Snowbirds Accidental Deaths

The Snowbirds had run into a bit of difficulty. They’d had a few accidents and one of the things they felt was that the average age of the Snowbirds was getting lower and lower every year. So a friend of mine asked if I would come out to the Snowbirds to be the Deputy Commanding Officer basically who is, on any squadron, is the disciplinarian, he takes care of all the discipline
problems. And I went out for to bring some maturity to the team basically. I was considerably older than the other members of the team and what turned out to be another interesting fact was that one of the leaders while I was there was my former student. So I went out and became part of the Snowbirds. While I was there we managed to have an accident free season. I mentioned before that it wasn’t quite as fruitful for the Thunder Birds or the Blue Angels and I attended a number of funerals in my years with the Snowbirds, attending funerals of the Thunder Birds and the Blue Angels and it was, each time it was very, very difficult because you got to know the people of the teams. It was like a fraternity and we did air shows together, we partied together, we hosted them, they hosted us. There was a real friendly rivalry and it was just devastating to see some of these people be killed on tour. More devastating to go to the funerals and something that I’ll never forget as long as I live is the missing man formation where at a funeral they will fly
a formation by and when they get to the site, the viewing site, one of the aircraft will pull straight up and then the formation proceeds with that blank space in it and that is part of the military tradition.