the controller would usually just get a gentle talking to, and the runner would be tagged as a “rat”. Rougher than normal treatment would usually ensue by not only the guilty controller but the rest of his crew as well. It was not uncommon to “inadvertently” trip a rat runner as he hurried from sector to sector delivering his strips and then laugh maniacally while the runner tried to reload his tray with the strips that were now spread all over the control room’s floor.
The washouts would be required to perform this thankless job until the FAA found non-ATC jobs within the region to send them to—usually six to nine months but sometimes as long as two to three years. The best option they could hope for was to be sent to a Flight Service Station (FSS) within the Southwest Region, where they would again enter a training program to learn how to take flight plans, give weather briefings, airport advisories, and broadcast NOTAMs (Notices to Airmen) over aeronautical radio frequencies.
These facilities were typically located in small remote towns such as Cotulla, Texas, where Bill feared he’d end up, or McAllen, Texas, near the Texas-Mexico border. Staffing at these stations usually numbered less than ten FSS Specialists, and the GS pay level for a journeyman was GS-8 or 9, depending on the aircraft traffic density in their particular geographical area.
Enroute ATC facilities in Texas, such as Houston or Fort Worth Air Route Traffic Control Centers (ARTCCs) usually numbered three hundred controllers and supervisors, and the journeyman GS pay level was GS-13.
Because the majority of the personnel who worked at these FSS’s were ATC training washouts, they were held in very low esteem by air traffic controllers and were also commonly referred to as losers.
When I was learning to fly, I came into contact with several employees of flight service stations as I completed various stages of my pilot training. In the air they provided me with valuable enroute and destination airport weather information and many times suggested alternative routings to make my flights easier and safer. I thought of them as professional and had the highest regard for their expertise. So, it was difficult for me to listen to my non-pilot controller peers and superiors degrade the work that these dedicated people performed daily just because they may have washed out of the ATC training program.
***
As badly as I felt for Bill and the rest of the runners, I didn’t have a lot of time to worry about their unfortunate situation. I had enough to think about after Billy explained what our future training program entailed.
Having memorized the fictitious Oklahoma City Center aeronautical airway map for our course at the academy, I was told that I would now have to re-memorize both high and low altitude Houston ARTCC (ZHU) aeronautical maps of my assigned area for the rest of my training program here. Although the academy’s maps were less congested and easy to memorize, the actual ZHU maps were extremely complex and highly congested with copious amounts of aeronautical data. As if that weren’t enough, we were now required to memorize every Ultra-high (UHF) and Very High (VHF) radio frequency that was used in all the high and low altitude sectors in the center.
To my dismay, we were also told that because there was a controller shortage, there were going to be days when the entire training staff would be called down to the floor to augment certain crews that were short due to sick leaves, or because severe weather was impacting a number of sectors. On those days (perish the thought), since we were not certified on anything, we were to be temporarily assigned to the floor to help out the Flight Data section. And although we were not expected to do a lot of running, it was inevitable that the FDS supervisor would make us run strips out to the sectors anyway to take some of the heat off of the permanents.
Since we had been successful in passing our initial training at the academy the harassment (call it hazing) would not be as severe as the washouts received—but it would still be there. Pushing that thought out of my mind as much as possible I decided to concentrate on my training.
It was also explained to us that we would soon all be promoted to GS-9s, having completed initial training. If we were successful on completing our next phase of training, we could expect a promotion to GS-11—and so forth, until we reached journeyman level of GS-13. We could expect to stay at each of the GS levels for at least a year before being promoted to the next level. The whole program should take a full four years to complete, and the bad news was that anytime during those four years we could fail and be sent back to the floor, and on to an FSS for the rest of our career.
The Whitten Amendment
Briefly, the Whitten Amendment was a bill passed by Congress in 1952, allowing the suspension of time-in-grade requirements for Federal Employees in training programs that required ascension through GS (General Scale) ranks before reaching Full Performance Level (FPL) or Journeyman level status. Usually, time in grade requirements stipulated that before an employee could be promoted to the next GS level, he/she must spend at least 12 months at their present GS level. This 12-month waiting period was known as ‘time-in-grade’.
The Whitten amendment effectively did away with time-in-grade requirements under certain conditions. Since this bill was not all inclusive and was meant to only be applied if/when an agency met all requirements, it was used sparingly. The one thing that would for sure trigger its implementation would be for a governmental agency to declare a general staffing emergency. In short, it would have to provide documentation to Congress that because of critical staffing levels within its ranks, time-in-grade requirements were hindering its ability to promote essential and otherwise qualified personnel to higher GS grades.
In early 1969, the FAA petitioned Congress to invoke the Whitten Amendment claiming that critical staffing levels existed at most FAA ARTCCs, RAPCONs, and TRACONS. Although the agency had sufficient personnel in the training pipeline to alleviate the critical staffing shortages, time-in-grade requirements would hinder an adequate number of these developmentals to attain FPL status to fully backfill the cadre of upcoming retirements.
Early one morning, shortly before I was scheduled to take some practice problems in the training department, our lead instructor entered the room and asked for our attention.
