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Tav's note in the latest checkpoints, "...Steve Latham, who I think is in Alaska, but I'm not sure...", made my wife and I laugh. I didn't mean to drop off the radar quite that far. Guess I haven't been the best in sending updates, although I try my best to keep up to speed on what everyone else is doing via the '91 site and the checkpoints column. My life since '91, in a paragraph or less: UPT at Del Rio by the sea, then 2 years banked (standard), but got to spend them in NATO (RAF Bentwaters and RAF Lakenheath); came back through requal to the A-10, then spent 18 months at Osan, followed by 3 more years flying hogs at Moody, although most of that was spent living out of an A-4 bag elsewhere. Did the standard rotations to the desert. I had great fun doing all of it, but having experienced staff work as a 2LT, decided to avoid it as best I could as a major, and got out in late 2000. To my great surprise, I got an interview with United Airlines almost immediately, but elected instead to take a job offer from a bush pilot outfit in western Alaska, and put United off for another time. Dragged my (then) fiance, Jana, up to Alaska with me and flew bush planes for several months out west in Bethel, AK, then spent a summer in Fairbanks flying paracargo and smoke jumper support for the Alaska Fire Service, followed by a winter in Anchorage flying a fog seeding (don't ask) contract for the international airport. Jana got to see a lot of the state. While waiting on a training date with the Alaska guard, I spent a year working for the U.S. State Department in South America flying OV-10Ds (another don't ask), got married, then in 2003 went through the rotary wing transition at Fort Rucker, followed by the HH-60G course at Kirtland. This week, I'm a traditional Air Guard HH-60G helicopter pilot, flying floatplanes in the summer for Alaska Air Taxi in Anchorage, Alaska, and married to the girl of my dreams. She's a former professional photographer, and owns an art gallery here in Anchorage, and between our 3 (8?) jobs, 3 dogs and 50 hobbies, we are both way too busy, but both doing what we love. Greg Schumacher, his wife Amy, and sons Gus and Rudy, live 10 minutes down the street from us here in Anchorage. He's an orthopedic surgeon at Elmendorf, and Amy, who he met in Madison, Wisconsin at med school, is a "civilian" pediatrician. He's just now on his first rotation to the sandbox (the surgery residency is a LONG one), and his boys are trying to figure out what the pictures of Dad sitting on a camel are all about. Anthony (Scott) Davis is currently flying C-130's for the Hawaii guard, and I'm not sure what else these days. We spent most of 2002 and some of 2003 working for the same company, but flying different airplanes, for the State Department in South America. Scott was in the venerable C-27, I was in OV-10s because I'm not all that smart. Mike Bibeau, F-15 pilot extraordinaire, is off on a nonflying staff tour in the UK with his lovely wife Norri, sons Forrest and Avery, and presumably a dog. Other than that, I can't speculate, because he sucks even worse than I at email updates. Ed "Tippy" Schindler is one of many from our class furloughed from the airlines following September 11. He flies C-130s with the Dallas ANG, and has spent an astonishing amount of time in the middle east over the past few years. He's currently at the C-130 weapons school, which I'm sure is a nice break. As a side note, when one of our parachute team friends was killed in an HH-53 crash near Bagram last year (Steve Plumhoff, '92), Tippy got on the rotator from Afghanistan and didn't get off an airplane until he was in Albuquerque for the memorial. He was wrecked when he showed up, but there he was the next day, in blues with the rest of us. A lot of us were there for Steve's memorial service, but nobody came farther than Tippy. Ryan "Pi" Payauys changed his last name to Payus in the late '90s when he got sick of everyone spelling his name wrong. Personally, I spent too long learning to spell and pronounce "Payauys" to use the new one. However you spell it, he's currently flying for Jet Blue, and C-5s for the Reserves at Dover. Married in 2000 to Judy, a cardiologist, a happy workaholic pair. Rich "Boda" Svoboda has also had some diversity in his post active duty career. He and Jeannie have gone from stock trading and mall kiosk ownership in San Diego to reserve T-37/T-6 IP to motorcycle racing/security clearance investigator, then back to stock trading again. They're currently residing happily, if sweatily, outside San Antonio, TX, although Boda commutes to Del Rio to fly. He has a love/hate relationship with the T-6, but it leans pretty heavily toward the love side, and from talking to him I think instructing is his calling. Anyone who knows Boda won't be surprised that while he was living in San Diego, he DROVE several times a month to his reserve flying job in Del Rio, TX. Ouch. That's about all I have for now I guess. Don't know if any of this is new news. I'll try to write again before the end of the decade. I've include a couple of pictures for posterity - hopefully I haven't sent all this to you by mistake instead of Tav. I haven't quite broken the code yet on which of you we should be sending stuff to. Talk to you soon, Steve and Jana Latham
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