The Tomcat Blog: My Heart on my Sleeve, my History on my Back.

First things first, I apologize for the late posting this week. I worked overtime and had a family thing this weekend...

As I start this little story the beginning slipped further and further back in time, all the way back to my childhood maybe 7 or 8 years-old. Being an average boy I was fascinated with the military at least the glamorized version brought to me on the television. Shows like 12-O’clock High and movies like the 1957 classic Jet Pilot could keep my attention episode after episode. There were even more modern shows like Call to Glory, Top Gun and The Right Stuff that gave me the same thrill I had gotten watching the old shows as a child. All of these shows followed the same script, a brave young pilot straps himself into a sleek machine and pushes it to its limit to overcome an adversary or a challenge. The one thing that stuck with me was at the end of the conflict as the pilots climbed from their battle weary machines at the end of the show usually they all wore a flight jacket displaying patches of past missions, battles and accomplishments. I always wanted to earn a jacket like that.

Some years later while walking through the base exchange on Andrews AFB I saw a beautiful sheep skin bomber jacket, it looked just like the ones worn by the bomber crews in WWII. The jacket was on sale for $389, well out of the price range of a young military family so I just kind of pushed the thought of having a jacket like that to the back of my mind and walked away. As the years in the military passed I collected patches that were significant to me, an aircrew style name patch with my name, rank, maintenance badge and wings on it, a few different Desert Storm patches, U.S. Saudi and Kuwait flags, a Desert Fox patch and some others. All of them just stacked up in a little box maybe to be put in a frame someday and hang on a wall as a reminder of challenges past…

In August of 2001 I retired from the Air Force and moved to Southern Indiana. My wife took most of our military memorabilia (plaques and certificates) and hung them on a wall in our home office but the patches I collected sat in a drawer. Then one summer day walking through the shopping mall in Evansville IN. I walked past Wilsons Leather Shop, the smell of the leather pulled me in. I walked through admiring the vest and other items but as I came to the back of the shop I saw a rack marked clearance, there on the rack was a black bomber jacket just like the one I had always dreamed of having, it was on sale for $25. I couldn’t believe my eyes. I had to ask the young lady behind the counter if the jacket was miss marked, when she said that was the price I bought it (I actually bought three and gave two away).

I found a little seamstress shop that sewed the patches on for me and it looked great. Flags down one arm squadron patches down the other. The name patch, command patch and operation patches on the front. Everything I had imagined but one thing was missing; the back of the jacket was blank. I had nothing to fill the space. I remembered the old movies and how the aircrews would have the nose art from their aircraft painted on the backs of their jackets and there was an old nose art used by the 9th Bomb Squadron back in the day called Cloud Nine. I had a copy of it on a pullover shirt. Over the years I had stopped into specialty shops with the jacket and shirt to see if they could make a patch to put on the jacket most of them either flat out said no or I was a bit leery of the quality after looking over their work. Then one day while visiting my mom in Louisville Ky. She suggested we stop into a little shop she has seen.

We took the shirt with the artwork in and talked with the owner, as he measured and looked it over I looked at his work that was laying around on the counters and hanging on the racks. There was no question in my mind this was the man that could do what I wanted. He said it would be difficult but he could do it and said it would be $90. I asked him one question; Are You Proud of Your Work… He replied “YES”. That was all I needed to hear.

The jacket was finished several weeks ago but I haven’t been able to drive down to get it. As a surprise my mom drove up this past Sunday and brought the jacket while I was out. When I came home and saw the Cloud Nine on the back I was speechless. I couldn’t have wished for a more perfect job, the colors are crisp, not a stitch out of place and dead center. The dream of a 7 year-old boy and a 51 year-old man came to be… Some cloth and some thread all in the hands of a true artist. Thank You…