I received an appointment to the US Air Force Academy from Washington State Senator Walt Horan but I applied to Stanford University just for fun. When Stanford turned me down (grades) and the AFA also turned me down (excessive refractive error in my right eye, not pilot qualified) I suddenly had no college to attend. People in town and school counselors made a few calls and I ended up at Washington State University in Pullman, WA, with a room rent waiver as my only financial assistance. I was not happy with the AFA for declining me so I attended the open house for Air Force Reserve Officer Training Corps (AFROTC) and signed up. I didn’t know what major to pick but I was good at math so started down that road along with the usual undergrad requirements, plus AFROTC classes and drill.
For the next four years I lived on the first floor of Goldsworthy Hall on campus. One of the first learning experiences is getting along with your new roommate. Since I hadn’t planned on attending WSU I hadn’t signed up for a specific roommate, so I ended up with Kent Stepaniuk, a Canadian from Seattle, and a smoker. We got along fine, other than the smoking which was allowed in the dorms back then. I was at Kent and Gretchen’s wedding which was like an all-night party. Kent majored in Accounting and went on to own a company that made cargo pods to fit Boeing airplanes, and he became fairly wealthy, owning vacation homes in Chelan and Scottsdale along with their home in Issaquah.
I had roommates as a freshman and sophomore. One of my roommates was Roger Young from Gig Harbor. Roger and I started a business called TNR Services; we recruited tutors for all subjects and then solicited the Athletic Department to funnel all their scholarship athletes through us for their tutoring. We kept a cut, like a booking agent, and paid the tutors. The AD loved it because instead of cutting numerous checks every month for the various tutors, they cut only one to us, simplifying their process quite a bit. We also got approval to have a telephone in our room, which was very unusual; most dorms at the time had two phones, one at each end of the hallways.
When I became a Staff Assistant for 1st Floor Goldsworthy Hall as a junior and senior, I had a private room, which was awesome. I was responsible for maintaining some kind of loose order, monitoring rooms for female visitors outside of visiting hours, excessive drinking and noise, etc. I worked with the Head Resident, Mrs. Eleanor Barlow.
A major regret from my college years was a joke I played on my mom that wasn’t as funny as I thought. When I was a freshman Mom had visited campus for Mother’s Weekend or something like that and got the impression I was depressed, so for several weeks after she went home I received encouraging letters from Rev. Dan Benedict and other friends and family. I got a call from the WSU AFROTC that the University of Idaho AFROTC had a field trip planned for Hill AFB, Utah, and they had room for some more cadets, and would I like to go? Of course I went, and while I was in Utah I sent a postcard to Mom that said the letters didn’t help, I was in Utah now but not for much longer, and not to worry. Then we flew back to Pullman-Moscow Regional Airport and I was back on campus that Sunday.
The following Thursday afternoon I was on the phone in the hallway when Mrs. Barlow showed up – and she NEVER came onto the dorm floors. She asked if I’d been anywhere recently and I told her about the quick AFROTC trip to Utah and back. She sighed and said she’d gotten a call from my Dad asking if she’d seen me around and coincidentally, she had not. She said Mom had received my postcard, had fallen apart, Roy and Jim told classmates that their very stable big brother had flipped out and run away, and my folks wouldn’t even tell my sister Vicki because she’d get hysterical. I told Mrs. Barlow that the postcard was so OVER THE TOP that everyone would know it was a joke — but apparently not. Mrs. Barlow instructed me to use the phone in her office to call my Dad. Dad was not amused; he told me that if I’d been home when Mom received that postcard, I’d have the anatomical distinction of being the only teenager in history with his butt kicked up between his ears.
College provided my first exposure to parties and alcohol, and I learned some things. First, I don’t like the feeling of not being in control of myself. Second, after a very VERY bad experience with Johnny Walker, I don’t even like the smell of whiskey of any kind. Third, after two frozen double margaritas in 30 minutes at an AFROTC Dining In (formal dinner event) at Fairchild AFB in Spokane, I spent the bus trip back to Pullman explaining how I’d do a much better job of running the program than anyone on the AFROTC staff. Since I didn’t know I’d done that until the next day, and still managed to keep my upcoming commission, I don’t ever drink margaritas, frozen or otherwise.