“OK guys, this is going to be short and sweet”. He said, while flicking his lighter trying to light the first cigarette of his two-pack-a-day habit. “Who knows what the Whitten Amendment is?”
No one raised his hand, and we all kind of looked at each other. My immediate thought what I somehow, I had either skipped learning an ATC rule, or the FAA just invented a new one for me. I was all ears.
“The Whitten Amendment…” He took a long drag and blew a blue-gray cloud of smoke up toward the ceiling. “…in short, eliminates time and grade requirements between GS grades at this facility. So right now, all of you who have just been promoted to GS-9s, would normally have to wait a year before you’re eligible to be promoted to the next ATC level of GS-11, (ATCs skipped GS8 and GS 10). So, what the Whitten does is erase that year of waiting between GS-9 and GS-11. You’ll still have to successfully certify, but as soon as you do you will be promoted to the next level.
So, as it stands now all of you will be going down to the floor to OJT in the next few weeks to begin on the job training (OJT) as manual (D-side) non-radar controllers. In the past, everyone before you had to wait a year after certification on all the non-complex D-side sectors before promotion to the GS-11 level. You lucky bastards will immediately be promoted to GS-11 as soon as you certify. So the faster you check out on a sector, the faster you’ll be promoted and making more money. Of course, if you’re a dumb shit and take the full year to certify, the Whitten will do you no good.”
He chuckled to himself, seemingly proud of his little joke.
“Now, who doesn’t fucking understand what I just said?”
No one moved or said a word. I had a thousand questions, but I had learned that asking “stupid fucking questions” in the FAA would immediately result in a shitstorm of insults and put-downs. In “this man’s FAA” you either knew it all or were a total dumb-shit. After class, and over some drinks at the nearest bar, we would normally go over all the stuff that we were sure we didn’t know and try to figure out answers. It was a good system, as we were usually able to come to consensus on what the right answer was after about beer number three.
Basically, we all agreed the Whitten Amendment was meant to skip all time in grade requirements, usually twelve months between grades, and grant immediate promotion to the next level as long as the developmental continued successful progress. This almost sounded too good to be true as we knew that some of the controllers on the floor had waited up to twenty-four months between grades—even after they’d been certified. They had been told that in addition to needing a period of “seasoning” on those sectors, the FAA was experiencing “budgetary problems” that necessitated an additional period of time before being able to promote them to a more expensive grade.
What we weren’t sure of was why the government had decided to take such a radical step to alleviate some future staffing shortage. It wasn’t long before the coffee shop gossip and after work bar meets provided us with an answer—albeit, an unofficial one.
When I was hired into the FAA in March of 1969, the agency was already experiencing a wave of employee unrest and a rash of unexpected retirements. Since its inception way back in 1934, the FAA had never had to deal with any employee union representation—and subsequently had grown tone deaf to any issues that may have been negatively affecting its ATC workforce.
Top heavy with mostly hand-picked “good old boy” managers and supervisors, the FAA basically ignored controllers’ complaints on issues such as working conditions, schedules, time-off, and especially, pay. When a union called PATCO originated in New York ARTCC (ZNY) in 1968, and headed up by famous attorney and pilot, F. Lee Bailey, the frustrated controller workforce suddenly found themselves with a representative voice that had never existed. The local management staff at ATC facilities, with absolutely no type of human relations or labor/management training, tried to quell the rising unrest the best way they knew: by making threats.
With little to no subtlety, the union’s leaders tore into the FAA’s antiquated and ill-prepared cadre of directors and managers with unbridled enthusiasm and a growing pile of grievances. With little more than bluster and the weight of the Federal Government to fight back with, the FAA put up a hard line and began to weed out some of the more vocal and radical local union leaders and supporters.
Suspensions, threatened terminations, and demotions unsettled the already riled workforce and in June of 1969, right after I’d returned from Oklahoma City, FAA facilities nationwide felt the effects of a work stoppage by PATCO-affiliated air traffic controllers, who claimed illness and did not report for work.
This “sickout,” which resulted in widespread flight delays, coincided with congressional hearings on legislation to provide higher pay, early retirement, and other benefits for controllers. Of 477 controllers who took sick leave nationwide during the job action, the FAA suspended 80 from three to fifteen days. On July 27, 1969, the FAA terminated its dues-withholding agreement with PATCO, stating that it was not in the public interest to assist an organization taking part in an illegal job action. It was in this type of atmosphere that our class of fifteen was asked to receive on-the-job training from, and to eventually replace, some of the older and more radical controllers. And it was this situation that finally invoked the Whitten Amendment.
***
In September of 1969, I successfully completed simulated non-radar training and was assigned to a crew on the floor. Of the fifteen developmentals who had returned from Oklahoma City, there were but three of us left. Twelve had failed the rigorous training program at our facility and one by one had been sent down to the floor to run strips and wait for their reassignment to a Flight Service Station.
