Triumph: The Journey of an African-American from Childhood to Fire Chief

By Floyd Jordan

Triumph is the story of my journey through the fire service and has been a dream
of mine since I was promoted to the rank of fire lieutenant in 1974. Writing this
story and reliving many events was painful, such as the blatant racism and
disrespect experienced on duty the day Dr. Martin Luther King was assassinated in
Memphis, Tennessee; and when the firefighters union expelled all the black
firefighters from membership when they refused to disband their association as
members of the Black Firefighters association; and Scrotum on the head", the
worst scandal in the Miami Fire Department's history, are a few of the most
important stories revealed in my book. But this story is not just about pain; it is
also about the joy of triumphing over the obstacles and barriers that were
endemic for trailblazing black firefighters from the mid 1960's and beyond.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: May 3, 2012
• ISBN: 9781477102701

Floyd Jordan

Floyd Jordan, born in Georgia on May 16, 1943, was raised in Miami-Dade County, Florida; A Viet Nam veteran; and a fire service employee that served in four different fire departments for more than 43 years. He joined the City of Miami Fire Department in 1967 as the second black firefighter. He was a black trailblazer in the South Florida fire service that rose through the ranks by competitive examination becoming the first black firefighter to be promoted to every supervisory rank in the fire department, including the first black Fire Chief/Director of a Miami-Dade City or County fire agency when he was appointed the Fire Chief of the City of Miami Beach on June 1, 1999.

Book preview

CHAPTER 1

LESSONS FROM

CURRY QUARTERS

MY FIRE SERVICE career was not planned, nor did it evolve because I grew up with a desire to become a firefighter. In fact, as a child growing up in South Florida during the 1940’s and 1950’s, the Fire Service, as with many career fields, was out of reach for every African-American citizen. Because we were black, Negro, or colored, as we were commonly referred to back then, we never dreamed of working in careers that were known to reject us because of our race or color.

I struggled through my mid-school years, not academically, but struggled dealing and coping with all the issues involving poverty, a broken home, and the embarrassment of going to school some days, while in the sixth grade, in clothes that most people would be ashamed to wear. Though my family was poor, my older sister, brother, and I were happy as smaller kids while living in the rural farming area of South Florida in a town called Perrine. I have fond memories of those early years when it seemed like everyone lived in harmony, and family members worked and contributed their earnings to the family as soon as they could produce. I still recall my first work experience as a small child about five years old picking beans for fifty cents a hamper. We lived in a community called Curry Quarters, where most of the residents were in the same economic condition, farm workers picking the beans and tomatoes from the fields owned by the Curry family. All the houses in Curry Quarters were owned by the Curry family, and anyone living in them was required to work the Curry fields.

The houses were basically the same, consisting of three rooms with an outhouse in the back about 15 to 20 yards from the house. The first room, commonly referred to as the front room, served as a living room and bedroom with a bed used by my mother and father. The second room had two beds, one bed for the oldest, my sister Leola, and the second for my older brother, Gleamus, and me. My brother Gleamus and I slept in the same bed all the years we lived together until he went away to college. The third room was a little smaller and served as the kitchen. It contained a wooden stove, a table, and an icebox.

My brother and I had the chore of keeping the stove filled with wood for cooking. Whenever my father was able to acquire a load of wood to be dropped off in our backyard, my brother and I were responsible for chopping the wood into smaller pieces for use in the stove. The icebox was filled about twice a week by the ice man who used a large ice hook to carry a large block of ice on his shoulder and to put the ice in the upper ice storage space in the icebox. Ice—boxes in those days were not very efficient for preserving food for more than a few days. Most shopping for food items, such as meat, butter or milk was limited to a few days to prevent spoilage. Crime in that community was practically non-existent. People did not lock their doors, and everyone knew each other. The major community event was playing stickball several times per week. The only equipment needed to play that game was a broomstick and a rubber ball or tennis ball. I also remember a favorite activity for most in the community was listening to the Lone Ranger and the Amos & Andy Show on the radio. I remember when the first electrical power lines were strung out on power poles in the Curry Quarters neighborhood and when the first television in the entire neighborhood was purchased. Seeing my first electric light was such a marvel to me. I remember pulling the light string in each of our three rooms to turn the lights on and off, over and over until ordered to stop for fear of creating a large light bill. Watching television for the first time was a treat for me and the neighbors who gathered on the television owners’ front porch and watched the television through the windows. The front room of the owners’ three room house was usually occupied; friends and neighbors sat in each available chair and space on the floor.

