I’ve gone from China to India and back on a ten hour flight and logged nine at hours of instrument time. You never see outside the plane, but still you are flying headings to miss mountains. That got to be trying on your nerves.

Nowadays, jets would go over there and never even see the mountains. They go so high. With what we had we did a great job.

They published an article about me in the local paper and some Colonel got a hold of me. He lived in Redlands and a retirement village for military officers. He saw the article and I got a letter from him. He said: “you guys never got the credit you deserve for what you did.”

I thought that was a nice complement from someone I didn’t even know. That was a real highlight.

And I enjoyed the jewelry business. It was nice clean work indoors. I met a lot of people; talked to a lot of people.