Page 58 - Appendix A

The colonel told me that Pete I’m not an Academy grad, and I have to face the fact
that I'm not going to be a general, and you need to face the fact that you're not

going to fly fighters.

I was like, “Oh boy,” this dude just told me in no uncertain terms, I do not give a

blank about you young man because you could have done anything, you could
have been freaking Hercules and I still wouldn't support you. Cuz that's basically
what it was.

Ivan: What timeframe with this Pete?

Pete H: It was the summer of 1988.

Ivan: Okay.

Pete H: Yep. Once again, I…

Ivan: So this is the wing commander before Newton. A couple before maybe.

Pete H: Yes.

Ivan: The wing commander stays in place about a year or 14 months.

Pete H: Well actually, I think General Newton did possibly replace him. I can't really

remember. If he didn't replace him, he came in there like two years after this dude.
But once again, you can think a lot about yourself and know how you really stack
up, but it’s the way that they dot the Is and cross the Ts that makes the difference.
So all they did was ignore my performance.

Ivan: When you say your performance, help me to understand. I am not a rated officer.
I get an OPR and a stratification. Do you get a piece of paper like that? An OPR,
something other than the OPR that stratifies you?

Pete H: We're still officers. Yeah, we get OPRs too. All they’ve got to do is downgrade them
a little bit. When I say, downgrade, send my OPR to the DO instead of sending it
to the wing commander….

Ivan: That was in the old days. They could try to get the max rating and send it up to the
three-star or something like that.