I have left out so many stories.  Some funny, some horrible.  But life is zillions of minutes, most of them routine.  As Ken always said about being a single seat fighter pilot, "It is hours and hours of boredom followed by seconds of sheer terror."

After he retired, he went on to get a degree in Aerospace Studies at Oklahoma State U. (with a 4.0--I told you he was smart), and a Masters in Sociology at Tulsa University.  He had gone there on a football scholarship when he graduated from high school.  As he put it, "I went to play football and have a good time."  I think he must have done both because at the end of one semester he had a grade point of 00.04.  He didn't go to class.  Someone must have given him a D or it would have been 00.00 He was out of options so he enlisted in the Marine Corps.

The registrar asked him (when he applied for entry to the Master's program,) "Are you the same person that went here over twenty years ago.  What happened?"

"Twenty one years in the Marine Corps," Ken answered him.  "It makes a difference in a person's life."

After he enlisted, the Marine Corp did something very rare.  They opened the door to flight school to enlisted personnel if they could pass a college graduate equivalency test, and could pass the flight physical.  (You had to be in a certain height range.  If you were too tall you would lose your knees when you ejected.)  Ken passed both.  A few of them did.  Fewer still could pass the written exams in flight school--there was a ton of advanced math.  He was commissioned.  As he put it many times when he was teaching young people in our church, "It changed my life."

Ecclesiastes 9: 10  "Whatsoever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might."