Since both our parents worked in the fields most of the day, we had the freedom to roam through the woods that surrounded Curry Quarters. We looked for fruit, such as mangos, guavas, and grapefruit. Sometimes we hunted birds with a slingshot. The only boundary drilled into our heads was never cross the railroad tracks that ran parallel to highway U.S. 1. That highway was the separation boundary for the blacks living in Curry Quarters and the whites that lived on the other side of the highway. The separation was reinforced at every road that crossed the railroad tracks leading into the Curry Quarters area; the Ku Klux Klan letters KKK were painted on the road near the tracks. There was virtually no interaction with white folks during that time, other than interaction with a storekeeper or a Straw Boss in the fields where my parents worked, or a black female day worker who cleaned the homes of a white family for the lowest of wages. My mother preferred being a day worker rather than working in the fields, and she accepted days work whenever she had the opportunity. My father worked the fields most of the time but when picking the vegetables was out of season, he often found work doing any labor job that was available. He frequently found part time work as a helper on furniture moving trucks. His working on the furniture moving trucks eventually provided my family the opportunity to leave the Curry Quarters community in Perrine. My father was offered more work as a helper for a furniture moving company that was located near Coral Gables. We moved from Perrine to Coconut Grove, a small area in the City of Miami. We lived there for a few years until my mother left my father.

As small children, we were aware of family conflicts, such as arguments, excessive drinking, and physical abuse. We also became aware that our mother, a day worker, was carrying the load supporting the family. My father was a heavy drinker and never seemed able to acquire a full time job. He worked part time and appeared to avoid full time job opportunities. His behavior led to many arguments between my mother and him and always escalated to a physical beating of my mother. Eventually, my mother stopped asking for money to pay the rent or buy groceries to avoid the arguments and the beatings that followed. I learned in my late teens that my mother tried to leave my father, but was afraid to because of his threats to severely harm her. Finally, my mother developed the courage to leave. She left without telling anyone, except four of her sisters living in the Miami and Perrine area. When she left my father, my brother Gleamus and I were left in the house with my father. My sister Leola married at a young age and lived with her husband, who was serving in the U. S. Army in Alaska. My brother and I knew our mother was gone, but we didn’t know where or for how long.

Within a few weeks after my mother left, we had to leave the house my parents were renting in Coconut Grove because my father couldn’t pay the rent. We were evicted. My father brought us to live with two of my mother’s sisters living in Perrine. Though we were accepted by my two aunts and cousins, that was a difficult situation and unfair to my aunts who did not have the financial ability to feed and clothe their own children and two additional nephews. After a few weeks, my father had to come for us. We moved in with my father’s Aunt Sally and her husband in the Perrine area. That relocation lasted another few weeks. Though Aunt Sally did what she could to help, the solution to our problem required my father to find permanent work and a place of his own to raise my brother and me.

Finally, my father was able to find enough work back in the Coconut Grove area to afford renting a room for the three of us. I remember well that first room rental. It was a small room containing two beds; one bed was a double bunk bed with me sleeping on the top bunk and my brother sleeping on the bottom. My father slept in a small single bed next to the bunk bed with barely enough space to walk between the two beds. That was not a good situation, especially after my father moved his new girlfriend in the room with us. Neither my father nor his girlfriend cared that my brother and I were in the room while they enjoyed themselves. I guess they assumed we were asleep, or assumed we would pretend to be asleep. We lived in that rental room for about two years. When my father got behind in rent payments at this location, we had to leave. It didn’t take long to find another room to rent. All of us, including his girlfriend, again piled up together in one room. After a few months, the same scenario would repeat itself, my father getting behind in rent, looking for, and finding another room to rent. We moved so many times in Coconut Grove that our family was given the nickname Moving Van.

