... His Son Flew the plane.

Quote

Col. Roy A. Knight Jr. received full military honors after a Southwest Airlines flight carrying his remains landed at Love Field in Dallas.

Bryan Knight was 5 years old when he said goodbye for the last time to his father, Roy A. Knight Jr., at Love Field in Dallas.

Fifty-two years later, Mr. Knight, piloting a Southwest Airlines flight on Thursday, brought back the remains of his father, an Air Force colonel who was killed in the Vietnam War, to the same airport.

I am not crying!

It's just the dust in the air...

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/09/us/colonel-homecoming-vietnam-dallas.html

Longer video of arrival at Love Field: https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=464134104409119

Same dust where I'm at.

Thanks for posting.

 

jime

Wow that is touching, 52 years is a long time for repatriation 

7 hours ago, n4gix said:

I am not crying...

First time I cried as a Man was after my brother, former Air Force, passed away suddenly in '92.  I was Controller of Harrah's Reno/Tahoe hotel and food/beverage ops back then, and my brother worked as a bartender across the street in Reno at Fitzgeralds, where they cut scenes for the movie Sister Act--His entertainment lounge he ran was converted into the "Moonlight Bar"

I was at home all day in March of 92 online, we used modems back then, remember them?  So I could not get incoming calls, I used a special code to block incoming calls with a busy signal so I would not lose my session, I was on Prodigy back then, my Sim of Choice was Flight Assignment, ATP, which I loved because it was the first sim where I could do transcon flights.  I even found a way to hack the ground colors, so the cities I made gray during the day, and yellow at night, vs there original colors, since I knew assembler language that it was coded in.

When I went offline that night in March of 92, the phone rang, and my Mom simply told me my brother who I loved so dearly, who taught me how to read, how to ride a bike, how to defend myself in a scrap, had passed away at age 33.

I went to funeral the next morning in Reno, I lived down in Gardnerville NV since my accounting office was in our Tahoe property.  Several of my employees came to support me, I was held on oneside by my brother's ex wife, and on the other by one of my female employees, I think her name was Martha, since her daughter was crushin' on me at that time.  Since my brother served in the Air Force in the late 70's, he was given a military funeral.  He never saw action, but those on defense of our country were always trained for action, just in case.  He was an aircraft electrician.

I had to drive to Napa to be with my despondent parents after the funeral, but first I had to drive back to Gardnerville to pack my things, and while I was driving I was almost in a car accident--I cried, and cried, and cried, thinking of all those good, and sometimes bad memories, I shared with my brother, the first to go in my nuclear family.  Now they have all gone upstairs, but I always remember, in threads like this, this song, from "Mike and the Mechanics", Mike Rutherford of Genesis Fame....  It applies to the man brought home from Vietnam, and his family too.  Why, because I know he is up there, and he knows his family loves him.  Take my word on that....

 

Good story.  BTW, I'm a 30 year Controller for Hyatt.

Unlike civilian jobs military units become like families.  It's a not a 9 to 5 job where you go home after work.  We are with each other 24 hours a day.  While I can barely recall names and faces of those I worked with in my civilian career I recall many I served with as a Marine in Korea and and s an Air Force troop in Vietnam; not to mention the peacetime units I served in.

Each year the Christmas card list gets smaller and smaller.  When I served at Yokota Air Force Base in Japan a dozen of us were assigned to the bomb dump.  Being apart from the main base we were a family.  I was 26 years old then, about the middle of the age group.  I am now the only one left.  Still in touch with a couple of the wives who are still around.

Anyone who has not served in the military cannot know what it feels like when one of your former comrades passes away.  We are indeed relatives who keep in touch year after year.  When one goes we all feel it.

Welcome home Colonel Knight.

Noel

I've stood at too many funerals, military and civilian. It's something you never get used to.

RIP Colonel. 

 

6 hours ago, birdguy said:

Each year the Christmas card list gets smaller and smaller.

