David Turner:
CLASS OF 1978
Los Altos High SchoolClass of 1978
Hacienda heights, CA
University of California - Electrical EngineeringClass of 1982
Los angeles, CA
Orange Grove Junior High SchoolClass of 1974
Hacienda heights, CA
Palm Elementary SchoolClass of 1972
Hacienda heights, CA
David's Story
Life
As I was preparing to leve the active duty military in 1991, I met my wife through Mensa and, following a whirlwind romance, we were married 2 days after I was officially discharged from the Air Force. We ended up moving to Dayton, OH, where I owned a condo, and have lived in the area since 1992. We have two great sons: Jonathan, born in 1995, and Benjamin, born in 1998.
College
I went to UCLA on an Air Force ROTC scholarship, and graduated in 1982 with a Bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering. I've never actually engineered anything, but did learn a great deal about critical thinking and problem solving.
Workplace
When I left the active duty Air Force in 1991, my timing couldn't have been much worse. For three or four years prior, I had seen other pilots leave to start (supposedly) lucrative careers with the major airlines. When I started to look, however, almost all the airlines had stopped hiring. My new bride supported us for a few months until I was offered a position in the Air Force Reseerves (see military bio).
After three years of keeping the bills paid by working as much as I could with the Reserves, I finally got my "big break" in the airlines with an overnight cargo company called Airborne Express. At the time, the pay was mediocre (for an airline pilot), and the hours were brutal (it's called overnight express delivery for a reason), but it appeared I would have a quicker career advancement than at American, United, or Delta.
Things have changed since 9/11, though. DHL bought the ground delivery portion of Airborne Express, and the airline division was spun off as ABX Air, for whom I now work. My job hasn't changed much (although I do get to fly during the day more, now), it's just that the packages are yellow and red instead of red, white and black. Also, in an ironic twist, ABX Air has better pay and benefits (not to mention a solvent pension plan) than any US passenger airline.
I guess it's a good thing no one hired me right off of active duty: I'd either be furloughed or working for half as much.
Military
My first assignment out of college was assessing foreign aircraft avioics. I suppose it required someone with an Electrical Engineering degre...Expand for more
e, but it definitely didn't call much on anything I learned in school. It also didn't involve any actual "hands-on" contact with anything electronic, except for a computer terminal. I started taking flying lessons in my free time and was eventually selected for Air Force pilot training.
After basic pilot training, I took a detour through fighter pilot school before being assigned to stategic (i.e., long-range, worldwide) transport. I spent the last four years of my active duty tour travelling around the world taking "beans and bullets" to the troops (and sometimes the troops themselves.) By the time the first Gulf War was wrapping up, I decided I'd had enough of flying for my country and decided to leave to fly for some real money. (See my workplace bio.)
Unfortunately (or maybe fortunately), I had not seen the last of Uncle Sam. Less than six months after leaving active duty, I was back in my green fligh suit flying the same airplanes in the Air Force Reserves. This job became my family's main source of income for the next three years, while my wife took jobs which underutilized her Master's degree, but at least provided health insurance.
Once I finally landed a "real" airline job, I still participated in the Reserves as a "weekend warrior", mainly because first year airline pay is barely enough to live on. By the time my civilian job started paying enough to make my job in the Reserves unnecessary, I was getting close to being eligible for a USAF Reserve pension, if I could just hold on for a few more years. So I participated just enough to satisfy all the necessary requirements, and submitted my retirement paperwork in December 2002. All would have been fine if the military required only two weeks' notice, but I was still obliged to serve for another six months.
In February 2003, my squadron was called to active duty to support the war in Iraq. This would not have been so bad if it wasn't for a little thing called "stop-loss", which put all transfers, separations and RETIREMENTS on hold effective May 2003. I ended up staying on active duty until September 2003, and still have some barely repressed anger toward the military for all I went through durin my last couple of years.
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