When our lead instructor first told us that the training program in ZHU was going to be much harder than the one at OKC he wasn’t kidding. In addition to having to commit to memory a pair of much more complex ATC charts, the separation problems were ten times more difficult. Further, our instructors were less forgiving, and many times would refuse to “stop the clock” during a problem to explain why a certain rule would work better than another. They were wise to the trick that sometimes stopping the clock worked in the student’s favor—giving him a chance to take a breath and mentally catch up with the fast-moving air traffic that was now suspended in mid-air.
Instead, the ZHU instructors made us plow through the problem, slowly burying us as more aircraft were introduced into the air traffic picture. At times it seemed to me that there was hardly any time to even take a breath—afraid that that millisecond would cause me to get further behind. When the instructor finally called out, “OK, stop the clock, we’re done here!”, it meant that either the problem had been completed successfully, or that the student had bombed so badly there was no use in going on.
Many times, I was shocked to realize that I had spent eighty to ninety minutes working the problem with not the slightest idea how much time had passed. The only indication I had was that my shirt was usually soaked with sweat from my armpits to my belt.
When I received my crew assignment, I saw that I was being assigned to crew seven, and it was supervised by someone named Tom Moore. My OJT instructor was a senior controller named Hillary Larkins—and yes, he was male.
Billy Mauldin told me that I’d been assigned to this crew because of my “stellar” performance during the non-radar training phase. Apparently, students who did well were rewarded by being put on crews that were manned with those who were considered the best controllers and the most hands-off supervisors, while those who passed by the skin of their teeth were assigned crews with less experienced controllers and higher-strung and younger supervisors. Honestly, I thought it should be the other way around, but I sure wasn’t going to argue the point.
Just because one was assigned to a particular crew, it didn’t mean you worked with only those controllers all the time. Each crew had nine to ten controllers, and staffing required there be at least sixteen controllers on duty during the day and evening shifts. The midnight shift consisted of three controllers, and they were usually from the same crew.
On any given shift our crew worked with controllers from crews six and one. Since the Houston Specialty worked a weekly schedule known as a 2-2 and 1(two evening shifts, two-day shifts, and a midnight shift), and my crew had Mondays and Tuesdays off, we were always rotating with the crews on either side of us.
As I soon found out, the hazing that was dealt out to the runners wasn’t necessarily just reserved for them. Non-radar trainees—regardless of having survived and successfully completed the initial simulated non-radar training program—were considered by some journeyman controllers to be just a notch above washouts, and rightfully deserving of severe ostracization and loud verbal beat-downs.
I quickly learned that this type of behavior was more apt to come from younger and less experienced journeyman controllers. I eventually figured out that since they had been on the receiving end of this type of abuse for several years, they now felt that once they had passed their final check out (routinely called check-rides), it was their “obligation” to pass that abuse on to the newbies on the crew. Unfair as that may sound, it was considered normal behavior and completely condoned by supervisors and managers.
As it turned out, it was indeed fortunate for me to have been assigned to Hillary. He was one of the most senior controllers in the facility and one of the very few who frowned upon and refused to berate his assigned trainee. As he explained to me the first day we met, “If you can’t see traffic from the get-go—and from my position sitting directly behind you I will know it the first five minutes after you plug into the sector—no amount of yelling will ever get you to see it. When you make a mistake, and you will, I will rectify it immediately and we’ll discuss it when the training session is over.”
A slightly-built gentle-looking man with light brown eyes and an easy smile, I soon discovered that he was an incredibly patient, fair, and understanding instructor. Whenever one of his trainees committed a minor error, he addressed it by softly placing a hand on his shoulder and pointing to the erroneous flight strip. He would point out larger and more serious errors by quietly bringing the issue to the radar controller’s attention and positively assuring the student that to succeed he would have to learn to never commit that particular error again.
Furthermore, it was well known on the floor that Hillary would not tolerate anyone else berating his trainee—quickly nipping in the bud any attempt to do so by simply casting a dark glare in the offender’s direction and pressing his index finger to his lips.
Ultimately, it may have helped that besides being a deeply religious man who detested cursing fits and tantrums, he and his wife of twelve years were very busy attending church and raising seven children.
And so, after taking a week of vacation time (called annual leave) and spending some down time with Kaz, I reported to work at Houston Center’s crew seven on my first shift as a training non-radar controller. It was a 4PM to 12AM shift, and as I entered the four-digit code that allowed me to enter the Center’s lower floor where the control room was located, I felt a nervous rush of energy flash through my body. If I survived the next few years of on-the-job training, I would finally realize my dream of becoming a full-fledged journeyman radar controller. And although I had come a long way in the last six months, I knew that I still had a very long way to go.
The one thing that I had already learned from taking and passing hundreds of simulated problems was that the one trait that was absolutely essential to succeed in this job was to have complete confidence in one’s ability. If you didn’t believe that you were God’s sole gift to the air traffic control world then no one else would, and you would soon find yourself running strips and waiting to be shipped off to some godforsaken remote-assed Flight Service Station.
As I headed to the control room for my very first live traffic training shift with Hillary, one thought kept rolling around in my head: I will be the best God-damned air traffic controller that Houston Center has ever seen.
To be continued…