I was the Base Adjutant at Albrook Field in the Canal Zone 52-55, when our fledgling Air Force decided to host a Central and South American "Good Will" tour centered around the Thunderbird Team of F-86's and Chuck Yeager, who was the renowned test pilot who had exceeded the speed of sound and had many other aeronautical accomplishments. The Carribean Air Command/Albrook Field were to be on-site hosts for the tour. All of the staff that could be spared were assigned duties, as well as to be escorts to each of the tour's dignataries.

I was assigned to Chuck Yeager to answer his beck and call, since I had been in the 1st Fighter Wing and had flown the P-51 and the P-80. We got along just fine -- except that you didn't carry Chuck Yeager's bag or anything else; you just accompanied him and enjoyed his company. He was one neat guy that you could never get ahead of. He was always up, out and gone before your feet hit the floor. The more I tried to help him, the less I could do. If you were in a group of people with him, he had the nack of making each and every person feel only they were getting his complete attention. Chuck flew the F-86 at each show in every capitol. What a fantastic flyer!

I did not see him again for nearly ten years, until late one night when I was on a cross-country in a T-Bird out of Vandenberg AFB. I stopped at Albuquerque to refuel and see my old Base Commander from Albrook, Col. Joe Martin, who was the Sandia Base Commander. We were sitting on the tailgate of his old pickup when the AO came running out exclaiming "Colonel, we've got a flameout in a T-33 forty miles east. The pilot said he wanted no emergency support, that he would call on final, and that he was turning everything off to save his battery." The AO went on to say that the pilot quickly gave his plane number and his name before signing off, saying "pilot and soul occupant is Chuck Yeager." The AO asked Joe Martin if he should get a fire truck and Air Police out there, but Joe said "No, have them stand by". Several minutes later, landing lights flashed about 1/2 mile out on final approach, then went out. That AO was anxious but Joe Martin just told him to relax. It wasn't long until we heard the tires squeek as they touched the runway. A moment later that T-Bird turned off at the center taxi-way, rolled up to within 20 feet of our pickup tailgate where we were sitting, tapped the brakes slightly to bow the nose, and the canopy raised.

Chuck Yeager had just dead-sticked that T-33 some 40-odd miles and then rolled right up to our pickup, and did this all at midnight in pitch-black darkness, over mountains! But that was not all. The first thing he said to us was "Joe Martin and Jack Oliver, what a welcoming party! I don't think I've seen either of you since South America on The Good Will Tour". Now, we all know of the thousands of people he had met on that tour -- and so many more people since -- yet he remembered not only our last names but our first names as well.