Bob McCarty Writes

The November/December issue of AARP The Magazine features an interview of NBC’s Brian Williams, according to an AARP news release today.  While I’m certain the article is full of a lot of newsman wit and wisdom, I suspect readers of the silver-haired group’s publication might get a bigger kick out of my experience with “the most watched network news anchor in America.”

In Brian Williams and Other Air Force Memories, a post published nearly two years ago on this blog, I wrote down some memories of a day I spent with Williams while serving in uniform at an Air Force base outside of Valdosta, Ga.  Here’s an excerpt:

Okay, Valdosta wasn’t very exotic, but it was unique, and I left there with some unforgettable memories. Probably the greatest Valdosta memory coincides with the opportunity I had to meet and work with Brian Williams in the spring of 1991.

You know him today as host of the NBC Nightly News. Back then, however, he was a rising star, working as evening anchor for WCBS, CBS’s flagship TV station in New York City.

On the other hand, I was serving as chief of public affairs for the 347th Tactical Fighter Wing at Valdosta’s Moody Air Force Base. [Note to file: For you trivia buffs, the base is located about 30 minutes downwind from the site where they filmed the swamp scenes in the movie, Deliverance.]

Operation Desert Shield was about to turn into Operation Desert Storm – a.k.a., the first Persian Gulf War – and Mr. Williams wanted to do an up-close-and-personal story about the folks who would soon be flying their F-16 Fighting Falcon aircraft into harms way over the skies of Iraq. The folks at the Pentagon sent him to our sleepy little base deep in the heart of South Georgia.

In addition to arranging interviews with fighter pilots and others at the base, we were told to provide Mr. Williams with a ride in the backseat of an F-16. Before anyone rides in the back of a fighter jet, however, he has to have a physical and complete preflight training that includes learning how to get out of the jet in the event of an emergency. Part of that training was something we called “hang and harness” training.

Hang and harness training is just like it sounds. A person hangs from a harness to get an idea of what it feels like to use a parachute. Standing on a platform several feet off the ground, Mr. Williams had a parachute pack strapped on his back and was connected by cables to a mechanical rigging device suspended from the ceiling.

The gear worn by Mr. Williams included two main straps, each of which extended from his shoulder area, down across his chest and under his crotch where they passed by his “family jewels” – one strap on each side – and continued up his back side where they connected with the bottom of the parachute sack.

Despite being told more than once by his Air Force instructors that he should tighten those straps until they were very snug, the anchor-man ignored the advice. When the time came for him to jump from the platform to the ground below, simulating the feel of a real jump, the anchorman’s less-than-snug straps suddenly became snug – and in an oh-so-painful way.

These days, I can’t even watch him on the NBC Nightly News without thinking back to that painful moment which, by the way, he failed to mention when the story aired. Thanks for the memories, Mr. Williams.

Once again, I say, “Thanks for the memories, Brian.”