As a sophomore I was invited to join the Cougar Guard Chapter of Intercollegiate Knights, a sophomore men’s service fraternity. We did such things as ring the victory bell and act as ushers at football and basketball games. (I was ushering when Lew Alcindor – later Kareem Abdul-Jabbar — came and played with the UCLA Bruins. He was unstoppable.) As part of the initiation I was required to design and fabricate a ceremonial paddle. It turned out pretty well, I think, and you can find it in my memory trunk, which is one of my dad’s footlockers from WWII. As a senior I was inducted into the Crimson Circle Chapter of Omicron Delta Kappa, the National Leadership Honor Society.
Arnold Air Society was an AFROTC-sponsored professional fraternity for cadets; Angel Flight was the women’s auxiliary and I was in love with all of them. They had their own drill team with uniforms featuring white and gold capes and they supported us at social events and parades. They were some of the prettiest and coolest girls on campus. Although I socialized with all of them and dated some of them, I never had a serious relationship with any of them. Angel Marilyn Thorsvig pinned on my new 2nd Lieutenant bars along with my Mom, and Angel Roxann Shotwell (Skinner) has been a friend for years.
I barely passed some of my math classes but I excelled at AFROTC, never losing sight of the rejection from the Air Force Academy. I was the Outstanding Freshman, the Outstanding Sophomore, the Honor Guard Commander as a Junior, and the Cadet Group Commander the first semester of my Senior year as well as Commander of Arnold Air Society. I received the Boeing Award as the Outstanding Cadet and received a Regular Commission as a Distinguished Graduate. The cool thing is that only Air Force Academy graduates get regular commissions; the graduates from the Air Force Reserve Officer Training Corps (AFROTC) get Reserve Commissions — unless they’re Distinguished Graduates. What that means is that I got the regular commission without having to put up with the crap at the AFA and got it at a coed college to boot! At the time, of course, the AFA was male-only.
I guess I should mention Janet Freed since we were engaged for a while. Janet and I met at WSU and went on several dates. Wyatt will understand this, but as I look back on that relationship I can’t tell you why we got engaged. We just sort of fell into it. Her dad owned a drugstore in Kelso-Longview and carried a small line of jewelry so I bought an extremely nice 0.68 ct. flawless diamond solitaire at his wholesale price of $300. Janet came down for my graduation from pilot training and her picture is in my Class 70-08 yearbook. She broke off the engagement when I flew a training sortie back to Washington State by way of Missouri to see another girl first. Her dad was not happy I got the ring back but I turned it into a man’s ring and wore it until I traded it in for $4,200 worth of furniture in Borger. It goes without saying that a few years later when I bought a ring for Teri Sue, the flawless diamond had to be bigger than 0.68 ct.
I graduated from college debt-free. I’m sure Mom and Dad helped me with some expenses, but I had worked since I was 15 to save money for college, and worked summers and breaks. I spent a summer up on Chelan Butte working for the US Forest Service as a fire lookout – great job: paid overtime during storms and no way to spend any of it. The Chelan Butte Lookout was 8 miles off Highway 97, the access road taking off from Lakeside on the south shore of Lake Chelan. The USFS brought up water in 10-gal cans and my folks brought up groceries and clean laundry. Compared to the other LOs, I had it very easy: electric range, daily visitors, telephone…….. My junior and senior years, I received room and board as compensation for being a Staff Assistant, and the Air Force paid for books and tuition, plus a monthly stipend of $50 for whatever.
As I took more theoretical math classes I determined I really didn’t like math that much. Unfortunately, to change my major from a technical field to a non-technical field could have jeopardized my commission, so I couldn’t change. Miraculously, when I took my commissioning physical as a college senior I was told my eyesight had improved, and would I like to be a pilot?
Absolutely! My eyes had me going to Navigator School at Mather AFB, California, but of course I’d rather be a pilot than a navigator! So I was soon enrolled in a class to get my private pilot’s license out at Pullman-Moscow Regional Airport flying the Cessna 172. I remember one of my instructors telling me during a preflight inspection, “Cadet Draggoo, we aren’t buying the damn thing, we’re just going to borrow it for a while.” Apparently my preflight check was too slow and too thorough for his taste.
And that’s how I found myself with a BA in Mathematics, a Regular Air Force commission with a 2nd Lt. bar, a private pilot’s license, and orders to report to Webb AFB, Big Spring, TX, for Undergraduate Pilot Training (UPT) in June 1969, at age 21. At this point in my life, I still didn’t own a car.