During that time, my brother and I were enrolled in George Washington Carver Elementary school for the second time while living in Coconut Grove. I completed the fifth grade and moved to the sixth grade at Carver Elementary, and my brother was in the seventh grade at Carver High. My sixth grade year was the worst school experience in my life. It was embarrassing for me to go to school. I was ashamed to wear the clothes that were hand-me-downs given to my father. I recall the hand-me-down shoes were so tight that my father had to cut slits in the shoes near the toe to relieve the tightness. When holes wore in the soles of the shoes, we used cardboard or newspaper on the inside of the shoes to cover the holes. The worst embarrassment was when the soles of the shoes separated from the shoe, and my father used hairpins to thread and tie the sole and the shoe together. That repair required twisting the end of the hairpin to lock the hairpin in place. The other kids in class laughed at and picked on me often. As an eleven year old sixth grader, I lost interest in school and didn’t care about anything. I had a terrible attitude and developed a reputation for being a no-good kid. The embarrassment of going to school every day with a don’t care attitude led me to quit school in Grade 6. My brother knew I quit, my teacher knew I wasn’t in class, but my father didn’t know anything. Each morning I would leave the house as if I was going to school, but I never went to class. I would hang out or sometimes go back home. That charade went on for more than the last three months of the school year. When my father finally found out, the school year was just about over.

The news of my going bad and quitting school reached my mother, who was living in Jacksonville, Florida. It was painful for her, knowing the path I was on could lead to self-destruction. Despite the fear of my father, my mother summoned the courage to return home, confront him, and turn my life around. As I reflect back on my life, it is clear and unquestioned that that moment in my life was a turning point from traveling a path of destruction to a path that led me to where I am and who I am today. My mother could have continued to stay away to avoid my father and the physical abuse she feared, or a worse fate, if she returned to Miami. If she had stayed away, I know without a doubt I would have never gone back to school and would have eventually become incarcerated or worse. Her courage is a testament that there is no love superior to a mother’s love for her children. My mother returned to Miami after I was out of school for the summer. She rented a three room apartment on the ground floor of a two story wood frame building that was across the street from Booker T. Washington High School in the Overtown area of Miami. Each floor of the building had two three-room apartments separated by a hallway. My mother’s sister, Aunt Ruby, and her three daughters lived in the other apartment on the ground floor.

After returning to Miami, my mother didn’t take long to let my father, my brother, and me know she was home. She began the process to divorce my father and arranged for my brother and me to live with her on the weekends. My father continually tried to reconcile with my mother, but it was obvious my father had not changed, and my mother was fed up with living a life with him. When he realized talking would not bring my mother back, he began threatening her with physical violence again. My mother took out a restraining order, which required my father to stay away from her.

The next school year was approaching, and my mother’s number one priority was to get me back in school. She attempted to get me in the seventh grade but because I quit school in the sixth grade, I failed Grade 6. During that time, I was ambivalent, not caring about school anymore and wanting to do anything to make my mother happy so she would never leave again. The next school year, I returned to school to repeat the sixth grade. My mother was able to buy my brother and me decent school clothes, which eliminated the embarrassment I had felt the previous school years while living with my father. However, I had to deal with the embarrassment of repeating the sixth grade and falling behind one grade from my previous classmates. It was not easy, but I learned over time that graduating one grade behind, or whenever a person graduated, did not determine the level of success a person achieved. After returning to school, I slowly began to reacclimatize myself to study and homework, but it took a much longer time for me to live down my reputation of being a bad kid. Despite those difficulties, I kept plugging along, and finally some of my teachers realized I could be a good student. Perhaps the most positive advantage I had was I loved to read. I began reading at an early age, and reading helped me to think for myself and consider possibilities beyond what a teacher would teach in the classroom.

Before my second sixth grade school year ended, my mother finally achieved her divorce from my father. The divorce also required my father to pay child support payments for my brother and me. During the first couple of months after the divorce, my father made the child support payments; after that, he didn’t pay a dime. Though my mother worked, primarily as a day worker, she needed those child support payments to help with raising my brother and me. After many months without any payments from my father, my mother decided to file a complaint and take my father back to court. By the time my brother and I went to court with our mother, I was thirteen years old, and my brother was almost fifteen years old. My father was in jail for failure to pay child support. Going to court was an experience I will never forget. The judge’s ruling released my father from jail without any requirements to make up the past payments or any obligations to make any payments in the future. As I stood in that courtroom with my mother and brother, I can still remember and feel the words uttered from the judge stabbing me in my gut like the knife of a mugger who has cornered his victim and offers no mercy. The judge said, These boys look like they are big enough to work, implying we shouldn’t need any financial support from our father. I saw the hurt on my mother’s face as she realized the justice system was failing her. It was also clear to me that this judge would never have made such an insensitive statement or ruling involving a white family similarly situated. I felt the implication of the judge’s low expectations and that school would be a waste of our time. The judge implied we should enter the labor market, which would have doomed us to a future as manual laborers.

