Page 55 - Midas Touch

The first day my aircraft was fitted with guns and rockets was my wake-up
call. Up to that day, I had always been a “C” student. All the way from
elementary school through high school, military school, and flight school,
I was chronically average.

I know now that I was average because I was lazy and bored. But then I
knew the school system graded on a bell curve and that in every class there
are kids labeled smart, average, and stupid. There are a few smart kids on
one end, a few stupid ones on the other, but the majority of the kids in the
middle are average.

Happy to be in the middle, I rarely studied. I quickly figured out that, to
stay in the middle, I had to do two things:

1. Know who was more stupid than I was. As long as there were some
students below me, I knew I was safe.

2. Figure out what the teacher thought was important, memorize those
points, and take the test.

In most cases, this method of study and observation kept me in the middle,
a solid “C” student. I am not proud of my actions, but this is how I got
through school without studying. In June of 1971, walking out to my
aircraft now loaded with rockets and machine guns, my days as a “C”

student came to an abrupt end. Being a “C” student would get me and my
crew killed.

In January of 1972, a little more than six months later, I was stationed on
board an aircraft carrier off the coast of Vietnam. A few weeks later, while
on a mission north of Da Nang, the first rounds of enemy fire flew from a
hilltop toward my aircraft. My crew chief, on his third tour in Vietnam,
tapped me on my helmet, then grabbed my facemask, turned my head so

he could speak to me face-to-face, and said, “Do you know what the bad
thing about this job is?”

Shaking my head, I said, “No.”

Without smiling, he shouted, “Only one of us is going home today. Either
he goes home or we go home. But we aren’t both going home.”

Entrepreneur, Take Note