Call signs remain fun Air Force tradition

One aspect of my time in the Air Force involved something that tends to remain “off the radar” with regards to the rest of society. It involves the nicknames those in uniform tend to adopt following something that happened to them during their years of service.

Better known as “call signs,” it’s something those in uniform get “bestowed” upon them by their peers for doing something very cool they did. However, sometimes these folks end up with these titles after they get caught doing something, to put it bluntly, very stupid or embarrassing.

Some of us connect with that aspect of military life, especially since those call signs tend to make their appearance in certain movies we watch. For example, most of us remember “Maverick,” “Goose” and “Iceman” each time we watched “Top Gun” many years ago.

As that movie clearly shows, those call signs never go away. Instead, they tend to remain a part of each veteran’s life well after they retire or step down from their military duties.

I still remember my early days in the Air Force when my supervisor at Eielson Air Force Base, Alaska, thought I needed a call sign as I served as the editor of the base’s weekly newspaper. It began after someone either in my office or somewhere in the wing headquarters repeatedly misspelled my first name by accidentally transposing two of its letters.

As a result, I became known as “Brain.”

That callsign stayed with me for quite a few years, although some of my supervisors tended to avoid using it when they asked me a question or needed me to help them complete something in our office.

But unlike some Air Force pilots and others whose call sign sticks with them throughout their entire career, it seemed mine was meant to change once I moved to Kunsan Air Base in the Republic of Korea. During that one-year remote duty assignment, it seemed my connections with science fiction movies and television shows nudged me toward earning a new call sign. It was something I must admit I earned after pulling a prank on our lieutenant who recently got stationed at the base.

In addition to our daily duties, our office made it a point to take time each week to remain physically fit. While some in my office preferred to use various pieces of fitness equipment at the base gym, I tended to stretch my legs as I ran across designated areas of the base.

For me, it was a chance to enjoy the view in addition to ensuring I never worried about passing the yearly fitness tests each of us were required to complete. While we only needed to run 1 1/2 miles as part of those fitness tests, I decided many years prior to push myself to see how far I could run without stopping.

At one point, my endurance allowed me to nearly run around the entire base perimeter. Not bad.

It was here that the lieutenant asked if she could join me on a run. Seeing that she was getting a bit tired after several minutes, she asked where the halfway point was located so she knew how far we had to go before we could turn around and head back to the gym.

It seemed my quirky sense of humor kicked in as I pointed toward the instrument landing system, or ILS, tower located next to the base runway. She admitted the tower seemed pretty far away but chose to keep pace with me as we continued to run.

Several minutes later, she asked how far we had gone.

“Oh about two miles,” I said.

“Sergeant Orban!”

I could tell I had fooled her. Obviously, I knew she only wanted to go about 3/4 of a mile before turning around to complete the minimum distance we had to cover as part of our fitness test requirements.

However, she failed to properly clarify what she meant when she referred to the “halfway point” on the route we continued to run.

“No, you asked me where the halfway point was,” I replied. “I planned to take you on a five-mile run, and that tower is about where the halfway point was.”

Fortunately, the lieutenant survived that run. However, she was simply shaking her head knowing I had fooled her.

Afterward, the captain who served as the head of our office heard what happened. Obviously fighting back a chance to laugh out loud, he saw the opportunity to provide me with my new call sign...

“Jedi.”

I received that title after he told the lieutenant I had pulled a “Jedi mind trick” on her. It helped explain, from a hysterical point of view, how I convinced her to run much further than she had anticipated.

I continued to remain known as “Jedi” until the day I retired from the Air Force. However, it seemed I gained another call sign a few years later as I started teaching classes through the city parks and recreation department.

Among those classes included teaching children and teens how to build and fly model rockets – the same ones that students at the junior high school create as part of their science lessons. It was a hobby my father introduced me to when I was just 12 years old – a hobby that persuaded me to build and fly various rockets that included some that represented various challenges I learned to tackle over the next few decades.

After teaching that first class at the parks and recreation building, the students and I took time to launch and recover these rockets at a designated launch site east of town.

I could tell these children were clearly excited as they watched their rockets soar off the launch pad at speeds of more than 400 miles per hour. Reaching altitudes of more than 800 feet, each rocket then deployed their recovery systems and slowly return downward while each student ran to catch their rocket in the air versus waiting for them to touch the ground.

I could tell I made a difference in the lives of these students, some of whom expressed a genuine interest in building larger, more challenging rockets they could fly with their parents’ help.

That message became very clear the following day as two of those students were with their mom as they drove down the street near my house. Immediately, they saw me outside doing yard work.

“Mom! Stop the car,” they shouted. “It’s the Rocketman!”

To this day, that call sign remains a part of my life. In addition to receiving a NASA T-shirt that features that call sign, the parks and recreation staff also presented me with a hat that includes that call sign as well.

Each time I taught those classes over the next several years, I made it a point to wear that shirt and hat. After all… “I think it’s gonna be a long, long time / ‘Til touchdown brings me ‘round again to find / I’m not the man they think I am at home / Oh, no, no, no / I’m a rocket man.”

– Brian S. Orban