Up until what seems like not that long ago I had a very long Christmas card list. I finally hit zero about four years ago. I know that there are some cousins, on both dad's and mom's family, but I've never met any of them and have no addresses for them.

16 hours ago, jbcallender said:

Good story.  BTW, I'm a 30 year Controller for Hyatt.

Love the Hyatt chain, I always used to visit the Hyatt Regency in San Francisco, I'd sometimes have a drink with my pilot friend Mike in its revolving lounge.  Hyatt is a good brand, I was Doubletree's international WAN admin and PC purchasing and support manager for a time between 95 and 97 before they merged with Red Lion, then merged with Promus.  Fess Parker, who owned a Red Lion resort in Santa Barbara, knew me when I was evening property manager at Meadowood Resort in St. Helena, home of Napa Valley's wine auction. 

He invited me to work at his resort, but my career in hospitality systems instruction had started and continued with Best Western after the Doubletree/Promus merger in 97, where I worked for my old boss from DC who had moved from our Holiday Inn systems rollout project to Best Western's new Nova Plus rollout project, where I worked as lead until early 2000 when I decided to give up my weary international travel after my daughter was born six months earlier. 

But I did return to Best Western in early 2005 to help them for two years with their new web portal rollout, and then their second project with Harley Davidson, a travel sponsor of theirs.  My boss then, a cool dude named David Wang, still a good friend, was a pilot.  David told me why he gave up flying, he was showing off for a friend and two girls in his rented private aircraft near Chicago at night, when he had a total electrical failure and he lost all instruments.  He said it was the most frightening flight of his life, because night can be sometimes inky blackness when you are searching for an airport.  My only GA night flight in 79, my first GA flight ever, was different, we flew on a full moon over Frisco from Napa, the most beautiful GA flight I ever had, with a pilot and good high school buddy, Doug Brambrink.

On my first day working on Best Western's Web Portal, which was already in beta, I noticed an embarrassing issue no one in Dev, QA or UAT caught.  No copyright notice appeared on any of our web pages.  David Wang sheepishly came over to me and said "glad we hired ya, good catch".  I was a Keane consultant on contract with Best Western, and went on to win their prestigious K-Pin award, given out to their client/site project employees recognized by their client.  I was the first and only one at Best Western to receive the award and the immediate raise it gave me, plus the perks it gave our team, which was on the verge of losing our Best Western contract simply because we took our time wanting to roll out a portal that met my load testing data, and had no Sev 0 or Sev 1 defects.  It rolled out that way. 

My Harley Project, of which I was Project Manager and lead QA, saved Best Western one million dollars in its first month in production a year later, again with no Sev 0 or Sev 1 defects.  It had been dead in the water, so I was asked to take it on, write specs which were absent because Best Western, our client, had no specs that complied with hotel business systems rules--they just were sketching out the project as they went along and I said "Not while on my watch" and my boss backed me up, as did their lead project manager, a cool dude named Ron Trog.  Ha ha, rhymes with Frog but he was no Frog, very good client to work with and he gave me run of the house on the project.

John

 

Edited August 10, 20196 yr by John_Cillis

I got Fess Parkers autograph when I was 10 years old!  Still have it!  Hotels are a different business these days.....night audited my way through college.  Actually had to post charges back then!  Imagine that.  Been all over the country, met entertainers, sports figures, presidents.  Been a great 40 years or so.  Flight simming is my refuge..

Regards, Jeff

On 8/9/2019 at 2:16 PM, n4gix said:

... His Son Flew the plane.

I am not crying!

It's just the dust in the air...

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/09/us/colonel-homecoming-vietnam-dallas.html

Longer video of arrival at Love Field: https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=464134104409119

There are still a lot of folks MIA in SE Asia.  My unit originally had 7 guys MIA, but have recovered all except three.  They went missing in the vicinity of LZ Lola in Laos.   

They recovered  my stick buddy (DSC) from flight school a couple years ago.

There is always hope.