From start to finish

We did it. Sean Cappel, local McCook product, is now a full fledged Air Force pilot. With a little more training, the military services are always training, it is in their DNA, he'll transition into the F-16 "Viper" and be ready to set the world on fire. Ah the optimism of youth. There aren't any old bold fighter pilots -- it is a young men and women's game. Our whole community is to be thanked for turning out splendid young warriors like Sean and a host of others just like him.

The pilot training program at Sheppard AFB, near Wichita Falls, Texas, is unique in the world. It is the location where all the NATO countries produce their air force pilots. The assets on the base are in large part owned by Germany. The signatories of all the NATO countries, U.S., Italy, Norway and more contribute to the cost of the program in proportion to the students they send for training. Of Sean's class half were from Norway, one from Italy and the remainder, including one female pilot, were United States citizens. All fly the US Air Force T-6 and T-38 training aircraft.

The instructors, all active duty pilots, come from all the respective NATO air forces and yes everyone speaks English or some version of our mother tongue. In my opinion it is difficult enough to learn to fly but to have to learn in a foreign language would be even more difficult.

One could ask what is the advantage of doing a joint Euro-NATO training program? For one, weather in Europe, in general, does not lend itself to the clear skies that rule in West Texas. Training airspace in the small European countries is quite limited and nothing is "bigger than Texas." Then bring to mind the ongoing air operations taking place by NATO forces today in Libya. The pilots flying all those sorties, no matter the country of origin, were all trained in the United States. All use the same language while airborne, all have been instilled with the same tactics and they simply play well together. The program is a success because it works!

You won't find more of a gentleman. His name is Pat Hunter and at a slim trim 82 years of age he stands straight as a sapling. He and Koelle, his bride of half a century, make an attractive couple and live surrounded by doting family. A daughter whose husband is a civilian contractor at the moment. Son Kim, a retired F-16 pilot and Air Force Brigadier General (you think Pat might be proud?) and their daughter along with her daughter (the Hunter's first great granddaughter) also were present. Southern hospitality at its finest.

Altus, Oklahoma, was only a few miles out of the way so Grannie Annie and I had stopped by as it has only been 37 some years since we and the Hunters had last seen each other face to face.

Major Pat had been my navigator, the best in SAC, and we had flown a tour in Vietnam together one summer circa 1968. That same year, our commander selected my crew to spend the three weeks at Christmas in Alaska; exigencies of the service he called it. Ah the "war stories" that we loudly recalled this time together. Both of us attribute diminished hearing to thousands of hours of jet engines ringing in our ears. With the patina of age, people we remembered and events lived together only have grown better with time.

Outside family Pat's main interest in life is to hunt deer on his farm, a near section of Red River bottom land. Typical of Southwestern Oklahoma his "farm" is of sandy soil covered with mesquite and a mixture of low growing scrub oak, juniper and sage, punctuated by a few copses of stately tall native pecan trees.

His "farm" produces no marketable crops but he tills and plants a few acres of mixed mung beans and cereal grains for feed and cover for large numbers of whitetail deer and wild turkeys. It would be a wildlife heaven except for a large population of feral hogs that moved in uninvited.

A friend traps the unwanted pigs, some 35 collected to date this year, that he in turn sells to the owner of a nearby hunting preserve. That entrepreneur turns them loose in a huge hog-proof fenced enclosure and then hosts safari like expeditions for hunters who pay royally to shoot the nasty critters.

Pat has a placed a fair number of deer stands around his "farm" all carefully sited within optimum range of automatic deer feeders. Those feeders are equipped with timers that sprinkle "deer corn", $9 a bushel, to entice his big bucks to feed where he can find them. Throughout his property he has also installed motion detecting cameras which flash and capture images of deer that happen past along with the occasional coyote, bobcat, turkey, feral pig or even a trespassing hunter.

All the effort, and expense, is for nimrod Pat and a very few selected hunting buddies', quest to shoot the "big buck"! Oklahoma allows each hunter to harvest two deer per season and Pat credo is to shoot no deer with less than fourteen antler points or better.

Originally raised in Ohio Pat professes home in his adopted state of Oklahoma. It is where he wants to be and bow season opens the 1st of October ! With a loving wife, doting family, and his own private hunting preserve there can be no better place to enjoy the rest of his days. May we all be blessed to fare as well

That is how I saw it.

Dick Trail