The fact is that my brother and I always worked at any job we could find. After school and on weekends, we would walk the few miles to the Riviera Country Club in Coral Gables to caddy or shag balls. Sometimes we would stand on the break corner near Highway U.S. 1 and SW 37th Avenue hoping for any odd job, such as pulling weeds, cutting lawns, or digging ditches. The judge advised my mother to apply for welfare. With the judge’s order to free my father from any legal responsibilities, my mother applied for and received welfare payments of $18 each per month for my brother and me. Those payments lasted until we reached the age of eighteen. That day I left the courtroom very angry. I couldn’t believe those words I heard from the judge. It reminded me of the same statements my brother and I heard from our father while living with him when our mother was away. On several occasions, my father suggested my brother and I should quit school and go to work. We refused to do it. Even though I quit school the last several months of the sixth grade and my father didn’t know it, I didn’t quit school to go to work.

Though the judge released my father from jail and from providing any support legally, my father promised in court he would help as much as he could. That promise proved hollow and eventually led to a confrontation between my father and me, which subsequently placed me on a path to learning the value of independence, self-reliance, and responsibility.

The confrontation occurred on a hot and sweaty evening in the Coconut Grove suburb of Miami several months after the court hearing. I remember that evening so well. I can still recall how the sweat dropped from my chin like raindrops from the leaves of a tree after a brief summer rain shower. The confrontation was spontaneous, sparked by another disappointing, I don’t have any money tonight. I had heard that statement too many times, at least four times during the prior six weeks. At that moment, I was angry and had had enough. The anger that boiled inside me began to release itself like hot steam from an overheated coffee pot as I said to him, I don’t want anything from you, and I will never ask you for anything again. My brother was present, and he was just as surprised as my father was when I made the statement that severed the cord of dependence on my father forever. I repeated the statement again very slowly to assure it was well understood, and the second time was easier with less anger. I began to feel a sense of relief and freedom as my anger started to dissipate like steam in the open air. There were many reasons for that confrontation which led to my declaration of independence from my father. I was tired of too many broken promises, tired of watching my mother work arduously as a domestic day worker trying to provide as best she could for two growing sons without any help from my father.

After the confrontation with my father, I began to appreciate and view money as I never had before. Mentally, I became more independent, but, as a thirteen year old, I knew I was still economically dependent on my mother. I began to use money very wisely and differently than before. When I worked and received pay from the many odd jobs, such as cutting lawns, pulling weeds, selling newspapers, or caddying at the golf course, I disciplined myself to save as much as I could to weather periods when work was not available. I learned how to save by developing a saving attitude. I learned that in order to save I must live below my means no matter how low that level is. When I had to spend money for things I needed, I looked for the least expensive items to buy. I became obsessed with not being broke.

Confronting my father and breaking from him on that hot summer night so many years ago was a defining moment that led to my independence. Like an engineer steering a train around a curve through dense fog toward a train station, I couldn’t see my destination, but I knew the path of the tracks would take me there. I chose a path that taught me how to become independent. Traveling that path was not easy; there were many lessons to learn and many barriers to overcome, but mentally I was prepared to accept any challenge placed before me. Through independence, I became self—reliant and learned to accept responsibility for my own actions and my own fate.

CHAPTER 2

MY DISCOVERY YEARS

IN THE JIM CROW SOUTH

TRAVELING THROUGH HIGH school as a teenager was a lot easier for me than my previous years in elementary school. It was also filled with a lot of fun. Those were the years of discovery; I was growing into manhood and developing a greater awareness of who I was. I became more aware of the society that I lived in and developed the ability to question my status in society—why I was treated differently in my own country simply because of the color of my skin. As a younger child, I was taught to obey the rules placed on me by that society, such as don’t stare at white women or white girls, and don’t drink at water fountains that said white only. Also, when I rode the bus, I was taught always to sit from the rear first, and never go into a white establishment unless I was going through the back door. Those lessons were taught by black parents as survival skills in a society that viewed black people as inferior and unworthy of equal treatment.

