I was especially pleased to receive my next Air Force assignment after three years at Scott AFB, Illinois and the MAC Headquarters staff. Our next destination…Pope AFB, in Fayetteville, NC, just over three hours from the Holy City of Charleston, our beloved hometown. (This Yankee from NYC had long since adopted Charleston. Hope she adopted me).

Fayetteville offered a chance to own a home for the first time. With help from the VA and a wonderful realtor named Ann, we bought our first home in a suburb called Devonwood. It was close to the base and the Cape Fear Mall, the area’s main shopping center. Ann said buying the house would be as easy as picking up a loaf of bread. It sorta was.  No down payment and affordable mortgage payments made it doable. Our Devonwood home was the best part of our three-year tour in what the 40,000 GI’s of the surrounding Fort Bragg affectionately called “Fayette-Nam,” a nickname still echoing the Vietnam era psyche in the late 1970s.

We made several weekend trips to Orangeburg, SC, where Marjorie’s mother lived, and to Charleston, reinforcing that “home” was never far away.

Pope AFB was tiny compared to the giant Army installation to which we were adjacent. That was Fort Bragg, home of the 82nd Airborne Division, with its 40 to 50 thousand GI’s. We had about 5000 folks at Pope. The 317th Airlift Wing liked to say they put the “air” in ” airborne”. There is truth in that.
Fort Bragg soldiers and their families were the primary industry of the town of Fayetteville. Air Force blue was well hidden by Army green.

I was assigned to the USAF Airlift Center, a tenant organization at Pope, a test center for new and proposed airlift equipment and tactics. We also did studies on issues assigned by the Command.  One big one was the study to determine if a navigator was an essential crew member on a C-141 with Inertial Navigation System (INS) on board. I was a navigator, you see. We went where the evidence led. It showed the pilots could easily use the INS and find whatever place which they sought. There was a safety concern in losing a third set of experienced eyes and ears in the cockpit. However, the $$ that could be saved from removing navigators from C-141’s ruled the day. Soon after our study Air Force changed the C-141 crew complement, removing navigators. Oh well. Thankfully, I had an MBA and there was plenty for me to do as a financial manager for the rest of my Air Force career.

A Director at the Airlift Center and one that enjoys running my mouth, I became a spokesman. I presented a rather showy quarterly briefing to the senior staff at Military Airlift Command on the results of our many tests and studies.
When it was time for me to leave the Center for my next assignment, which was to become one of 25 Air Force officers to attend US Army War College in Carlisle, PA, with over 300 Army officers, my colleagues presented me with a large plaque. On that plaque was a large Air Force style Tap shoe. The inscription said I was the official USAF Airlift Center Tap Dancer. An obvious tease about my quarterly “tap dance” for the senior MAC staff. That Tap Shoe Plaque still owns a place of honor on my bookcase. Thanks folks.
As for my upcoming assignment to Army War College, that was to be my favorite year in my 30-year Air Force career. Only 45 years ago. Wow. Enuf