Lee - Version 1.0
Self Portrait
During the last 40+ years, I’ve written this post in my mind hundreds of times. I’ve gotten close to articulating my thoughts, but still, I’m pretty sure I don’t have the words quite right. It starts with, my generation generally runs things here in America.
Sorry.
I’m a baby-boomer. Born in the 40s when everyone was celebrating the War’s end, a new economic cycle, and the vision of ever upward mobility. Well, most people were, not everyone. This post is not political, it’s about me and how I feel about the world around me.
My greatest humiliation was in 1980 at a fighter bar at Luke AFB, AZ. I know what you’re thinking but this is not the “standard” fighter pilot in a bar story. I was a captain, very full of myself, a brand new F-16 pilot, and on temporary duty to Luke to fly their full motion F-16 simulator. I’d gone to the bar the first night of the trip, I was by myself and enjoying a scotch. A female lieutenant slid onto the bar stool next to me and said hello. That didn’t happen often so I was very attentive.
She introduced herself and we began to talk about flying. In those days, the USAF trained women pilots but it was a new thing just started three years prior. And women fighter pilots still weren’t allowed. Sometimes, sometimes, I argue just for the sake of arguing, but this time I was serious…women should not be allowed to fly fighters. She and I argued through many scotches and neither convinced the other. Howsomever, I’m a slow learner and this young lady sparked an internal Lee analysis, of “Why shouldn’t they be fighter pilots?” But that epiphany did not come that night or that week or even that year. Rather my journey was a slow drip, drip, drip bit of looking about, looking inward, and seeing with a better set of eyes.
To that young lady, whoever she is and wherever she may be, I’m sorry. I was so absolutely wrong and so astoundingly arrogant and ignorant that you probably wanted to deck me. I hope that the angst you must have had after our encounter inspired you to become a fighter pilot and that you loved flying fighters as much as you ached to fly them that night in Luke.
That’s not the only blind spot I brought out of my youth. We didn’t have many people of color in Huron, maybe two or three families. Although South Dakota is 10% Native, I only remember one family in town. I didn’t really get the civil rights movement because we didn’t have many Blacks in the state, we had Natives but they stayed mostly on the reservations. The first black man I met and made friends with was in college. He was from Africa and taught me to play three ball billiards. Hanging with him, I began to sense the difference in how he was treated, and me when I was with him. And LGBTQ…I don’t remember that we even acknowledge they existed.
I’m still learning, I do have ingrained behaviors that are part of my baby boomer generation and the place I grew up. I am acutely and painfully aware of how racist and divided we are in America. I am very conscious that because I am tolerant and embrace race differences and LGBTQ, many folks in the country would not hesitate to hurt or kill me. I clearly see that we humans are cultural cannibals and hope to hasten the end of cultures and people not in our own image. I’m trying to not be like that anymore. I am hopeful that the youth of today will replace my generation with people who respect everyone, no matter.
To that young lieutenant, I hope you kicked ass.