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Ed Pierce is in the second row, fourth |
Sometimes it takes reconnecting with old friends to realize how far we’ve come in life and how meaningful our journey has been because of people like them.
I first met Keith Gilstrap on the evening of Friday, June 10, 1977. I recall that date vividly because it was my first day of serving in the U.S. Air Force.
Keith took the bunk across the aisle from me in the barracks during our military basic training at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas and we became close friends. He enlisted in Georgia, and I took the oath in New Mexico. We were both young and ready to establish our careers once we were out of basic training.
The experiences we shared over the next eight weeks created a lasting bond that we share to this day. It was intense at times and mentally, physically and emotionally trying. We watched as some members of our basic training flight dropped out and we were determined not to let the same fate befall us. If one of us had a problem, we would put our heads together and figure it out for the betterment of those remaining in our flight.
Upon graduation, Keith and I learned that we would both be boarding a bus to take us to technical school at Sheppard Air Force Base in Wichita Falls, Texas. He was studying to become an aircraft mechanic while I was learning about Air Force communications systems.
Since both of us were married, during the first weekend we were there at Sheppard, we learned of some available apartments situated across the road from the back gate to the base. We both looked at them and rented one-bedrooms next door to each other.
On the evening of Aug. 16, 1977, Keith and I were both assigned to the roof of a building at Sheppard and instructed to watch the skies for tornado formations that could potentially strike the base causing damage. To pass the time that night, I had brought along a transistor radio, and we listened to a news broadcast reporting that Elvis Presley had been found dead at his Graceland mansion in Memphis, Tennessee.
In mid-October 1977, Keith and I said our goodbyes as we each had completed technical training and were headed home on leave before traveling to our permanent duty assignments in the U.S. Air Force. I shook Keith’s hand and told him I was grateful for his friendship during basic training and technical school and hoped that someday our paths would cross again.
I spent the next three weeks in New Mexico before flying to Germany for my duty station there. Over the next eight years, I served as an Air Force journalist writing articles and serving as editor of a weekly base newspaper but had lost touch with Keith.
Days turned into months and then into years and decades. Somehow during frequent military moves back and forth to new assignments, then returning to college and newspaper jobs in New Mexico, Florida, New Hampshire and Maine, my basic training flight photo disappeared. In fact, the last time that I can recall seeing it was in the early 1980s when I was home in New Mexico visiting while on leave from Luke Air Force Base in Arizona.
Earlier this summer, I joined a Facebook group called 3723 BMTS, featuring flight photos of the Air Force’s 3723rd Basic Military Training Squadron at Lackland Air Force Base in the 1970s and 1980s. It had some, but not all, of flight photos of airmen like me during that time. Unfortunately, my flight’s photo was not among the group posted and it got me to thinking about Keith and wondering what had happened to him.
I searched for him online and found his name on a photo caption for a hunting group in Georgia. I sent a message to the person who posted that photo and asked if he would pass my phone number to Keith, hoping it was him.
Two days later, I received a phone call from Keith, and we spent nearly two hours reminiscing. He told me all about his four years of military service and subsequent career as a civilian F-15 mechanic. He later became so good at his work that he led a rewiring project for F-15s for the U.S. Air Force.
He said he was proud of my journalism career after the military and asked what I missed the most about my time in the U.S. Air Force. I told him that I regretted misplacing my flight photo years ago and only had a few photos of my time in basic training.
Keith then informed me I had signed his basic training yearbook, and he texted me a photo of myself at age 23 in the barber shop waiting to have my hair buzzed off on the second day of basic training. I confirmed it was indeed my signature and told him I never got a yearbook, so I had not seen that photo before.
The next thing he sent was a copy of my lost flight photo and it brought tears to my eyes.
My life is better because of friends I have made like Keith. < ~ Ed Pierce
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