As young teenagers, we often challenged those restrictions in our own way. I remember when two of my best friends, Morris Sands and Elbert Sealy, and I used to ride the bus from Overtown to Carver High School in Coconut Grove each day. On our return trip, we would get off a bus on the corner of Flagler Street and S.W. 2nd Avenue in order to transfer to another bus a few blocks away. There was a Royal Castle hamburger restaurant on that corner. Sometimes when we got off the bus, my friends and I used to go into the Royal Castle and order hamburgers. Blacks were allowed to order hamburgers, but only for takeout; sitting at the lunch counter was not allowed. When our hamburger orders were brought to us, we would sit at the lunch counter before paying for the hamburgers, which always resulted in our being told that we could not sit and eat at the lunch counter. Our response was always, if we can’t sit and eat, then we don’t want the hamburgers. We would leave the Royal Castle and after about a block away, we would bend over laughing. That was one of many ways that we protested the segregated society we lived in. Though we could not sit at the lunch counter, we made the employees go through the trouble of preparing hamburgers they thought were for take—out.

After we pulled that stunt several times, the manager tried to trap or intimidate us. One day when we got off the bus, there were several white Miami police officers standing outside the Royal Castle and obviously waiting for us. The police officers looked at us with snarling, mean faces. We simply got off the bus while whistling and kept walking to the transfer stop a couple of blocks away. The manager stood next to the police officers with his hands on his hips. During that era, the common belief of the overwhelming members of the black community was that the police department did not exist to protect and serve members of the black community, but existed to keep us in line or to enforce the Jim Crow laws of the South. We waited about a month to be sure no police officers were around and pulled the same stunt again. Oppressed people will always find ways to fight their oppressors; that was, in a small way, a method we used to fight the segregated Jim Crow system when we were teenagers.

High school was a great learning experience for me. The teachers at Carver High taught the students with a purpose that I came to understand with a great admiration years after I graduated from high school. They were trying to prepare us for a society that did not currently exist, a society that provided opportunities based on our abilities and not the color of our skin. Back then, that society was a dream, a hope, or a vision that the teachers never had a chance to live. But they had faith and a belief that the future had to be better. I have always felt that any success I have achieved was also a success for those teachers at George Washington Carver Elementary and High School. My teachers were inspiring in their own way. No matter the lesson, they connected the need to learn with overcoming the Jim Crow segregated society we lived in. I recall that the majority of books we used were obviously hand-me-downs from the white schools, as indicated from the writings and marks in the books given to us. A common theme from most of our teachers was we were about two years behind the white students. I later learned when I joined the United States Air Force that that theme may be true in what we were exposed to, but not in our ability.

Though the social environment consumed most black Americans including me, we still had to face all the other challenges of survival, such as making a living. My brother and I continued to work, primarily as caddies on the weekends at the Riviera Country Club in Coral Gables, and progress through high school. My brother discovered as a ninth grader his athletic ability as a football player. That athletic ability was eventually responsible for a college scholarship to play football at Florida A&M University, one of the best historically black college football programs in America. The football coach was the legendary Jake Gaither. It was an honor and a privilege to be offered a scholarship to play for that program. For me, I had little interest in being an athlete, and I was able to avoid even trying until my senior year in high school. When an older brother excels in a sport, there is an expectation that the younger brother will follow in his footsteps. During that time, football was also considered an avenue or path to a better life. If you were good enough, you surely would get a scholarship to a college. If you grew and excelled as a football player in college, the next expectation was a professional career in football. However, most black students during that time, including the scholarship football players, pursued a career as a teacher.

Teaching is a noble professional career, and during that time, most of the positive role models for me and most young blacks were teachers. Teaching was also a career with a lot of status, particularly in the black community, and a career that was open to blacks in a segregated society. Black teachers were needed to teach at segregated black schools. My brother majored in physical education in college with the intent of following after his role model, Traz Powell, the legendary football coach at Carver High School. I endured a lot of harassment from my friends and others because I didn’t play football. Before the end of my junior year in high school, the harassment resulted in a fight between me and a friend, Morris Sands, who was a very good football player. I had had enough and decided to report for spring football practice my senior high school year. My motive was not to pursue a career in football or a college football scholarship as a path to finding a career. My motive was to prove I could play the game, despite having only one year of high school left to prove it.

