B-B-B-Beards and Bootstraps

It was 1972, five years after the "Summer of Love." He was finishing college while on the Air Force Bootstrap* education program (now with a more formal title; Air Force Educational Leave of Absence Program). If you were an enlisted person within one year (now two) of graduation you could apply to attend school full-time to graduate. At the same time you could collect VA financial support for tuition along with your normal active duty pay - a hell of a deal to be certain. Your payback for this support was and still is 3-1. That is, you owed three months of service for every one month you were away.

Chapman University in Orange, California offered extension classes at a lot of military bases. They were eight-week terms year round so a person could knock off a lot of semester hours fast. His turned out to be 54 semester hours in a span of 10 months spread between courses at Norton Air Force Base in San Bernardino, CA and March Air Force Base in Riverside, CA. It was a busy schedule but not too difficult for most.

He was really intrigued by the idea that he wouldn't be wearing a uniform while in school as he had the previous seven years when he enlisted at age 17. That also meant he wouldn't be observed for compliance with Air Force grooming standards. So right off the bat he began letting his hair and beard grow. Julieann, his wife of some four years at the time, tolerated the little kid in him as always.

Hey...it was 1972-73!
Gotta' have hair and lots of it right?!

As he neared the end of his bootstrap time, he was approached by a fellow student at one of his night accounting classes at Norton Air Force Base. The "fellow student" turned out to be an Air Force Major who asked him if he was on active duty. He answered "yes." The Major nodded his head and then moved away.

There was a weird look in that Major's eye that made the bootstrapper* pretty uneasy. He was afraid he would get zapped for growing all that hair against regulations so he devised a plot to escape. He called his accounting professor, a fairly senior enlisted man who was teaching part-time, and told him the story. He then asked the professor if he could skip the second to last accounting class and take the final exam separate from the class. Much to his surprise, his professor agreed and that was that...he never saw the mysterious Major again.

He had a great ten-month beard and bootstrap journey. In the end, he had his degree in hand and returned to duty clean shaven.  Just over a year later he was commissioned** a second lieutenant in the Medical Service Corps...an act that would put his beard growing days on hold until post-retirement in the late '80's.

*The term "bootstrap" in the military sense typically refers to self-help or...pulling yourself up the career ladder by your own bootstraps. In his case it was actually his wife, Julieann. Julieann was the one doing all the pulling although she probably didn't realize it at the time but yup, she was the motivation all right.

**In a serious touch of irony, he went from NCO on Dec 31st 1974 to to 2nd Lt, on Jan 1st 1975...overnight, while driving from Luke AFB, AZ to Mountain Home AFB, ID.  His first assignment, Hospital Squadron Commander where one of his primary responsibilities was to enforce the grooming standards of Air Force Regulation 35-10.