Fluttering Leaves and the Fighter Pilot

About the Book

This book contains inspirational messages coming from the grassroots of a life well lived. It holds up the possibility of achievement by anyone, regardless of their beginning. Bill Garner was a painfully naïve country kid. He lacked career guidance but had an abundance of ambition. He pursued, with consuming vigor, a vision of what his life might be and came to realize his vision during a long life of successful endeavors. This is a how to guide to success in challenging times. Bill shares many lessons he learned along the way and offers a personal philosophy of life that others might adopt for their own lifelong benefit. He is a gifted writer. You will gallop with him through terrifying pony rides that end in no imaginable measure of glory; rather, in huge crushing disappointments. You will be transported to the complex cockpit of a Mach 2 fighter aircraft as you accompany him on harrowing missions in the black of night and driving rain during the Monsoon Season of Southeast Asia. Soaring tens of thousands of feet above the hostile terrain of North Vietnam and Laos, you will ride through in-flight refueling while connected perilously to a KC-135 flying gas station, soon thereafter to be shot at – and too often hit – by some of the most accurate and deadly antiaircraft artillery gunners the world has ever known. Following combat, he advanced through several assignments in Europe before attending the Air War College, en route to the Pentagon, his last assignment. He retired from the Air Force after 26 years of active duty. Bill shares his experiences in the two later careers of health services management and real estate. You will witness his innovative successes as he builds new and diversified programs and makes existing ones better.

About the Author

Bill Garner was born in High Point, North Carolina, November 19, 1933. His growing love of airplanes came to fruition during World War II when, at the tender age of ten, he discovered the joy of building model airplanes – precisely to the kits’ specifications. They didn’t fly but sure looked great and actually resembled the pictures on the boxes in which they came. His dream of flying became a reality soon after his graduation from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and commissioning as Second Lieutenant in the United States Air Force. His exceptional flying ability was realized early when he graduated with distinction as first in his Undergraduate Pilot Training class of 69 graduates. Following assignments as jet flight instructor, F-100 fighter pilot, and Assistant Professor of Aerospace Studies at the University of Georgia, he entered combat. Flying the F-4 Phantom II jet, during a 13-month tour. He amassed 241 combat missions over North Vietnam and Laos, most at night, for which he was awarded three Distinguished Flying Crosses (two of which were for valor), two Bronze Stars, fifteen Air Medals and numerous other combat distinctions. Upon retirement from the Air Force after 26 years, and for the next 10 years, he was director of clinical and patient affairs for the Ambulatory Care Center of the George Washington University Medical Center in Washington, D.C. His third career, of 25 years, was in his own real estate brokerage, specializing in property management, renovations and investing. He is now retired and lives with his wife, Evelyn, by the Potomac River just south of Washington, D.C. These are reflections of his journey from small-town boy to the “tip of the spear” of the greatest Air Force in the world and other life opportunities he pursued.