PROFILE
between 45 minutes and an hour to do the task. “We were in a hot zone where the helicopter had gone down,” he shares. “A sergeant and I were on top. We were being shot at. I finally told the sergeant, ‘Look, you’re a married man with two kids — get
the hell out of here!’ I have slides of me literally jumping off the top of the helicopter!” Leonard spent most of his time in the Marines working on Sikorsky H-34s. The last six months, he crewed a CH-46, and gained turbine
experience on top of the piston experience he already had. Leonard spent four years in the
Marines. He made Sergeant in 31 months and was on the Staff List. He would have been an E-6 had he re- enlisted, but that meant another tour in Vietnam. His brother had called him a few months before his re- enlistment date, and Leonard shared that he was probably going to re- enlist. His brother bluntly told him, “Mom will never take another tour of you in Vietnam.” “You couldn’t have hit me in the head any harder,” Leonard says. “So I got out after my four years were up.”
CIVILIAN LIFE Leonard went back home to Saint Michaels when he got out of the Marines. He got a job working in a local grocery store. His brother started giving him a hard time about working in a grocery store instead of taking the knowledge and experience the Marines had given him and using that to work in aviation. Leonard knew in his heart that he
wanted to pursue a career in aircraft maintenance. He applied to eight Part 147 schools and ended up enrolling in Spartan College of Aeronautics in Tulsa, OK. “I arrived there on a Sunday
afternoon, and almost went back home on Monday,” Leonard shares. “There were a lot of kids running around there who were not serious about school. There were some wild looking kids — hippies if you will. Their fathers enrolled them in school so they wouldn’t have to go to Vietnam. They would be in class clowning around and carrying on. The 65% of us who were ex- military in our class set them straight pretty quick. ‘My dad didn’t pay for this, and you’re not going to mess my education up,’ I said. That only needed to happen three or four times,
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