Spring football practice was very hard and very difficult, especially for me. The only football I had played up to that point was street ball. I had a ton to learn about how to play the game at a high school competitive level. I was an undersized 6-foot-2, 167-pound string bean. When we entered fall practice and began the manly phase of one-on-one hitting, it became evident to me that I needed to gain weight. Since I had the right frame at 6feet-2, gaining weight was easy for me. By the end of football season, my weight was 192 pounds. In addition to the physical practice, which built muscle and stamina, I gained the weight through a diet of eating a lot of extra food. Each day in addition to my regular meals, I would drink two quarts of milk and eat five to eight bananas. By the middle of the football season, I had earned the right to play and contribute more, and the last few games of the season I started at defensive end.

Carver High had some very good football players. Many of them received football scholarships to various colleges throughout the country. To my surprise, I received a letter from St Augustine College, a small Black College in North Carolina. It was an opportunity for a football scholarship in the form of a student loan. I did not respond to the letter. I knew playing college football or going to college at that time was not the path for me. My brother was already in college on a full football scholarship, but it was still a burden on my mother to send him money for the many extra needs he had being in college. I did not want to add to that burden. I wanted to get away on my own, experience the world, and be totally independent. The path for me to do that was to join one of the branches of the armed services.

In high school, most of the seniors participated in an armed services aptitude test. There were several phases of the test, and I was fortunate to pass all phases with good scores; but I did not have exceptional scores in any one phase. However, I was encouraged by the aptitude test results to join the military after high school graduation. Military service was also a tradition on both my mother’s and father’s side of the family. Many uncles and cousins had served in the military, so for me to serve was not unusual. My mind was made up to pursue the path of military service after graduation.

Three weeks before high school graduation, I embarrassed my mother and myself by getting suspended from school. Several other students and I were caught shooting dice in the boys’ bathroom, and everybody was suspended. Though I would graduate, I was barred from participating in the graduation exercises. That was a disappointing blow to my mother, who had done so much to get me to that point. The disappointment and pain I caused her was twice as painful to me because of disappointing her. After a few days passed, my mother went to school and pleaded with the principal and dean to allow me to graduate. Subsequently, my suspension was lifted, and I was allowed to graduate with my class.

The dice-shooting incident was the second embarrassing incident I was involved in after my mother returned to rescue me from a path to failure; but in comparison, the dice-shooting incident was very mild. The first incident occurred when I was fifteen years old and resulted in my being arrested and placed in youth hall. Another friend and I thought we could acquire some extra cash by using a hammer and screwdriver to remove the coins from the telephone booths located in the Overtown area. A police patrol car came after us, and we split up and ran. My friend got away, but I was caught by the legendary black police officer Big Nick. I was taken to the black police station in Overtown. There, I was processed, which included finger—printing and getting my picture taken. God, I didn’t like the way my life was going! I felt like a criminal, but I deserved it for what I tried to do.

I spent the night in youth hall and because I had no previous record, I was released to my mother the next day. My mother surprised me after picking me up; she didn’t say one word to me about what I had done. I was expecting a good tongue-lashing from her, but she never said a word about the incident, despite the obvious pain in her face. I felt very bad and was extremely disappointed. That incident resulted in my vowing never to get involved in or to participate in anything illegal again. Though the dice-shooting incident and subsequent suspension were embarrassing, they were not on the same scale as being arrested for attempting to steal from a telephone booth. Shooting dice is a game that later in my career and life I learned to love for its excitement and challenge.

The high school years, for so many of us young males, were also for romance and infatuation with girls. From the eleventh through the twelfth grade, I was certainly infatuated with girls; and as a tall young teenager, I thought I was handsome and desirable. Though basically shy, I sometimes played the role of a playboy. I even took the nickname, Gaylord and often quoted this phase: Gaylord, the women’s pet; the women’s regret; the women’s pride and joy; Miami’s number one pin up boy. But for me, the playboy role didn’t last too long. As an eleventh grader, and through one of my cousins, Jean, who attended Booker T. Washington High School, I met Georgianna Maxwell, a young pretty girl, and one of Jean’s friends and classmates. Before I knew it, I was swept off my feet, fell in love, and began a relationship that thus far has lasted for more than 45 years.

CHAPTER 3

ENLISTING

IN THE U.S. AIR FORCE

AFTER HIGH SCHOOL graduation, I couldn’t wait to join the Air Force. However, before I joined, there was one thing that needed to be taken care of. During the last high school football game, I suffered an injury to my right leg that I thought would heal and not be a problem. However, a knot or cyst developed under the skin, which caused me a lot of concern. I had it checked at Jackson